Liberate from the concept of ‘Diet Control’

The moment one hears the term ‘Diet’, the next thing which comes to his mind is ‘control’. Diet is always associated with control. DIET CONTROL! Do we really need to control our diet to keep us healthy and manage our weight? Ideally speaking, food is a source of energy for our body and we are here to enjoy all the types of foods that provide nourishment to our body. I have found a method which works optimally where we not only enjoy eating the food that we would like to eat but also to get a well balanced body composure and healthy life. We can easily liberate ourselves from this concept of ‘diet control’ if we set right some basics regarding diet. Do you want to know how to do this?? Then it is important to see a bigger picture for better understanding.

Information adding confusion:

One can get easily a clear answer if he probes logically into the history of human evolution. The concept of diet that exists now was unknown about fifty years ago. Science on diet evolved in the last 50 years and so did the evolution of multiple health issues. Today, we live in a state where there is too much information that leads to too much confusion. More the amount of information, the more the confusion is. Adding to this confusion is all the types of math of calories with diet. Some of us are so addictive in doing this math of counting the amount of calories to be consumed per day and eventually have become good in arithmetic. But, the question is whether the math which we have been doing on day today basis provides the desired results?

People were healthier 50 years back. Today’s scenario is quite different. Earlier people were dying mainly due to the lack of food but today it is exactly reverse. People die because of excessive food. How bad is it to hear this news? Beggars begging for food was a common sight decades before. But, what happened to all the beggars who were there decades before?

Stay in local domain:

Food has undergone a major change in the recent decades due to the influence of other cultures & technological advancement. Most of the foods that are available in the stores and restaurants like Pasta, pizza and lasagne were unknown few decades ago. There are wide varieties of food like Mexican, Italian and Mediterranean foods. Food has evolved pretty fast but the body is still the same. Body evolved over generations based on the external ambience. So, body is the same and there is no significant difference in body evolution. Now, we have changed the ambience by changing the supply of new varieties of food. The body is not used to this kind of food. So, now there is a mismatch! So, this drastic change in the food habit especially in case of children has a significant impact on the health of the children. So, bottom-line is to stay in the local domain to which your DNA is programmed for. In simple words, eat foods that your parents and grandparents prefer to eat. This answers the question of why our grandpa does not like Pizza?

Attitude towards food:

In a way in today’s scenario, food is cheaper and easily accessible. In prevailing situation, the money that is required to have all meals for a day is not that difficult to earn. Earlier, one really had to work hard to get food and extra effort was required to stock the food for the future. There was a value and respect for food earlier. But, now due to the easy availability, the value/respect which we gave to food has diminished.  

Nature law is always simple. More the respect you give, more is the respect given to you. If you give due respect to the food which you consume then same amount of respect is given to you in return and you are benefited by the food.

Don’t go by the face value of the food. Take for example the rice in your storeroom. It can be considered just a commodity available at ‘throw away’ cost or it can be considered as a source of accumulated energies from many different people from farmers, production unit, distributors to the vendors before it reaches our store room. The value is great when we consider the commodity based on the amount of energy it carries with it before it reaches our hand. This change in attitude towards food has significant impact on our own consciousness on food and becomes the starting point to build a conscious eating habit.

Perception of food:

Do we need to give importance to the quantity of food or quality of food or both? One can split food into subcategories like protein, carbohydrates, fat etc and do the math on the amount of calories during every meal.  Another approach is to perceive the energy in the food. The PRANA in the food. If we take the food items in our storeroom like coriander seed or onion etc they have ‘LIFE’ in it. They germinate into plants if we put those seeds in the soil. In other words, these foods have regenerative energy and when consumed give regenerative energy to the body. Say for example, on the other hand if we consider hotdog then this is a degenerative food and when consumed gives a degenerative energy to the body. So, I suggest considering the quality of food (the Life in the food) rather than the quantity of food to get the right source of nutrients and energy for the body.

I will cover some more points like Food and Body, Food Preparation, Food & energy, Taste Consciousness etc in my next blog.

