Fitness comes in all Shapes and Sizes

Fitness comes in all Shapes and Sizes

You make New Year Resolutions almost every Year and also on all other New years in the festival calendar to hit the gym. Your desperation certainly comes from the glamorous models, actors and celebrities you idolize on screen.  The drive gets pushy when you read all the rants of entertainment columns in newspapers on celebrity body, their diet and the extremes that these people go to achieve them. Adding more fuel to the ignited desperation are the health features in newspapers and on the internet, which showcase their own definition of fitness.

So what exactly is fitness? Is it a hot body? Sharukh Khan’s six pack abs or sorry eight pack abs (It may even get 12 packs by 2016), Deepika Padukone’s flat belly or the Bollywood's bhai Salman Khan’s bulgy muscles ? The generation today; young and old alike – are so hooked to the superficial parameters of fitness that the whole age old concept of fitness has become debatable.  Fitness according to your grandmother’s opinion was eating the Ghee loaded paranthas, tasty meals cooked to perfection and being immune to sickness. Fitness back then didn't conjure up to looking wafer thin or ripping off one’s body with chiseled abs. There was a certain pride in saying “Bhai, hum to khatey-peetey ghar ke hein.”  Nonetheless, the emphasis was on what the body can do and not on what the body looks like.

                                                      

Fast forwarding the time today, skinny bodies for girls and six pack abs for men with zero fats are projected as fitness. As a bottom line Fitness is no more being immune and having a good metabolism. It is not even about eating delicious meals or rather home cooked healthy meals but is now about 6 times a day meal, raw vegetable, boiled fish, grilled spice-less meats and green juices. Obnoxious as the fads sound too many, today it is all about ‘eating right’ and this habit of eating correctly is munching on like cave men did back in time. Precisely, even if the food part had to ignored, how can the body shape and size be sidelined?  Especially, as we are living in excruciatingly demanding age of photoshopped images that are airbrushed to perfection.

                                                     

When you think of fitness shapes, sizes; I am sure mathematically defying physical measurements toss up in the mind. The reason a physically huge girl gives up when she loses weight but fails to look wafer thin with all the exercising.  It has become so necessary to conform to the media generated norms of ‘Physical perfection’ that fitness has taken a backseat. Fitness has become easily associated with ‘physical perfection’ and this is dangerously become a matter of low self confidence and esteem among people.  A man with six-pack abs or a wafer thin girl fainting or suffering from fatigue is acceptable but a boy or a girl on a bulkier physical appearance but immune to sickness and who may be physically , mentally and socially strong are deemed as unfit.

It is time the focus has to be put where it belongs – fitness in its true sense.  To set the record straight fitness is being mentally, physically and emotionally strong. You need to accept that fitness as well as beauty in the world comes in all shapes and sizes. Stereotypes and hypes cannot define the real beauty, strength and creativity of a person. Be proud of the awesome person you really are. You may be tall, short , fat, skinny – it just doesn't matter unless you are ‘FIT’ – fit in a healthy way and not by physical perfections.