The 12-week Fitness Project

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What’s in it for me? Health beyond weight loss: a fitness plan for lasting well-being

There are a lot of diet plans out there right now that promise fast results for a smaller waistline, from keto and paleo to intermittent fasting and juice cleanses. Still, most of the world’s population is getting bigger. That’s because eliminating food groups, as with paleo or juice cleanses, and restricting calories, as with intermittent fasting or calorie counting, come with huge downsides. These include poorer nutrition, and an increase in the body's natural response to calorie restriction: more hunger.

Many diets for weight loss compromise your bone density, muscle repair, and skin health — they might even affect your sleep. After all, it is easy to lose weight under extreme stress, but that isn’t fostering good long-term health and well-being – in fact, it’s doing more harm than good.

So if you’ve been looking to make lasting change in your overall fitness, this Blink is for you. To understand why sustainable change is so important, read on.

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Why diets fail: the biology of starvation

During World War Two, starvation resulting from disrupted agricultural cultivation and supply chains was a near-global phenomenon. But the long-term effects of human starvation weren’t very well known. So in 1946 an American scientist, Ancel Keys, recruited healthy volunteers for a year-long study on the subject. The healthy young participants ate normally for the first three months, then for another six months they were restricted to just two meals a day to simulate starvation, along with required daily walks of several kilometers.

Within weeks of this restriction, the volunteers reported their energy levels plummeted, their muscles felt weak, and they were tired all the time. Mentally, they felt complete apathy, detached from the joys of everyday life, but were overwhelmingly obsessed with food. Even worse, they eventually thought of those around them as too fat, rather than themselves as too thin – a dysmorphia common to those with anorexia nervosa.

When the six months were over, they’d lost 25 percent of their body weight – but the long-term effects were just starting. Some participants reported that after the six months of restriction, they ate five times more than they had before. Given the study was published years later, in 1951, it also recounted how many had an increased appetite no matter how much they ate, even years later. Many participants described the study as the worst thing they’d ever experienced.

These brave participants highlighted the real costs of starvation, revealing how crash diets and poor nutrition are so damaging. From no energy or sex drive, they bottomed out, and their mental obsession with food during and after restriction set them up for continued misery.

That’s to say nothing of how far away this focus takes us from the nutritional advice we were given by our mothers and grandmothers. Traditional ways of eating a variety of foods from local sources, taking the time to enjoy them in peace and mindfulness, and enjoying the slow path to sustainable health can connect us to the land, to community, and to culture. Food can be a focus of celebration and joy, and feed us in more ways than one.

To counter the faster-is-better approach, let’s dive just a bit deeper into what sustainability means for health – not just our own, but the health of our communities and environment, too.

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Be the tortoise, not the hare

Sustainable health must reject restrictive diets and embrace a holistic approach that doesn’t sacrifice health for some desired number on the scale. Sleep, activity, and food all play a role in overall well-being, and so fitness has to account for all three. Even more, any fitness plan has to be one that you can imagine following for life. One that you’d be happy to have your children or family to follow.

Yoga, for instance, isn’t simply getting into a pose by any means necessary, straining your muscles and joints. Think about sirsasana, or headstand pose, and how much alignment, strength, and coordination it takes to do the pose properly. Some may take a lifetime to perfect the pose, and they will derive all the benefits. They may even apply the lessons they learned from mastering a headstand to understanding many complex circumstances of life.

That’s why this twelve-week plan isn’t looking for fast results, and openly encourages a cumulative approach. Each week, simply take on one healthy new habit and enjoy the process. Make enjoyment a central feature, in fact – from exploring delicious new sources of nutrition at the farmers’ market to taking that daily walk.

If you think some of this will involve setting aside gadgets and limiting screen time to help with sleep, exercise, and more mindful eating, you’re absolutely correct. Smart phones and gadgets have become a ubiquitous source of distraction and stress. From feeling on call twenty-four/seven to fear of missing out, our gadgets can feed a negative cycle in and of themselves.

Bringing mindful awareness to daily habits, and slowly transforming them, is the key to long-term, sustainable success. This can also have the added benefit of bringing more of your presence to your family, friends, and community. Exchanging a single session of mindless scrolling for an activity like taking a walk with friends brings multiple benefits for mood and health while adding richness to your relationships.

The key is to go slowly, and enjoy the journey along the way. Not only will it encourage you to keep going, but it brings more satisfaction throughout the journey that is life.

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One by one, change adds up

The twelve-week fitness plan is based on cumulative progress. For each of the twelve weeks, you’ll embrace a single habit, and by week twelve you’ll be practicing them all. In week three, for instance, you’ll continue the changes from weeks one and two while adding in week three’s challenge. While you might be tempted to take them all on at once, this approach isn’t sustainable, and was much less successful for many of the author’s fitness-study participants.

If you find one week you’re not able to accomplish your goal, don’t stress. Just get back on track the following week and carry on. Skipping a week might seem huge in the short term, but in the long run, study participants who kept going after short lapses still saw enormous benefits after just twelve weeks, so this isn’t all-or-nothing.

During the first week, start with breakfast – the beginning of your day. Begin with a banana or any fresh fruit, or soaked almonds or raisins, and not with tea or coffee. Just this small change in how you begin your day can bring massive benefits throughout the day. Add a glass of plain water and eat this small meal shortly after waking up. Feel free to have that cup of coffee or chai about 20 minutes later, if you still want it.