Take a deep breath for an awesome life

Do you know why a weightlifter takes a deep breath just a moment before he lifts his heavyweight? Because, he knows that it provides an instant stimulation of energy that is required for lifting the weights. Do you know why we unconsciously sigh ‘Aha’, a long exhalation when we are in the midst of our stressed out time? Because, that makes us feel relaxed. So, inhale is a stimulation that energizes and oxygenates the body where as exhalation is the process of ‘let go’ and relaxes us.

At a physiological level our cardio vascular system is optimized due to the good oxygenation of deep breathing that in turn regulates metabolism. In a way, this aids in developing our endurance and stamina level. At a psychological level, it slows down our brain frequency and calms down our mind. So, deep breathing is a process that connects our heart and head.

Yoga is nothing but a repeated flow of stimulation and relaxation done in a rhythmic way. In a way, we are all doing Yoga on a day to day basis every second of our life since our breathing follows the same rhythmic pattern.

Breathing happens involuntarily and hence many of us have taken this process for granted and do not give it due consideration. Anyways, breathing happens automatically all the time and hence why should we bother to become aware? First, one can optimize the respiratory engine if one becomes aware of the breathing. Do you know that our lungs capacity is 5000ml and we operate on just 500ml? That is staggering 1/10^th and is complete under utilization of our lungs. Why do you want to limit this vital life giving force when there is a way to enhance it?

Body is a complete chemical factory that operates by itself most of the time. But, when we start to utilize the true potential of the lungs, oxygen and carbon dioxide gas exchange happens more optimally. Do you know the fact that cancer and many other diseases cannot survive when our body is alkaline?  Our body becomes more alkaline with good oxygenation by means of inspiration. With depletion of oxygen, the body becomes acidic. When pH drops to less than seven, our body becomes acidic. So, just with deep breathing, one can change the body to alkaline and can get rid of many of the diseases. This alkaline ambiance is not conducive for the diseases to thrive.

 Some of my clients but not all have lost weight just by doing deep breathing regularly for 15 minutes in a day. Is it difficult to buy this idea and does this sound like a joke to you? Don’t worry. You are not alone. There are many others who think the same way. How can we get rid of those extra pounds with simple deep breathing?

Let me explain to you how this works. Metabolism has direct impact on our body weight. Highly activated metabolism keeps our weight down and poorly activated metabolism keeps up our weight. In simple terms, metabolism is nothing but energy in and energy out from our body. The basic energy currency to every cell of the body is called ATP. ATP is derived from two major components, glucose from our diet and oxygen from our respiration. When one of the components is not optimally supplied then our metabolism is deregulated. So, simply by deep breathing, one can regulate metabolism which in turn regulates body weight. For some people, this does not work simply because of the fact that the energy distribution is not perfect within them. When it comes to metabolism, both energy generation and energy distribution should happen correctly to regulate the metabolism. When there is no physical movement of body, blood circulation is not effective and hence a simple deep breathing does not provide the required results. In this case, energy generation is good but energy distribution is not good. Hence, some form of physical exercise is required in this particular case to keep the energy distribution effective.

If you want to learn deep breathing then you should know how to operate the diaphragm muscle which is a dome shaped muscle below the rib cage and above the abdomen. When this muscle is activated properly, it makes an up down piston movement. Lungs are triangular in shape with bigger area at the base of the triangle. Piston movement of the diaphragm inflates the bottom part of the lungs and hence enhances the lung capacity.

Here is the empirical formula of deep breathing. Breathe 5 to 6 times per minute. This means, breath duration is 12 seconds. Inhale for 4 to 5 seconds and exhale for 7 to 8 seconds.

Those species which breathe slower live longer. Longevity is directly related to the breathing rate. For this reason some animals like elephant and tortoise live longer than human beings. Some animals like cat and dog live shorter because of the faster breathing rate. We live roughly 90 years and our breathing rate is 16 to 18/minute. When you practice deep breathing exercise on regular basis, a time will come when your automatic breathing rate changes from 16 to less than 10 that keeps you in a peak state of your life. Go for it!

