What do you want to be: healthy or fit?

My friend was 31 years old, very dynamic, and prolific.
His mother died two days before his PhD graduation in a car accident.
It was devastating, and excruciating for him, no words.
Sometimes, the meaning and purpose behind some tragic events are unknown but cruel.
This is the time we have to take a test on our faith.
My friend couldn’t bear it and went into depression.
He was in constant therapist’s supervision for 2 years. Due to his sedentary lifestyle and negligible health behaviour, he gained a lot of weight, and became overweight by almost 90 pounds.
The good thing is that he came back to normal life gradually, started a job, but was still struggling to overcome his mother’s sudden death.
He was close to me, we used to share a lot of our professional life but not much of personal life.
One day he knew from our common friend that I run at least 2 to 3 miles every single day.
He came to me and asked for advice on how he can lose weight.
Our conversation inspired me to write this piece of content.
The first thing I told him is that everybody has some sort of painful events, major or minor in the past.
Ten percent of our life is what happens to us but the ninety percent is how we respond to the past actions. This shapes us in various forms throughout our existence.
We have to convert the past pain into new strength.
I told him, “In your case, you can turn the pain of your mother’s death to your healthy body, it’s up to you.”
I added, “Whenever you see or remember your mother, visualize her from liberation, imagine your mother is seeing you fit and healthy.”
“Make your health a passion for you, but a pray for the soul of your deceased mother.” I encouraged him.

There are many reasons we suffer in life, in my friend’s case he is already weak due to his mother’s sudden death, in addition to that his health is deteriorating everyday.

If we are healthy then only we can bring peace of mind, happiness, and prosperity.
Focus on your health and fitness that could be the best tool to start a new life.
Many of us don’t do anything to improve our deteriorating life due to past actions. We just think about the past actions, or results and move our brain in the past. This is one of the worst ways to live a life.

If we look only in the rear-view mirror while driving, there is a high chance that we encounter another accident.
We don’t have to drive into the past life using our rear-view mirror as a guiding compass.
Our past actions always work as scientific experiments in our life. Many experiments don’t give the results as per our expectations but still they give us some positive directions and references.
Even the negative results act as references to set up new experiments with the hope of our expected results. We must learn from our past experiences and actions but never ever live in those gone moments. It’s difficult but we have to absorb the pain and release it through our body and mind. We must focus more on those things which uplift and empower us at present or in the future.
In reality, the past is just a conceptualization and it doesn’t exist. The only thing that exists is the present.
If we remain in the past, our stress increases but if we move to the present or positive future by some tool, stress gradually fades away because of the change in emotions.

I make my living by doing science. Many times, I have run scanning experiments to see the real peaks but if I zoom in the baseline I also see tiny peaks called noises. In many circumstances, I have to abandon them and focus on my real peaks. In life, those small noises are past experiences and actions. We have to let them go.

There is another way to look at things in life called overview effect.
When we are in spaceflight and see our city, everything on earth looks like dots. Therefore, we have to see things in perspective. We are very small creatures on this planet. One kind of various forms.
My life philosophy is no one owes us anything in life. If you die today less than 30 people would be affected, and the world continues as it is.

From my personal experience, one tool to let go of the past is to massively focus on fitness and health. If we make health our priority, we become a completely new person never been before.

I advised my friend to be resilient.
I told him, “Don’t complain that you can’t lose weight even though you tried some physical activities”.
If we are unaware about the science behind the exercise, it is very difficult to achieve our health goal. Good health should be the continuous priority rather than doing some random physical activities here and there. We must know how to do it properly.

First of all, health and fitness are not the same.
Majority of people have confusion regarding this.
Healthy person can be fit but a fit person can’t necessarily be healthy. It’s the same as working hard versus working smart.
You can be seen clearly fit, but also unhealthy at the same time. Or you can be healthy without looking fit. My great uncle is still in good health at age 102 but he never looked fit during his lifetime.

Many people do exercise everyday but some of them still feel more fatigued and weak than others, why?
Because they are confused with the rules of health and fitness games.
Fitness is the physical condition to do athletic activity but health is an emotional or mental condition where all of our organ systems are doing their job in normal condition.
Fitness doesn’t necessarily indicate good health, sometimes it requires many skills with the sacrifice of health.
I asked my friend, “What do you want to be”?
He said, “Both”.
I said, “Pick one, and pick health first and work towards fitness”.
For the majority of people I recommend the same unless you are going to participate in athletic competition. That would be a different scenario.
We have to put our health first, and move towards fitness if we want.

One way to achieve this goal is aerobic exercise that burns fat with the help of oxygen.
Another form of exercise is anaerobic exercise that burns glycogen without oxygen.
This also causes our body to store fat.

Many of our activities with lower intensity and lower heart rate are aerobic such as walking, jogging, dancing or running but the activity with higher intensity and higher heart rate such as tennis or basketball are anaerobic.
Anaerobic process burns glycogen first and moves towards blood sugar. This phenomenon can completely disrupt our health and vitality. Our organ systems, especially nervous system demands a lot of blood sugar, but if that is deficient due to excess anaerobic activity, then we suffer health problems.

Our society should be aerobic friendly, but in reality it is anaerobic friendly. We don’t do regular light aerobic activities, and suddenly we feel our overweight body and we are ready to do forced activity or heavy exercise without proper understanding our body’s chemistry.

First, we have to develop aerobic exercise habits and slowly move towards anaerobic activity. Aerobic exercise makes us energetic, healthy and endurant.

Very simple example, if you have never run before, can you run ten miles consistently?
Less likely, if you do so, you will likely have serious leg, muscle, or heart problems.
There is a high chance that after your run you might not walk normally even for several days.
The reason it happens is because you enter into anaerobic exercise zone without much practice of aerobic zone.

One of the biggest benefits of aerobic exercise is that it prevents the clogging of arteries, which is the main cause of heart disease. Aerobic exercise helps to spread oxygen throughout the body organs.

You can go on diet, avoid all fat from your food, starve yourself for a longer period of time, but remember, nothing can beat aerobic exercise to burn fat.
Eat and train is much more functional and productive for our body than doing fitness and exercise on diet.

Christopher Sommer, a former US National Team gymnastics coach said, “Consistency wins over intensity, certain adaptations in body take weeks or months of consistent stimuli, if you rush, the reward is injuries.”

We also receive the burst of growth hormone after heavy exercise. Nowadays, It can also be synthesized in laboratories and given to children who have dwarfism.

Human growth hormone stimulates tissue growth, increases muscle tone, thickens muscles, and stimulates growth of bones and organs.
From birth to around age thirty, this hormone is naturally released into the bloodstream. High levels of this hormone naturally drop in older age. By age sixty to sixty five, men produce little or none of this hormone but women continue to secret into their old age. This is one of the reasons that women live longer than men.
Hyperthermic conditioning which is heat exposure can increase our growth hormone levels and improve our endurance. Sauna or hot baths after exercise are extremely useful in this regard.
In the end, I am going to ask you a simple question.
Who do you think is the most healthy person in the world?
I don’t know your answer, mine is: me ten years from now.
“This is the mindset we have to create”, I told my friend.
Make your health a priority everybody.

Thank you so much for your time.
– Yam Timsina