Body Musing

I was taking a shower today morning and noticed that I was rinsing my hair and scalp aggressively. I paused immediately and thought about what effect it would have on my hair - it would make it weaker. I instructed myself in my head not to do it. That's when I realized, I am physically one being, but I am talking to myself in second person. This is how the conversation went -

P1 & P2 are the people inside my head who had this conversation

P1 : Hey! you should stop being too rough with your hair, its going to ruin it soon.

P2 : Oh yeah right, my mind is elsewhere and I'm not being sensitive to what's happening to me.

P1 : Yeah you have to remember that this body doesn't belong to you.

P2 : Wha-

P1 : This body is just a vessel to experience the world around. We're infinte consciousness experiencing the world through the human body. Tomorrow you could be a plant and lose what the human body has to offer.

P2 : Ummm cool

I did chuckle at this conversation in my head, it seemed too weird to think like this. Before you, the reader, assume that I have achieved spiritual peak, I shall humbly remind you that I do not think this deep all the time. Heck, I don't think enough either. Thinking deeper about the conversation, I went to recollect all the thoughts I had about my body as I grew up. Some quite profound memories are -

I was quite fair skinned when I was born. It attracted the wonder and amazement of most of the visitors who came home (because I'm south Indian and we have a sad longing for a lighter skin tone). The blessings of Chennai's heat and sunlight, combined with the "evil eye" of all those visitors made my skin darker, to the dismay of my mom. Its the sad reality that is present in Indian families, to prefer a fair skin tone.

I was chubby with little muscle growth or strength until my late teens. In fifth grade, I was selected to be in the base of the "human pyramid" on sports day. This kept repeating almost every year and convinced my ego that I was strong enough.

My brother is a sportsman and he was athletic and strong. During my sixth grade, I noticed his forearm had veins that were visible and it looked really cool. I had a goal of getting fit enough to see my veins pop out of my forearms.

I frantically searched for "how to lose weight in one day." The day after was the health checkup at school. I had to make sure that people didn't know I was too heavy. Each student was given a slip with their health checkup results like weight, height, BMI, etc. I hid my chit quickly and told my friends that my weight was 65 kg, when I actually weighed 75 kg.

I joined another school for 11th grade. I barely ate lunch because I liked giving to the hostelers, they were huge fans of my mom's cooking. I got to play outside a lot because I took physical education as my optional subject. I managed to lose a lot of the fat from the previous years and leaned down. My weight came down to 65 for real. People became concerned for that too. But I was happy, the physical activity kept me refreshed for the boring stuff in the classrooms.

I gained weight and lost strength again in college as a result of poor lifestyle choices. My shoulder became very weak because of extended laptop use and I struggled through four years of ignoring what my body kept telling me.

Coming back home after four years hadn't changed anything either. It was after a short trip to Theni, south Tamil Nadu, where I interacted with a physiotherapist and stayed in his village, that I could make some sense of what was important for me. Bhaskar, the physio, was my dad's friend and he briefed me about a larger picture of fitness, posture and daily activities. I took his advice seriously and began to work out at home everyday. It was majorly bodyweight exercises, meaning the load on the muscles is from one's own body. Pushups and planks are a good example.

I had exercised from January till August and saw really good gains in terms of strength and how I felt in my body. I went from barely being able to do one correct pushup to doing 100 pushups in one day (not continuous). It wasn't just physical exercise that helped. I read about the types of physical activities, how they affected the body and the role of food that played in body's physiological state. There were predominantly two kinds of activities -

Aerobic - When the body is under load due to physical exertion, the lungs are able to pump enough oxygen to synthesise food and provide energy to the muscles. This meant no fat was burnt, but there was muscle growth. Low intensity, endurance activities like running and cycling come under this.

Anaerobic - After a certain threshold of physical load, the lungs cannot breathe in and supply enough oxygen to the muscles in the body. The body then turns to the existing fat reserves in the body and burns it for energy as it is faster than taking in oxygen. Activities like weightlifting and bodyweight training happen for a shorter period of time, but are highly exhausting for this reason. The muscles undergo immense load, but for shorter periods of time.

When it came to food, I learnt about intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting was a method of eating where one restricted their meals to 8 hours out of the 24 hours. This meant they wouldn't eat anything for the other 16 hours. I had followed this routine for a few months, where I ate all my meals between 9am and 5pm or 12:30pm and 8pm. The magic starts after a few hours after my last meal. I start to feel hungry and my brain signals me to get something to eat. I choose to ignore all the signs of hunger and I no longer feel hungry in a while. It happens because the brain turns to the fat reserves in the body and burns the excess fat for energy. Queue fat loss next. I had lost 5 kg in 2 months by doing just this. All that thoppai (colloquial term in Tamil for tummy) that grew from sleeping after eating curd rice at lunch had reduced considerably. I continued to do this for longer and it kept me feeling light and at ease all day.

Weight loss is 15% exercise & 85% nutrition

This was a statement that I had read in a website while reading up and I can agree with this.

During August, my dad suggested me to try out two free sessions of Yoga over Zoom. I fell in love with it and dropped exercising in favour of Yoga. The breathing kriyas and asanas felt amazing and I loved its holistic approach to ensuring body health. I continued doing Yoga for 3 months after. It came at the cost of letting go of my intermittent fasting because I couldn't adjust my 8hr eating window with the class timings in mind. I started to eat regularly and my thoppai is returning. Lack of exercise made me weaker as I had stressed myself out while working and I started to feel my shoulder ache again.

It was a tough decision and I decided to let go of my yoga classes and take a more serious approach to strenghtening myself. I found it unacceptable that my body was unable to take the physical stress of daily activity. I signed up for a year membership at a gym close by and went for my first session yesterday. I am excited to see how the next one year is going to turn out.

Skandha

P.S. Get medical advice if you have some health condition and want to try anything drastic like intermittent fasting. I am no expert to give advice, neither do I recommend anyone to try this. What's important is to feel good about your body and giving it the love, respect and care it deserves.