WATCH OUT for this MAGICAL SPACE, the space below the rib cage and above the abdomen. TOUCH UPON IT!! You will become awesome.

Are you busy?? – Unplug it NOW.

Recently when I visited the local grocery store, I bumped into one of my friends with whom I lost contact for close to a year. We greeted each other and I asked the question, “How is Life going?” He replied back, “Yeah! Life is fine and I am pretty busy with family, work and …..”  When he asked the same question back to me, I gave the same answer as him and since we both were busy, we waved our hands and departed. Is this not a typical dialogue that every one of us encounters in our day today life? What is the reason to call ourselves busy? Are we busy for any good reason that helps in our personal growth?  Why are we proud to say that we are busy?

Most of the time, we engage ourselves running from pillar to post doing some tasks for some reasons.  Even when we are left with some free time, we force ourselves to engage in some activities as calling a friend, watching TV, playing some online games, etc. So, we have converted our free time to busy time. Being busy has become so habitual and a part and parcel of our life. On any given day, this process continues from start of the day until we go to bed. It repeats next morning and life moves on in this busy cycle. Eventually, over a period of years, when we look back, we take a strong beat to notice that we had spent a monotonous and pretty boring life with no significant growth.

 According to research, surprisingly most of the successful people are not busy in life. They have sufficient time to do the things that they want to do. On the contrary, ordinary people are the busiest people in this planet. There are few factors associated with this type of behavior.

“Feeling of importance” is one of the strong needs of human beings. By becoming busy, we psychologically feel that we are important. Because of this fact, we feel good about ourselves. The more we want to feel important, the busier we become.

We tend to become busy when we are not clear about things. When we don’t have clarity of the things that we do, we become busy. Due to this we run every where to find out means to become clear.

Another aspect is that we are bombarded with thousands of information from external sources like internet, media, TV, friends and families and these give rise to distraction. Also, quite a lot of us can’t concentrate on single task for a prolonged period of time. Is it not common that when we are into a significant task, sometimes we intentionally divert our attention elsewhere? Maybe like going to the coffee machine, chatting with friends, watching email, texting with friends, etc.?

When we take an inventory of the activities in any particular day, it is startling to know that most of the activities are centered on unwanted unproductive trivial things of our life. All of these activities do not contribute to our personal growth. I strongly recommend each one of you who reads this post to do this inventory exercise to know exactly where we are focused in our life.

When we run our life with high speed without slowing down or reviewing the progress, it is inevitable that a defining moment comes to us where we are forced to stop this busy life. As Robin Sharma said, “One can’t simply drive a car because he is too busy to fill the gas. A moment comes where the car stops and one needs to refill the gas irrespective of whether he is busy or not “. So, it is important to stop the speed or some time it is even good to step back if one wants to move forward.

If you feel that you are into this mad rat race where there is no beginning and end then it is high time to redefine your current life. Unfortunately, we see people around us who are also into this same rat race. We all run somewhere in life not even knowing where we are all running towards. We simply run because everybody else is running in life.

How to come out of this madness of busy life?

Here are some practical answers.

1.   First, do the inventory of all the activities that you have done in the last 24 hours of your life. If you have done hundreds of activities then pick up that 5 or 6 activities that aid in your personal growth. Give less importance to all other 95 activities. Whenever you engage in any new task, see whether it helps in contributing for your growth. If so, then pick up that task. 

2. Since, we have the liking for these selected 5 or 6 tasks, our focus becomes far more better. We stop running pillar to post for execution. By narrowing down our tasks, we can train our attention muscle and by practicing this for 21 days we can permanently rewire the brain. We get a free mind and free thinking and our effort is lot more productive when there are minimum numbers of tasks on hand. We start liking the way in which this works on us and we feel good about ourselves.  Remember that others don’t like you when you don’t like yourself. Now, with the renewed perception, when you start feeling good about yourself it is common that others will naturally like you.

