We all have them in our lives, the haters and the naysayers, the ones who aren’t happy with your progress and prosperity. They are the people who resist you in every correct step of yours and shall encourage you for every wrong decision.
I have faced them quite a few times till now and I think results and right actions speak louder than frustrated words of the moment. So, every time I hear someone call me with names like ‘bodybuilder’, ‘dietman’, ‘fitness model’, I choose to say quiet and put in more work, dedication to my fitness journey. At the end, they are seeing your progress, they will be shut eventually but at the very soul, you must remember why did you start? What every rep of the workout means to you? How does your workout help you cope with the daily hussle?
You must remember why did you start? What every rep of the workout means to you? How does your workout help you cope with the daily hussle?
Even if we keep reminding ourselves about our purpose, there will be times when we fail and that’s when they, the haters will hit us the hardest. You, the person who has worked his ass off for a destiny must remember you aren’t lost but it’s just a pause, a pause to introspect, learn and get back stronger.
Educating yourself will always be the strongest move. Learning, applying and reassessing must be your weapon of choice when it comes to your fitness journey. There will be mistakes and failures in the path, infact a fair number of them, but they will be learning points, moments to humble yourself and make you ready to accept new ideas and try things out of the box.
You are in your fitness journey for your own life, it’s longevity and wellness. Everytime, you put in work, you are improving and that’s what matters.
Let them bark, till you shock them with what you have achieved.
Body Positivity, Fat Acceptance Movement, Fat Pride, Fat Empowerment or Fat Activism is a movement that started as an anti-fat bias movement and primarily focuses on changing the society’s opinion towards plus size men and women. This movement calls out every fat person to accept, be proud and love their body, the way it is, without being bothered about any other person’s opinion and honestly, I do think the motive behind this activity is truly great, I do think everyone must be proud of who they are and how they look.
I have been a fat kid, my whole life and to be honest, fat shaming is a real thing. People often put you down because of the way you look and I think most fat people will accept this.
Recently, I actually see this movement getting a bit more of momentum. I see my friends talking about it, I see people from my batch post about it on social media but I also see a toxic side of the movement and by toxic side, I imply to people, part of this movement, putting down any person who was previously one of them and now, lost their weight, to be healthy and achieve their dream physique. So, basically, a movement like ‘Fat Pride’ that started to bring in positivity in the society is responsible for spreading negativity further.
Captured in the Frame: Adele Adele Transformation (100 lbs, weight loss) The Picture is borrowed from https://www.instagram.com/adele/?hl=en for educational purposes only. Please mail the page moderator for any copyright infringement and the image shall be replaced/removed.
In the above picture, we have Adele, English Songwriter and Singer and recently she just went through this amazing transformation. She dropped nearly 100 lbs of weight and personally, a person like me who’s on his own transformation journey can say 100 lbs is no joke, it’s a good amount of work, sacrifice and dedication. Now, I am bringing her into this conversation for a reason and I quote some comments from the after photo post of her transformation (second image in the collage), “i really missed your old figure, you’re perfect in every shape and form”, “u are now just too thin”, “Why adele why did you lost all the weight, u were beautiful the way u were earlier, adele. Just kidding, but you were more beautiful earlier”, “you aren’t beautiful anymore 😭😭” and there are a ton of these negative comments.
I have also seen a lot of positive comments in the post but when you have a following of 39.5M, even the smallest chunk of negativity is quite significant. The matter is, it deeply saddens me. There are people who don’t appreciate the hardwork she has put into this transformation. People are unhappy and complaining about the fact that she just tried to lose weight, be in a healthy weight range and just feel good in general.
Now, if you think about the root of this negativity, trust me it comes from deep within of the people who made those comments, it’s because they used to feel good about themselves as their idol was one of them. Now that, their favourite is in perfect shape, they feel bad about them. So, all these negativity is nothing but insecurities of the general mass.
Instead, the very correct attitude will be if they draw in some motivation from the transformation, start training and exercising, eating better and healthier to be better than the last day.
Lastly, I want you to take this message with you from this post. Accepting the way, you are, it’s great but it is better to work on ourselves to be better than the present day. I do support the Fat Acceptance Movement, but at the same time, I want every single person, part of the activity to exercise and to eat healthy, get better than the last day. At the end, we know it’s not about how we look, but it’s difficult to do things when one is overweight, so it’s better to loose a bit of weight, just to feel good and perform better everyday. In the end, Fat Pride should always be about loving yourself the way you look but should never become an excuse to live an unhealthy life and further put on weight by eating junk in the name of body positivity.
Even if planning mostly don’t work with 100 percent success rate in the real world, but it definitely gives you a guiding pathway to achieve your goals. Yet, on the other side, setting goal if done improperly can definitely bring you failure. So, for people who are beginning out with their fitness journey must know how to set and achieve goals, the right way.
Settings Goals can be quite simple and becomes more effective if we introduce ourselves to what I say is ‘SMART’ goals.
SMART Goals is an abbreviated form for Specific Measurable Achievable Relevant Time-bound Goals. Okay, I do get it, that’s a lot of new words to begin with but further explanations will surely help you know more about it.
Basics of Setting Effective Goals in a Nutshell
Any goal that we set, should be quite specific and measurable and by specific and measurable, I mean it should have a particular purpose with a number attached to it. Since, we are a page about fitness, so I am going to talk with respect to goal setting for starting your fitness journey. Let’s say a person is overweight, he knows it because his doctor said him and he didn’t do any measurements by himself. He decides to join a gym to loose weight and sets it as his goal to begin with. By setting such a specific yet immeasurable target, it’s more likely that the person will quit the process halfway in the journey. Whereas, if the person checks his weight, finds that he’s, let’s say 10 lbs overweight and decides to loose it, it’s more likely that he will push himself till he reaches the goal and the success rate definately goes up by adding in a specific purpose and measurable number to the goal.
