The Power of Fitness
[Music]
thank you so much for the introduction
i really appreciate that um
so there are certain points in all of
our lives
that are defining moments some
have near-death experiences some lose
loved ones and some have to make hard
decisions throughout their lives
and the list goes on this is my story
on how fitness redefined my life
from the moment we are born or maybe
even before that our parents
naturally want us to be successful they
want us to grow up to be lawyers
doctors engineers or successful business
women
and men i grew up the same way
my parents worked hard as immigrants
from india
to make sure that my brother and i both
received the best education
and went into careers that would set our
lives up for success
and what they didn’t know nor did i
realize until
very late in my life was that there’s a
cost to it
and i’m not talking about a monetary
cost
so due to the lack of our knowledge
i spent years blindly going to school
and then college and i ended up
graduating from law school
in december of 2019.
looking back now throughout our
schooling
we were told that we had to take core
classes such as
math english social studies
and science we also had elective courses
these were secondary in nature and
important and
they weren’t as vital they weren’t as
important
as their core classes your success at
the class
was not as important
and one of those electives or secondary
secondary classes
were physical education
so even while we were in school we were
taught to put our physical education
second
[Music]
and it’s kind of engraved in our
minds that it has to be second
so even in law school
we weren’t provided courses on physical
health or mental health
and this is true although lawyers and
most
other professional careers have high
rates of stress
depression poor physical health and so
on
and although we may not have been
directly taught to put our physical
health second
the system was designed to make us think
that way
in the u.s obesity has risen
to above 40 percent
back in 2017 and 2018.
obesity in india has reached epidemic
proportions
with morbid obesity affecting 5
of the country’s population
in the entire world 13 of the people
are obese that means a little over 1
billion people in the world
are at risk of heart disease loss of
bodily functions
diabetes stroke osteoarthritis
and now coronavirus
being obese or overweight significantly
increases your risk
of being hospitalized due to the virus
because of a decreased capacity of your
lungs
impaired immune functions and
increased bmi and i know what you’re
thinking
a beach there’s a there’s a vaccine
coming out it’s been approved
we’re good we’re going to be fine we’re
well
coronavirus is not the first disease to
ever exist
nor will it be the last studies have
shown that obesity may be linked to
lower vaccine responses
for numerous diseases as demonstrated
with influenza
tetanus and hepatitis and this is
exactly why
we need to change how the world sees
fitness
when i was in school and in college i
saw fitness as a fad
just like others i wanted to be the
biggest and strongest person in the room
i wanted to look like a star as we saw
on social media
and movies so i worked out religiously
but what i didn’t know was that being
the biggest and strongest
didn’t necessarily mean that you were
the healthiest i also didn’t know
what i was really doing and i wasn’t
taught how to properly work out
and what it means to be fit nor was i
taught
how i can incorporate healthy habits
into my
ever-changing lifestyle as an adult
as a young adult i had packed on
a great amount of muscle and someone
could look at me
and assume i was healthy because of the
mainstream
standard we’ve all created about what a
person looks like
when they’re healthy but the truth is
i had poor cardiovascular health my
stamina was next to nothing
in a high intensity situation and i
could barely run
half a mile without having to sit down
and take a breath
and not to mention my lack of mobility
and flexibility as an overall athlete
and as stressful as college was it
wasn’t until i got into law school
that i realized how unhealthy i was
the first year of law school is meant to
torture you
you were worked to death with copious
amounts of reading
and assignments and you were exposed to
an unexplainable fear
of being called on in class by your
professors
and well the grading system isn’t the
fairest in nature
so you’re working your butt off for what
most likely won’t reflect in your grades
and what is the result lack of time to
focus on your health and wellness
large amounts of stress
high risk of depression and lack of
sleep
all of which lead to poor physical
health
so why is our health and wellness not to
not tended to in our schooling why is it
not a priority
if our education system is designed to
stress us out
the first year of law school took such a
huge toll on me
that i suffered from every single thing
i mentioned
i gained a ton of weight i could barely
sleep
i ate disgusting amounts of junk food
and i was incredibly depressed and on
the verge of not wanting to live