3. Finally, a consistent conscious engagement has the ability to shift the direction of the sign post from ‘busy’ to  ‘unbusy’. This is a great way to unplug yourself from busy life. For this, one must be constantly aware what he focuses on at any time of the day. The power of consciousness keeps one in the positive direction of growth always. I will write a separate blog just on this particular powerful strategy.

By following the above three strategies, we get a renewed way of dealing with our tasks in life in a highly productive way where we work on few things, highly focused and consciously engaged. Eventually, we become ‘unbusy’ but effective.

Oh, yes! I am proud to say that I am an ‘unbusy’ person and I welcome you to join this club. If you see a difference in your life after practicing the above strategies then please feel free to share your experience with others.

Be UNBUSY but EFFECTIVE!!   

Secret of Success : Successful People Interview 1

I have an ambition to meet a minimum of thirty prominent world class successful people and to understand the underlying success formula that made them successful in life. These are successful business CEOs, positive psychologists and spiritual gurus. I believe that there is a basic winning formula underlying their successes that can be easily followed and replicated by anyone.

In this series of Blogs, I am going to share success stories and success formulas of all those people to whom I have met and have learned from.

Success Story: This is the success story of Mr.Ravi Sundaram. He belongs to a middle class family with no formal educational qualification. A decade before, he found hard to take care of his family and to meet the basic needs of his living. Ravi is presently an Executive President Team member and India’s topmost distributor of Herbalife. He is fondly referred as ‘Slum Dog Millionaire’ by his Herbalife global partners. He conducts regular personal development programs where the participant’s strength usually crosses few thousand people. 

Recently , I got an opportunity to meet up with him on the occasion of his house warming ceremony. I have summarized below an abstract level of his winning strategies based on my conversation with him.

Success Formulas:

1.       Whatever work we are into, just keep our execution simple & ‘easy to follow’. It has to be so simple that when we train someone then that trained person should able to pass his skill to another person at ease. In this way, our wisdom branches through people as the flow of river water that branch into multiple streams.

2.       Strong desire and intention are the driving forces to achieve the results. Without which, one cannot progresses well in life.

3.       At first, everything happens as an idea. Ideas flourish when a person does not bind himself with his present resources and limitations. They say, “It happens only twice in life”. Once as an idea in the mind in our internal world and another as an action/execution in the outside world.

4.       When the idea comes to us, it does not matter ‘how & when’ to execute the idea. What matters the most are ‘Why & what’ to do with the idea. ‘Why & what’ is an approach of visionaries and ‘How & when’ is an approach of theorists. This is the difference between visionaries and theorists. Mark Hughes of Herbalife was one such visionary.

5.       When we have a vision, we live with that vision as if it is happening right now. We live in this imaginative reality. This is the power of the imaginative faculty and by doing so eventually, things fall in place and manifest in physical reality. This is the fundamental of law of attraction.

6.       Express gratitude to others for whatever position we are in today. This is a great virtue to become successful. Also, to be more successful don’t expect gratitude from others.

7.       It is natural that people start building trust with us as we progress in life. The greatest success formula is not to compromise that trust in any given situation at any cost.

8.       We are human beings and we all have our own dull moments some times in life. During these moments, one can bounce back to normal life. This is mainly because of the return energy. Return energy is the energy that comes from the people to whom we have given our energy at an earlier part of our life.

9.       Every failure in life is a good experience. This experience helps us in come out the present crises of big challenges and bad moments in life in quick time.

10.   Be open to any new idea from anyone at anytime. Keep ego level low irrespective of our current status and achievements. This attitude makes us grow further.

11.   Successful people know clearly that they have grown well. They are aware that their growth depends upon the growth of the other people who have trusted them. They help others to grow and in that process they grow .This is a win-win situation.

12.   Successful people are very focused. They work on people who have shown genuine interest in growing. They don’t spend time with people who do not have strong desire for their development. Hence they discard them as they don’t see value in dealing with them.