Skip to main content

Which Exercise For Me, Doc?

Image
By
“Which is the best exercise for me, doc?” is a frequently asked question I find difficult to answer and that I often return with “ Which one do you like best?”
If you thought docs always had the perfect lives and answers, this personal recount will tell you how very human and vulnerable we are. Having been a sports enthusiast in my younger days, weight had never been a problem till my 40s, as a daily dose of soccer, cricket or shuttle with young colleagues kept me trim. Games further added that “enetrtainment value” that is so unique about them.
Things changed when forgetting may age, I tried a scissor shot on the soccer field, landed with a thud, broke my bone, and realized that soccer had now become a game to be only watched on TV screens. In a few months, when I grew  a paunch, a senior colleague suggested tennis. It was a refreshing change and provided the much needed pauses between points during which my vintage colleagues and I could catch our breath.Ten years rolled pleasantly by except for the seasonal gain of 3-4 Kg of  body weight during the monsoon months that we struggled and shed when the rains left.
When I developed a “tennis elbow” a few months ago (my friends laughed that I got it in my left one!) and had to discontinue tennis, my family insisted that I try walks. I had never been a steady walker and considered this lengthy exercise of crossing suspiciousy looking dogs and men, monotonous and flat. I soon gave up.
When my son, worried about my lack of stamina, dragged me to the gym one evening, my initial fascination with the treadmill turned to horror when the calorie-meter showed that I had burnt only 46 Kcal, about half that of a nice sized chapati,.after having spent 10 endless minutes on the machine.
There is really no such thing as the best exercise that fits all. We need to move our bodies (that is aerobics), for around 30-40 minutes, should rave up your heart rate and breathing, and should do it with regularity. While I continue my search for what is best for me, you could try some of these websites to find out what appeals to you.
The website www.stronglifts.com provides you all information on how to build muscles, lose weight and shape up. If running appeals to you visit www.completerunning.com and learn how you can maximize your gains and make the jog interesting. If yoga appeals to you, go to www.itsallaboutyoga.com and discover which ‘asanas’ are best for you. And if you fancy dancing your weight down try www.zumba.com and enjoy the experience with Latin beats and tunes.
If you want to enjoy all the wonderful foods this world has to offer, you need to burn calories so that you don’t bulge when you savour them. So find out your best exercise and get started.
As published in HT City( Hindustan Times) dated 9 january, 2011.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Doctor’s Dress

By
The familiar white coat worn by physicians as their distinctive dress for over 100 years, has started generating  murmurs  of controversy. It is not uncommon to find the blood pressure to be higher when measured by a white-coat-wearing-doctor in the hospital or clinic than the readings obtained at home by relatives.  This is due to the anxiety that the white coat and the hospital setting evokes in patients, and has been termed “White Coat Hypertension”. Mature clinicians often routinely subtract a few points from these measurements when entering records in case charts or calculating the dose of anti-hypertensive medications to be prescribed. The white coat scares children too.  Kids often express their dislike for this dress by crying and screaming and by denying access to their bellies or chest for examination by paediatricians in this attire. Many pediatricians across the world have folded up their white coats and taken to informal colourful dressing to...
2 comments
Read more

Food Fads in Liver Disorders

By
In an attempt at trying to do well to those they love, spouses and parents often enforce diets on patients of liver diseases that often turn out to be detrimental. The commonest food fad is pale insipid boiled cabbage being doled out to nauseous patients suffering from hepatitis that makes them puke even more.  The liver, in a way, is a buzzing manufacturing unit that requires lots of energy to keep its multiple functions going. And it derives all this from the food we eat. During disease, such as during an attack of jaundice, when many of the liver cells get killed, the liver attemptsdamage control by trying to regenerate quickly. For its cells to multiply however, it requires a generous supply of energy that comes from carbohydrates, and protein, the building block for its cells and tissues. Boiled green vegetables unfortunately have neither of these. Hence the situation often progresses to that of a starved liver unable to recuperate due to cut-off food suppl...
2 comments
Read more

Teaching and Learning – is there a trick?

By
One of the big mistakes that we as parents and teachers often make, and that could stifle the mental development of our children, is to treat them as just small adults! In fact, it is this attitude of grown-ups that could be leading our next generation to become stereotyped conformists rather than original thinkers and innovators. And if we intend to drive home health messages and inculcate healthy habits we need to tailor our efforts to their cognitive potential. That children indeed think and discover the world differently was first noticed by a Swiss scientist Jean Piaget in the early 20th century. He studied his own three children grow and was intrigued by how they behaved, played games and learnt at different ages. With further observations and experiments, he propounded the theory of ‘cognitive development’, placed great importance on the education of children and is hailed even today, 30 years after his death, as a pioneer of the constructive theory of knowing.  He...
1 comment
Read more