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My Workout and Health Series Conclusion
This is the final post in the health series which I started almost 3 months ago on the request of a friend. I hope some of you found the posts helpful. I would like to conclude the series with my exercise habits.
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My Diet
I wanted to give a quick overview of my eating habits in case someone is interested. To start off, my body type is ectomorph and as such, I need more calories from carbohydrates than the other macro nutrients. Also, I need to do more strength training than cardio. I am a non-vegetarian and prefer eating meat daily, mainly because I will not be able to meet my protein requirements on a vegetarian diet. Keep those things in mind as I uncover details about my health and fitness. Remember that the diet and exercise I am following best apply to me and may not work for others. Do your own research on your body, figure out your body type, diet and exercise.
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Importance of Exercise
We are finally coming close to the end of the health series. As most people probably already know, eating healthy is more important than exercise, so I spent a lot of time on how to eat healthy. Assuming that you got your food habits in order, the next best thing you can do to your body is to exercise. In many cases, the inactivity is the cause of most health problems. If we do just some very basic exercise, it will help the body quite a bit. Depending on your grit and inclination towards fitness, you can do more exercise and be at the top of your fitness game, or you could do just the basics and be moderately fit. The returns tend to taper off as you increase the level of activity. So beginners and inactive people will see a lot of benefit quite quickly when they start exercising and the benefits will drop off as the intensity increases.
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Body Types and How It Affects Us
Did you know that the way you look if you do not do anything special with diet or exercise, is the way your genetics dictate. Yes, that is the unfortunate truth. You acquire the propensity to be naturally fat or lean from your parents. But that need not be the end of story. You definitely can change that. The problem is that the obesity and diabetic cases are increasing year on year. If everyone just acquired their parent's genetics, then the proportion of healthy vs unhealthy, fat vs lean, diabetic vs non-diabetic should remain the same over time. However, that is not the case. So we are doing something wrong to make things worse. Environmental changes, increase in stressful jobs apart, our quality of diet and exercise has been on the decline. We need to improve them. But, depending on the body type, you need to adjust your diet and exercise. So it is helpful to understand your body type based on your genetics. There are three body types in general -- endomorph, mesomorph and ectomorph. Figure out which body type you closely resemble and apply the fixes.
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Investment Analysis App
For the past few months I have been working on a web app that would let me slice and dice my investment data so I can do some analysis and answer interesting questions about my investment. I am finally (mostly) done with the app and published it recently. In this post, I will go over my investment strategies and how they played out using the data from the app.
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Micronutrients
Now that we completed understanding macro-nutrients, it is time to understand micro-nutrients and their role in health. Micro-nutrients are essential parts of food that is required in small amounts. These include vitamins such as A, B, K etc and minerals such as iron, magnesium, zinc etc. Vitamins are required for a healthy immune system, converting food to energy, healthy eye sight and so on, where as minerals help in fluid balance, growth, muscle functioning. We need to obtain most of the vitamins and minerals from food since our body cannot make some of them. So what are the different kinds of micro-nutrients and how do we get sufficient amount?
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Macronutrients: Fat
We have come to the final macro nutrient -- fat, which has got a poor rapport with health. But there is more to it than meets the eye. Fat is not as bad as they are made out to be. Fats are blamed for build up of cholesterol which is in turn related to many of the heart diseases. But did you know that eating the right type of fat can actually reduce cholesterol? More importantly, your body needs fat in good quantity, and hence it is a macro nutrient. Lets find out more about fat, what to eat and how much to eat.
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Macronutrients: Proteins
Continuing my health series, today I want to talk about proteins, one of the three macronutrients. I already discussed at length about the importance of carbohydrates in my previous posts, so now it is the turn of proteins. While carbohydrates provide energy to do work, proteins provide amino acids, the building blocks for cells and muscles. Since our body is constantly replacing cells and repairing our body, it needs adequate amount of amino acids to do its work properly. There are 20 types of amino acids, but only nine of them are essential, which means our body cannot make them and we need to provide those via the food we eat. The rest of the amino acids can be made by the body.
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Rain Water Harvesting Project
When it came to self-sustainability, I was interested in doing three projects -- growing organic vegetables, setting up water harvesting and generating power from solar panels. While we cannot certainly be fully self sustaining if I completed the projects, we could at least be less dependent on outside factors. A while ago we started growing vegetables in our side yard and terrace. I need to get around to writing a post on it. Some topic or the other always comes up and I write a post on it and eventually the post on terrace garden is way overdue. I did not want to let the same thing happen to this project which we started working on setting up recently. So here is something on that topic. The work is not yet fully done, but if I wait, I may end up never getting around to it :)
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Dietary Fiber, GI and GL
I know that this health series is stretching quite a bit, but I have to write a few more posts before ending the topic. You see, I initially wanted to write just one post on how to eat healthy, but then as I started writing, the post became too long and I decided to split it into three parts. But even as I was splitting I knew I had to give more information, because the thing about eating healthy does not end with "eat these foods and you will be fine". It goes a bit more deep and I have to explain why we need to eat them and the nuances associated with them. So if you are feeling bored already, brace for more boredom in the coming weeks as I continue this health series :)
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