The Hindu Business Line : Six-pack frenzy

You feel great, on top of the world when your body is healthily robust, and adequately exercised; and your mind is harmoniously at peace, far away from the ‘I-want-it’ neurosis.

Bharat Savur

If you aren’t a body builder, what do you achieve from having six-pack abs? Are you going to exhibit it, talk about it to family, friends, colleagues?

Please understand that it has no value. You get fit to return to your natural, healthy, lively, happy self, and not to turn yourself into a synthetic mannequin. By starving, over-exercising, dehydrating your body and pumping artificial supplements into it; by torturing your mind into fantasising about the food you cannot eat, stressing it with a flood of narcissistic garbage and cramming it with marketing lies masquerading as dietetic facts, you do not live better. You simply waste your hard-earned money on overpriced tripe and end up frustrated and ill.

On the other hand, you feel great, on top of the world when your body is healthily robust, nature-nourished and adequately exercised; and your mind is harmoniously at ease, at peace, far away from the ‘I-want-it’ neurosis, into a beautiful contemplative contentment and lovingness.

Complacence v/s contentment

However, this does not mean that you should be complacent about your bulging stomach. Complacence and contentment are two different feelings. Complacence contains lethargy, contentment contains energy. When you are complacent, you don’t want to do anything. When you are content, you want to do something good — you want to give from your own fullness.

So, realise that you must never become complacent but work towards flattening and strengthening your stomach. Too much fat in the abdominal region can put pressure on the heart and give you palpitations. Have you woken up in the middle of the night, your heart beating abnormally fast? That’s because you were lying on your fat-layered stomach which was pushing against your heart. Sit up and you find your heart gradually returns to its normal state.

Other bad effects of a bulging stomach are lower-back pain, varicose veins, constipation, hernia, excessive appetite, and sometimes, low self-esteem.

The abdominal muscle structure is designed to hold all the organs firmly in their designated position. When the stomach muscles weaken and sag due to a poor lifestyle, the organs slip. And if you get a strong sneeze, you can even precipitate a hernia.

Instead of starting a chain of disorders, start exercising and watching your food. Some suggestions to keep you on the healthier side:

Walk in a place for about five minutes to warm up your body.

Run briskly around the house/office for 30 minutes. Or jog on the spot while watching TV for 20 minutes. These activities burn abdominal fat.

Here are two exercises to tone up stomach muscles:

Get on the floor-mat and do 20 crunches i.e. lie on your back, knees bent, feet flat on the floor. Now, raise and lower your shoulders while supporting your neck with your hands. Over the days, learn to flex your stomach muscles while raising and lowering yourself.

From the same flat-on-the-back position, bring both knees towards your chest, then move them away — 20 times. It is as if you are cycling with both legs. Or you can draw big circles in the air with both legs for 30 seconds.

If you want to further tighten and strengthen your stomach muscles, do hyperextensions with weights. Lie flat on the floor, legs folded, holding weights in your hand. Raise both weights above your head but not touching the floor. Return. Do 20 hyperextensions. Use weights — 2.5 pounds to 5 pounds — that you are comfortable with.

The nicest thing about this exercise plan is that you can do it anytime at home or at your office-cabin. If you are an outdoors person, you can do all these exercises in the park with the grass as your mat.

The most earnest exercisers sometimes experience retrogression — a day when the body seems stubbornly inflexible and refuses to move. It is due to inadequate sleep, a poor diet or too many pre-occupations that weigh you down.

Take care of your needs:

Relax into restfulness before you sleep at night by putting on some soothing music and letting all thoughts and tiredness drain out of you.

Cut out fatty foods. If your body is using all its energy to digest the heavy food, it has no energy to spare for your exercise routine.

Cut out foods that distend your stomach — channa, nuts, foods cooked with soda, for example. If the stomach is bloated, it is difficult to do abdominal exercises and this frustrates and de-motivates.

Drink a litre of water. This dispels constipation by promoting elimination.

Don’t let your mind remain empty or brood. An empty mind is a miserable state which makes you seek food to fill its emptiness, to assuage its misery.

Chant, sing, exercise for 20 minutes to charge your mind.

Above all, drop the six-pack-abs obsession. Be your natural fit self.

The writer is co-author of the book ‘Fitness for Life’.

Queries may be sent to life@thehindu.co.in

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