Alright, let’s say you are ready to start with a specific and measurable goal but if you set your goals beyond your limits, it will only bring you disappointment. We are continuing with the 10 lbs overweight person’s example. The person is ready to loose weight but he decides to loose all of it in a week. Of course, it’s possible but he has to stay in a huge caloric deficit, he has to do hours of cardio, his energy levels will be low and he will be in a bad mood because of continuous ghrelin signals which he keeps avoiding. Instead, if he goes in a slight deficit, where he can function well, start easy with cardio and slowly making his way up and don’t horribly suffer all the time while dieting, it’s more likely that he will achieve the goals. So, knowing your limits is important before setting a goal.
A goal which isn’t relevant with the present situation is the one that will bring no good and in fact it will be bad for you in certain times. Let’s say the person we were talking about, even being overweight, decides to bulk up first to gain muscles and then cuts back the previous 10 lbs and the added fat he has put on during the bulking phase. It’s more likely that he will not be able to reach his goals. He has to diet harder, diet for a longer period and suffer more. So, it’s more likely that he quits halfway into the journey. So, not only did he quit and now is disappointed but also has to start with more than 10 lbs of weight to loose at the first place, in his next attempt and the whole situation just becomes tougher for him. Relevant goal setting is must and not a choice.
Next big thing is the time factor, the last factor that can make or break the game for you. If the person goes in the slightest of deficit to loose weight and decides to loose 10 lbs in a year, he may get impatient in the mid and just get frustrated and quit. On the other hand, if he decides to loose the 10 lbs weight in a period of 3 months(12 weeks), he actually goes for less than 1 lbs weight loss per week rate, which is in fact a correctly decided time frame and can be done with ease. The time period is also short, so it’s more likely to be achieved.
Now, we understand how to set goals or set SMART Goals with higher success rates but when it comes to fitness, it is something that needs to be done for lifetime. So, it’s important that we actually enjoy the process while working towards our goal to actually develop it as a habit and continue doing it even if our goal is achieved.
It can actually be done by taking care of little things. Your workout program must include exercises you enjoy doing. You must love your diet and look forward to every meal you eat. Dieting can be made easier by making smarter choices that help you reach your goals with ease when you are enjoying the process itself.
In this time of social media, it’s also beneficial to take advantage of these platforms. Click your weekly progress photos, your weight check ins and talk about your journey.
Declaring your goals on social media can actually add in a fear factor which can be positive and it’s more likely that you will work hard towards your goals, pushing your limits just because of the fear of missing out which in fact will be a help for reaching your goals.
Believe in yourself and on yourgoals.
It’s important because your believes will fuel your journey and will take you beyond your limits.
I still remember the exact date when I first stepped into the gym, 1st April, 2019, the day I chose to bring in the change I always wanted for myself.
Being brutally honest with myself, I can assure you people, I was in a bad state and I am not only refering to my physical health but also talking in terms of mental health and my state of mind. I was broken and needed a ‘just me time’ to collect all my pieces together. Exercising, for me was my ‘me time’, the only time where I can talk to myself, let my anger, disappointment and fear drive me through the workout and let go of all the negativity and negative thoughts in the gym itself.
I was always someone who loved playing out. I loved playing Cricket but I couldn’t continue playing when I went into a coaching institute for preparing for my JEE exams. I used to stay in a hostel, there was no playground for students, we had our classes from 7.00 am to 4.30 pm, 6 days a week, added with them are tons of assignments that are to be completed before the next day itself and to make it worse I always had some backlog from the previous classes to add in some extra pressure. So, this is how things started to get ugly but it became worse once my grades started degrading, from being in the top 10 of the batch, I went down as low as last 30 of a batch of 120. I was quite stressed about my grades, I worked harder every single time but couldn’t bet the stocking piles of backlog and with added backlog, my grades further went down. I developed an eating disorder, I ate my way to happiness, feeding to a point where I can eat no more. Pizzas, Burgers, Milkshakes, Cookies, Fries, Snacks and what not. My weight continuously went up from 75 kgs to 98 kgs by the time of departure from the institute. At this point, I hated myself. I hated the way I looked, I hated the way I feel. Even climbing up stairs was a challenge. I remember being out of breath when I was dragging myself up, taking little steps at a time to reach the 2nd Floor, walking like a Grandpa. This was the time, I knew I have fucked up and wanted to fix it all again. I strongly decided to loose my weight, no matter what comes in my way.
As I said before, I joined the gym. I did intermittent fasting, ate in a huge caloric deficit(which I recommend to no one and still regret doing it). My weight went down fast, I was happy with the scale going down every week I measured my weight. 2 months into the journey, I love the results and the changes were vivid and visible. My size went down from xL to L in just 3 months.
The larger change, it all starts with that small step, in fact, it’s all about, taking those continuous smaller steps till you reach the larger goal. Hardwork, Dedication and Discipline, those together make the single key to unlock the doors to reach your goals.
I have made some majors mistakes when it comes to my personal fitness journey, one of them is losing weight fast. I lost weight but not all of it was fat. It was fat, water and muscle mass together, but I personally think it doesn’t matter. What really matters is I found myself back, I regained my confidence and most importantly I loved the journey even if, it was a bit rough. I used all of my negative thoughts, my agression and my fear to drive myself through the workouts, burning it all in the gym itself and honestly, I still believe fitness is my mantra to stay positive and to fight with my demons even in this present time.
I hope my story motivates you.
It’s truly never late to start. let’s start today to make ourselves fit with every passing day. Join me in my fitness journey and we will be growing together from this day.
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