Count your blessings, not your calories!

Beginning of another year and it’s time for resolutions and a time to introspect on your blessings. Most of these New Year resolutions don’t see day light, unfortunately the resolutions these days revolve around mankind’s new found love to hit their graves all glamourous and healthy defying natural deterioration and depreciation of both body and soul.

Trying to stay young while getting old is defying nature and helping you at this, is the new fad and big business. Quacks are cashing on this exactly the world over. The cash counters are ringing for people in the diet / organic food, fitness clubs and the electronic gadgets business. This is an effort to take a sneak peek into all three.

Apple cider vinegar in the morning along with an egg white of a Omega 3 boiled egg, steamed veggies for lunch and a glass of milk laced with turmeric for dinner goes the diet menu. I knew Apple, Cider and Vinegar as three different stuffs growing up. Fruits like Avocado have found its way into our lives. Avocado, I thought sounded more like an Italian mafia family name hailing from the Corleon town, until someone pointed out it was a fruit. The humble banana that I used to patronise as a kid is now hailed for its calcium, little did I know then. The lady’s finger has put the lady in the limelight as a cure for diabetes, the so yellow coloured, so South Indian turmeric, is now being lauded for its antiseptic values and is today an acclaimed complexion crusader which we South Indians with duskier shades found solace in to look lighter. The so called ‘research’ proves that par boiled rice with the husk intact is good for you. The good old keerai / Cheera, yes the same keerai / Cheera, the old vendor would scream you out of your bed on a Sunday morning is what you appreciate today as greens that your dietician recommends and for which you pay a fortune to buy. People who used to scorn garlic are now swearing by it.

This is a world where people get up in the wee hours of the morning to pump iron or run a mile but end up cranking the engines of their cars to reach a corner shop that is literally round the corner. This is because, ‘Burnt 100 Calories running an errand for wife to pick up green chillies’ sounds so third world a status message compared to ‘Checked in @ ABC Fitness Club: Whew!!!Pumping Iron@ Gym!!!’. A message that the silly gadget around your arm or under your shoe shoots off to the world. Now that message truly sends out THE MESSAGE on your STATUS. Man’s obsession to biceps and triceps has come a long way, since he was first pulled out of his mother’s womb with the forceps!!!

The Apple watch can monitor how many times you moved, stood or exercised , a Nike fuel band counts the number of steps, a Wi-Fi smart scale not only tells you your weight but lets the world know you are doing good by dropping a couple of milligrams in a month!!!. My watch strap could tell me if I had walked enough when I was younger. The wetter it was with sweat the more I had walked.

The recent invention of a self-tying shoelace is what inspired this blog. This was the last serious effort mankind took in bending down to take a look at his toes or the ground below both literally and figuratively, now even that is passé. Apparently an energy saving device stores energy from your walk which will power the shoe lace mechanism. Stamp your heel twice, and voila you have your shoes laces out. Remember the days I first learnt to tie shoe laces, it was a herculean effort then, wish I was born 4 decades late!

I recently received a thought provoking joke in Tamil which goes like this.

Cycle otta kashtamma irrikunnu bikea vaangi,
bikea vida sowkariyamaa irrukummnnu carra vaangi adhinaala thoppaiyaa vaangi
Ippo adhai kurraikka gymukku ponnaa….
Oddadha cyclea otta sollaraanga …Vazhkai orru Vattam!

For those who don’t understand thamizh (or Tamil)... here you go.

Thinking that Cycling was difficult I went in for a bike and then bought a car thinking it would be even more comfortable and got myself a paunch in the process. On enrolling myself at a gym with an intention of reducing my paunch they ask me to pedal on a cycle that doesn’t move!!!! Life is one hell of a circle!

I’m no health guru, gadget geek or a fitness freak; my only advice is eat well, be aware of what you eat, eat moderately and binge once in a while. Don’t be bothered about the caffeine in your coffee or the colour of your tea or the Omega in your egg. Eat and drink in moderation and all’s well.

You don’t have to karate, yoga or Zumba your way to fitness. Increasing your day to day activities is good enough, take the stairs to your Gym or the Zumba classes on the mezzanine floor, do your dishes and mop the floor and lift your weekend laundry. Your biceps may not be as good as lifting weights and you might be a couple of packs short, but trust me you will remain healthy.

Try and fit those gadgets on your mop and count the number of steps in your building or fit a sensor in your sink to count the dishes you washed and tell yourself you are doing well and not the world. The world has many more things to be worried about. Stop buying those sweat proof gadgets and let sweat be the only proof of you moving around.

Stop counting your calories and start counting your blessings! Stop counting your heart beats using gadgets and start to be conscious of your breath. The breath of life!

Too much of anything is bad, even good!