Stay Active!

Modern urban lives are hectic enough to make a lot of people perpetually dizzy. One in five Indians aged between 18 and 24 are concerned about being fatigued more than anything else, reports say. While tiredness has become a casual joke among healthy adults who describe their constant state as one of being done, fatigue is a public health concern as it can cause more severe ailments in the long run. Keys to feeling less tired are:

• A good routine.
• A systematic body clock and rhythm.
• Keeping a close eye on food consumption patterns to ensure it is in line with your tridoshas.

Feeling light throughout the day is an art that needs us to consciously care about our bodies and take the overused-to-death metaphor of our bodies being temples quite seriously.

How active should we be every day?

According to the CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention), a normal human being should get a minimum of 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise classes every week. You may be have shocked by now! And may think of it as a daunting job to do every day. But, if you want to improve your quality of life, then managing body weight is essential. However, if you break down the number to per week notion, the number is less than 30 minutes a day over five days a week.

With coronavirus outbreaks, staying active is even more critical. Most of the time in a day, we sit and work that has adverse effects on our body. Whether it is work from home or working from the office, if the job is to sit and work, it means very little or no physical activity. It will have a negative effect on your body, and there will be high chances of getting diseases such as type 1 and type 2 diabetes, obesity, blood pressure, and even heart diseases. 

Besides keeping the person fit, doing regular physical activity has a lot of health benefits, such as:

• Improves mental health
• Helps to weight loss or weight maintenance
• Strengthens the muscles
• Boosts the immune system

Six ways to stay light and active throughout the day

Ayurveda states that we become what we consume. This includes not just our bodies but also our mental states and emotional lives. Here are six simple strategies to stay active all day round:

A universal balanced diet is a dream that doesn’t come true. This is because body types, needs, and constitutions vary across people. Therefore, it is essential to pick your meal according to your body’s VPK levels currently has to stay active. Generally, a VPK test is pretty simple and reasonable to do. (follow our blog on how to do one on your own!) For example, Pitta dominant types should eat three solid meals a day, while vatta types can have two big and two small meals. Kapha types can have a big lunch while keeping breakfasts and dinners light, as their digestion is slower. Snack meals in between should ideally contain fruits and nuts, with a good gap of 2-3 hours in between meals.

Regardless of your doshic constitution, making lunch the important meal is a great thumb rule to follow for everyone. The sun is shining brightest in the afternoon, increasing Agni in the body (which is why pitta types especially feel hungry during this time, to the point of being crabby!), and digestion is at its best. Since daytime is good for digestion, and nights are good for accumulation, eat your dinner (last meal of the day) three hours before you hit the bed. Sleep and digestion do not go together. A healthy gap between eating and sleeping allows more excellent absorption of nutrients and less weight gain for healthy living. Keeping other meals more accessible to digest will make you feel light 

A lot of weights we carry are emotional and psychological. Keeping a journal will help you release stress, tension, pent-up worry, work through it and help you track personal progress. Writing down your feelings helps you see your development across health in the broadest sense- biological, mental, and emotional. It will also give you a sense of continuity and rootedness and not feel like you don’t handle your life. Next, pick a fun healthcare regime. Walk, do pushups, aerobics, cardio, pilates, jumping jacks, or take a yoga class- make your health and fitness routine a fun exercise so that you look forward to it. Finally, learn tai chi with a friend to push your motivation and create social interactions that help you emotionally.

Consume vegetables and food that has more roughage and higher water content. While this will make you feel full, it is also low on fat and carbohydrate while giving you energy. Fiber-rich foods help ease the digestion process, while good roughage helps with greater absorption capacity for nutrients in the body. It is better to consume water in accordance with your dosha. For better digestion, vatta types should drink water an hour after meals, while pitta types should drink small sips during meals. Kapha types should have a glass before they eat to feel full and eat less. Try to eat as fresh a meal as possible, and avoid canned, processed, frozen, or overnight food. These foods are hard to digest as they accumulate toxins and create ama in the body. Such foods have also mostly lost prana and no longer contain the vitality of fresh food. Therefore, consuming them gives lesser energy, creates problems, and becomes hard to burn calories.

Are you feeling tired? Do not reach for a second cup of coffee. However hard it may be, stimulants are harmful to the body and its health condition. They not only aggravate pitta but can also cause chronic acidity and boils on the skin. Stimulants mask tiredness and do not address it at its root cause. They deeply affect your digestive system in the long run and make it sluggish. As you increase coffee consumption, for instance, it develops tolerance in the body leading to a natural loss of activeness and freshness. Other methods such as fixing bio-rhythms and eating healthy are better alternatives. Drinking water or green tea are better ways to boost activity. Taking a break from stimulants and pushing yourself can be an excellent month-long challenge!

Cleaning duties at home are not so much of a pain if you make them your exercise routine. Most cleaning activities like sweeping and vacuuming involve a lot of muscle movement, weight-lifting, and bending. So club cleaning with your favorite playlist and make it an opportunity to de-stress along with getting chores you’ve been postponing done!

What are the ways to stay active during work from home (WFH)?

We all living the work-from-home life from last year! Most of our time is spent in front of the computer, and the 9 to 5 work hour has extended to 24*7 work time. So, getting hung up on our work is our daily routine now! But, the physical activity that our body requires is hugely neglected, and it is essential to stay active that too in this unprecedented time. 

However, below are some of the tips and trick that will help you keep active, especially the older adults in this pandemic that too while you are doing WFH:

Attend calls while walking

Besides the video meets or video-conferencing where you have to be in front of the computer, whenever there is a conference call or a telephonic call where there is no need to be on-camera, you can stand up and walk. Use the time of your call and work towards your 10,000 steps goal a day.

If most calls are video calls and you get very few off-camera calls, you can try to be a rebel and try to switch to a typical call instead of a video-on call. Besides walking, a regular call gives you a different environment and smell and sometimes even helps you think beyond. Moreover, you can connect with your team or colleagues through normal calls and start walking as soon as you attend.

Stand in intervals

Sitting too long for an extended period leads to back pain and even affects your posture and butt. Instead, make sure to stand up and stretch every 30 minutes. Just stand up, stretch a bit, move in the room or home and come back and work. If possible, think of your desk as your gym equipment and start stretching. This is a great way to combat the harmful effect on your spine. 

You can even go out of the way and get yourself a standing desk or make a standing desk at your home. Work sometimes at the standing desk once your feet are too tired to stand, go and take a seat.

Fidget with your home office

Fidgetting while working at the office isn’t that easy, and mostly because we don’t want our teammates and colleagues to be disturbed. Well, this is the blessing of working from home because you are in your comfort zone. You can fidget as much as possible, sit, relax, twitch, and toss do whatever you want until you get comfortable. Not just that, you can tap your feet, put your feet on the table, swing your legs, or lay on the bed, do whatever you want to.

Also, you can get fit by doing a little workout at your desk, while laying on the bed, and even while twitching your feet. The more you move, even while working, you get closer to your physical activity goals.

Lunges and lunches

Make sure to convert your lunchtime to more than just food, even though food is the best part of it. First of all, if you were snacking in between work, then make sure to control the quantity of food you consume at lunch. Always try to make your lunch healthy and less oily and have lots of proteins to pump up your energy levels. 

You can make the lunch physically active by eating while standing or can do some lunges or squats in between the bites. If you have extra time left out of your lunch break, then after finishing your lunch, do a quick 10minutes walk in the home, try to climb stairs, or do a little jump rope on the terrace. 

Try these out and avoid a range of illnesses that are unforeseen, owing to our stressful lives. Stay active and light, and feel alive, each day.