nothing else caused this school did
so i spent 12 years in school four years
in my undergraduate studies and then
three more getting my law degree
that’s 18 years that led me to be so
unhealthy without any sort of
preparation for life
and that is a reality of access to
modern day health and fitness education
we are so caught up in our own lives in
our
own pursuit of what we believe to be
happiness
that we forget that without our health
we have nothing
i started by speaking of everyone having
a defining moment in their lives
i had mine after the first year of law
school
i didn’t do well specifically
i failed i didn’t know how to handle the
stress
and i wasn’t taught to do so and
physically
i just gave up because of lack of time
and energy
and when i found out i was failing i
lost all hope
i had no more fight in me and the
pressure of being successful
just became too much so i gave up on
life
and that’s the toll so many pay and
that’s the toll
so many succeed at paying
but ironically enough i failed at that
too
and that defined how i would live
this newly given chance of life so one
day
i woke up and i said to myself
i’m going to get into shape both
mentally and physically
and i told myself i will make time every
single day to work out
to tend to my personal life and just
take time out for myself
i found a workout program and three
months
after that i lost 50 pounds
i was healthier and happier than ever
before
during that course of time i also
started to do better in school
i started getting better grades i
started retaining more information
and i started enjoying school rather
than being stressed from it
and really just did what i could
to be my best and to take it further i
took it upon myself
to help inspire others like me people
who are in the same
situation as me and help them find a way
to take time out for their own health as
well
and to really emphasize how much better
i was doing
through the rest of the two years of law
school not only did i do
better in school but i went out of my
way to teach myself photography
videography over five different types of
training styles
and created a brand of my own to show
others that if i can do it
so can they obviously i ended up
graduating law school
and doing okay but what was the sudden
change how could fitness have made such
a
huge difference well it allowed me to
have an
outlet outside of the regular ongoing of
my day
i worked out for 20 minutes a day every
single day
that’s it on occasion i
do a workout twice
but i also started to watch
what i ate and that sounds cliche right
but instead of going out and getting
food i started
cooking which really allowed me to
connect with myself
and really learn about myself and that’s
something we don’t do very often
and these two things working out and
watching what i eat
they sound so small and my new but were
the biggest factors for my health
the dictionary defines fitness as the
condition of being
fit and healthy but there’s so much more
to it than that
being fit is great but
it’s the journey to get there that
defines it
the journey is what creates a healthy
lifestyle and healthy habits
i have a saying not one meal
made you fat and not work at one workout
made you fit it takes consistent
action to either be fit or be
unhealthy and that is why i believe
fitness should be a primary success
subject
not only through school but even in
college
and graduate school so that people don’t
have to learn the hard way
like i did we are expected in society to
grow up
evolve and change our perspective on
life
the older we get we go from playing
video games as kids
to being expected to handle full careers
and be responsible for a family
in a matter of a few years but no one
teaches us how to continue our own
well-being
through all of that and not all of us
have the means to hire personal trainers
and therapists
and so on fitness
like anything else evolves it can grow
with you
change with you and fit your needs based
on your own unique life
and that’s where the education of
fitness comes in
to help us focus on our own health
on our own well-being while we grow
and in the modern world with a pandemic
in our midst with a virus that feeds off
of us
being unhealthy the education of fitness
has never been so critical
and i truly believe if every single
school
incorporated one required course on not
just the importance of being fit
but how to achieve it and how you can
start your fitness journey it could make
a huge impact
not just on today but on generations to
come
and until that time comes i urge every
single one of you
to take time out of your day whether
it’s 10 minutes
20 minutes or an hour whether you’re a
student
whether you’re whether you have a
full-time career or you are a
stay-at-home
parent to focus on your fitness
both mental and physical
we as humans are ever changing
we grow throughout our lives experience
new things go through different issues
and so on we are inherently
impermanent but to be able to take on so
much
in the few years that we have to live in
the world
we have to be mentally and physically
ready
that is all