My social feeds are full of my workout videos, the quantified food I eat and black coffee snaps and as a result, whenever I am with my family or friends, they ask me the same question every time, “Why are you doing this”, “Don’t you feel like eating junk?”, “Why gym is so important for you?”, etc. And not only family/friends ask me this, even my followers and readers of this blog ask me the same kind of questions. I never really answer anyone to the point because till now I wasn’t clear why I am into fitness, but now I am and hence this article shall help to me and people who want to get into fitness but something is stopping them.

To overcome my self-image issues

I come from a small city of Rajasthan, where, during my childhood days, fitness or gym wasn’t an option. We were always asked to study, just study. No sports or no curricular activities, it was always study! study! study!. Hence, being out of shape was common. But I personally developed few self-image issues when I was growing up. I don’t know how or who was responsible for it, but I started seeing myself into the mirror with some hate of how I look, and this was not healthy at all.

But, after getting into fitness, and consistent work on myself through diet and workout, I changed how I look. I am still far away from my ‘body goal’ but now in front of the mirror I feel very much comfortable and I respect what I have earned through consistency. I had options like to be mad at people because of my own self-image issues, but I never complain.

To overcome my health issues

As I entered into adulthood, I developed health issues like random fever, cold, headache, chest burn every now and then. Whenever such issues happened, I rushed to a doctor and then same, 5 days of medicines and then another visit. Who loves falling sick like this? No one I suppose.

After reading things about nutrition, one thing I clearly understood, If your diet is on point and if you are working out at least 3-5 days a week, your body’s immunity will keep getting better and better. And exactly the same happened, after getting into fitness, I stopped catching a random cold and now I don’t even remember when was the last time I got a fever.

To fix my relationship with food

I belong to a Marwari family and we have been taught how to eat ‘sweet’ anytime and anywhere. I still don’t see anyone in my family finishing their meal without at least one piece of sweet dish. I too had a major sweet tooth. My relationship with food was very bad. I couldn’t control my cravings, whenever I saw anything sweet, I always used to end up eating in bulk (here bulk means 1kg kalakand or 8 doughnuts in one go). But again, now after following diet and workout regime, I see my body changing and this gives me the motivation to see food as a fuel source rather than an “emotional sympathiser”. I have now the best relationship with food, I can eat anything, I never say no to any kind of food, however bad it is in taste.

To test my limits

After getting into fitness and seeing my body change, I got more and more interested in myself and my limits. I got more curious about how can I break my own limits by pushing myself more at the gym and gain strength simultaneously. Now, even the change in 2.5kg on compound lifts like bench press, squats, deadlifts, etc fill me with excitement.

To learn self-control and patience

We all know that our body doesn’t change overnight (if you are steroid-free lifter), as a natural drug-free lifter, even slight changes take time and you have to be really patient about it, otherwise you cannot really make fitness your lifestyle. And with this patience, you have to learn self-control. Now self-control could be anything, it could be saying no to a glass of alcohol, to a night out with friends, to a pani puri date with your girlfriend or to sternly tell you mom/dadi/Nani about the amount of ghee they going to use in the meal. Fitness lifestyle teaches you such things which makes you mentally strong.

To look and feel different

Whenever you are in a crowded area, like a mall or a theatre or some event, look around and you will see that 98% of the crowd is either obese or too skinny or rounded shoulder, pot belly and lethargic. And check in your family/friends, the majority of them keep falling sick and always complaining about this pain that pain. You get my point?

Because of fitness, I feel different from this crowd. I feel good in this crowd. This might be a narcissist quality of me but it is a different kind of high all together when you look and feel different in the crowd.

These were my reasons to be in fitness. Why are you into fitness??

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