Physical Exercises

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Last Updated: Thursday, 21 May 2026 00:51

Published: Sunday, 12 June 2022 18:34

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Physical Exercises:

Apart from a healthy and balanced diet, you also need to keep your body active. We are not looking for 6 abs, just enough activity to keep ourselves healthy. Below are some easy and effective exercises:

• Running: Running is the best and the easiest exercise that can be done anytime, anywhere and doesn't require any equipment. We should tr to run at least 1km every day, which should take about 4-5 minutes. This gets you warmed up so that you may continue to do other exercises.
• Swimming: Swimming is the next best exercise since it can be done by anyone with knee pain, back pain, etc. This is because swimming doesn't hurt any of these body parts, and involves movement of all of your body. Unfortunately, swimming isn't available everywhere unless you belong to the rich class and can afford going to a swimming pool, or are willing to take chance swimming in natural areas.

Fat content in Body:

People are constantly obsessed with fat content in their body. Here's a chart showing body fat % at different ages for both males/females => https://www.newhealthadvisor.org/Body-Fat-Percentage-Chart.html

Basically our body fat % goes up by 3%-4% every decade as we age. For males, ideal body fat goes from 10% in their 20's to 25% in their 60's, while for females it goes from 20% to 30%. Women need higher fat% to help with estrogen production and to help during pregnancy. We all require more body fat to remain healthy in old age, so fat % going up is not a concern, it's a natural process. However going above 25% body fat for men and above 35% for women is not desirable from health perspective. To see 6 pack abs, men need to have < 15% fat, while women need to have < 20% fat. Men generally store more fat in their belly, while women store more fat in their hips and thighs.

To lose fat, you need to burn more calories than you take, i.e create a calorie deficit. Fats store extra calories, and when when body is consuming more calories than what you took in, it starts burning fat stored in your body to get you those calories. These fats in belly and hips are the last one to go, so usually people don't see the results when going on calorie deficit for a short time.

6 pack abs: The abs that you hear about in social circles take a lot of sacrifice to get there. For men, only when you get to < 12% body fat, is when you start seeing abs and only 0.1% of american men have that. And that is not even healthy, and your body fights back. A more sustainable fat % is 15%-20% for men (true for 3% of american men). You need 6-12 months of calorie deficit and lots of exercise to be be able to get to 15% - 20% of body fat, where you may see few packs and more defined tones in your muscles. Do NOT go below 15% body fat (for men) and below 20% (for women).

How much exercise is needed?

Thee link below suggests at least 30 min exercise everyday for 5 days/week. You should also do muscle strengthening exercise 2 days a week as without it, your muscles will start decaying every year after 40. After age 40, you start losing muscle mass at 3%-8% per decade. Within your lifetime, you lose > 30% of muscle mass (varies from person to person). This muscle loss will prevent you from living even if all your organs are virtually intact. That is why very old age people are not able to walk or sit or stand up w/o assistance => because there's only 50% of muscle left in the body, compared to what's needed. Muscle strengthening exercises are needed to prevent this loss.

Muscle loss => https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/preserve-your-muscle-mass

Exercise duration => https://lifehacker.com/how-much-exercise-do-you-really-need

Yoga:

You probably already know what Yoga is. You have seen those esoteric poses and breathing and concentrating. Yoga aims to integrate mind, body and spirit. Yoga is a sort of mental and physical exercise. What I'm going to discuss below are some poses or asanas that are very powerful and very good for your physical and mental well being. These are also exercises, but are lower activity.

Asanas: Asanas are postures that