In the second week, incorporate a few spoonfuls of ghee into your diet. This wonderful and flavorful substance delivers a powerful combination of antioxidants, fat soluble vitamins like D and E, along with lipolytic effects – that is, ghee is a fat that breaks down other fat deposits. It also helps you de-stress and wake up with more energy.

During the third week, bring more mindfulness to your gadget use. Shut down phones and computers at least one hour before sleeping. Put them away for at least one meal a day as well, and aim to make all meals gadget-free by the end of the twelve weeks. Not only will eating without distraction help ease stress and help your body know when it is full, but it will also help awaken your senses to the sights, smells, and textures of your meals.

Week four takes on the timing of your biggest meal, which plays an outsized role in fitness success. Eating a wholesome meal between four and six in the afternoon can be the single most important factor in overall health. Not only is that the time of day when the body experiences the most natural hunger, but eating at this time also respects the hormonal cycles the body goes through over the course of a day, regulating them for better sleep, energy levels, and mood.

In week five, it is time to incorporate more movement into your routine. Not exercise, per se, but simple movement to complement health. Commit to taking the stairs instead of the elevator, or to adding 100 steps after dinner; small movement bursts add up, and they break up the lengthy periods of sitting that have become a staple of modern life.

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More building blocks for change

By week six, your cumulative changes will be transitioning into real lifestyle change. It is incredibly important to keep going from here. That’s because week six focuses on adding one session of strength training to your week.

Adding lean muscle mass to your body, no matter your age, is one of the best predictors of a long, healthy life. As we get older, our muscle mass begins to dwindle, along with the strength and metabolic benefits we enjoyed in youth. Adding strength training counteracts this decline, and helps regulate our hormonal health.

During week seven, simply try eating dal rice for dinner. This staple of Indian cooking is prebiotic, meaning it keeps the gut healthy and is a natural cure for constipation. Easy to digest, it encourages better sleep quality for more energy the next day. You can find many recipes online; try it with your favorite rice to suit your taste.

This may bring up the question of how much to eat for any meal, and week eight takes on this very question with a simple rubric. During week eight, when you serve yourself a meal, first visualize how much you’d like to eat. Then serve yourself half of that portion. Take double the time you usually do to finish this portion, and then ask yourself if you are still hungry. If you are, start over at step one until you are full.

It is likely that you’ll find serving yourself less, and taking more time to enjoy it, will naturally shrink your portions over time without the feeling that you’re restricting yourself. This is precisely the point.

During week nine, commit to doing sun salutations, or Surya Namaskara, every day. Unless you’ve practiced yoga before, this might take a YouTube tutorial or a session with a teacher to begin, but the benefits of continued practice can’t be overstated – from glowing skin and stronger muscles to balanced hormones and lower blood pressure. If you incorporate only one yoga practice into your life, this is one that pays off.

In the tenth week, pay attention to hydration by increasing your water intake. You might also explore seasonal drinks or fruit snacks, like sherbet, that deliver hydration with electrolytes. Or try buttermilk to top up your vitamin B12 levels. It has the added benefit of cooling the body in summer as well.

At week eleven, it is time to take on human and environmental health. Reduce plastic by using cloth bags, and take time to heat food in iron dishes instead of in the microwave. Replace plastic film with wax cloth wrappers, and storage containers with glass. Not only will you take in fewer toxins through your food, but the planet’s health will also benefit. Even more, cooking in iron adds important micronutrients to your food, staving off lethargy and anemia.

Finally, in week twelve, bring three nutritious fats back into your diet – cold-pressed native oils from your region; coconut as a garnish or chutney; and cashews as a snack during the day or before sleep. They heighten flavor, and the variety of fats they contain delivers building blocks for healthy longevity.

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When the project ends, the journey begins

When you’ve added all twelve building blocks to your health journey, the fun is just beginning. There are so many ways to keep modifying and adapting this fitness advice to help further your individual goals.

For instance, you can commit to trying a new fruit or vegetable every week. Eating in season and finding fresh, organic produce from local farmers is good for your body, and it brings variety to life. Growing produce in a backyard or terrace garden adds more activity and movement to your life, while helping you develop a deep personal connection with your food.

Exploring fermented foods can also unlock a world of flavor and health benefits while adding a rich source of probiotics for digestion. Heritage grains like millet, especially in winter, lift the mood and warm the body. Even finding natural varieties of salt that offer unique mineral or micronutrient benefits can make daily cooking an adventure.

The key is to keep exploring delicious and nutritious foods, pursuing activities that keep you moving, striving to be less sedentary, and becoming mindful of the distraction of screens and gadgets along the way.

You can even add in some pampering and self-care to your routine. Try massaging ghee into your feet before bedtime, for instance, as it can moisturize dry skin while delivering essential fatty acids to encourage more restful sleep. Or explore using coconut oil on your hair, scalp, and skin to keep them luxuriously soft and moisturized while nourishing them.

Doing these self-care rituals after a bath and following a yoga or exercise session might even get you craving the next session – especially if you fully enjoy the incredible feeling this routine brings to your body, mind, and spirit.

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Final summary

A lifetime of fitness and well-being goes well beyond a number on a scale, and restrictive diets actually contribute to negative health outcomes. To effect sustainable change, a fitness plan has to promote more variety and nutritious eating as well as enjoyable activity and movement, while limiting screen time and sedentary habits to promote better sleep. Taking on small, weekly goals over time transforms them into lifetime habits. Keeping the emphasis on enjoyment, not restriction, results in positive change for a lifetime.