Chapter 2 Preface to the 1st edition

This is neither a book on salads, nor a commentary on life. What it is, is a journal of experiences that my wife and me had in our journey towards being fit and strong. Like a salad, day to day life may not be the most appealing lunch option, but just like a good salad if you can keep finding the blueberries every now and again, it is both rewarding and fulfilling. The small and big milestones we achieved during our journey kept us going, just like the blueberries in our salad.

Initially, I wanted to write a book documenting our journey towards fitness and strength on a day to day or at least a week by week basis. As things progressed, I realized that we were not the only ones on this journey and the Internet was filled with blogs and YouTube videos that document in detail, very successful, inspiring and transformational stories. Why was I wanting to reinvent the wheel by writing our story on the same lines? I thought that while a daily or weekly journal was not something, I could do but definitely there were “topics” on which I would like to pen down my thoughts. For example, the most often asked question, “What diet did we follow?”, “Do I really need a trainer?”, “Just tell me how long it would take to lose 10 pounds” and so on. Therefore, I decided to write this book as a collection of essays on these and other related topics.

It has been more than 9 months since we started this journey and I feel that we have learnt so much that it is important to document this first and foremost for our own selves and then also for anyone who might be interested (I hope someone is). After all, it is one thing to see someone famous transform and another thing to see someone you know or could relate to (middle aged Punjabi NRI couple anyone?) do the same and then realize “If they could do it, so can I”.

We took daily measurements for our weight and other biometrics and they were automatically synced via an app on our phone. This is huge, daily tracking enables, even forces, conversations around progress (or lack thereof) towards your targets. It keeps you honest and on track. What it also enables is to see the big picture over time, such as are you slowing down, do you need to adjust to your routine, how much that elaborate weekend dinner set you back? For me personally, as a data scientist it was fascinating to collect the raw data, find patterns, gain insights and get some forecasts done (when would we reach our target weight?).

Over time I understood that while the desire for weight loss was what got me here, but what I was really gaining was good health and strength. One can lose weight by falling sick, we know that is not healthy. Weight loss should not be the only goal. To reduce the benefits of what we were doing to just burning calories and losing tens of pounds now seems like a terrible underselling of the idea of fitness. The human body is a fascinating machine capable of wonderful things, good health is a state of both mind and body. Exercise and healthy eating habits help both mind and body. If you do not have any serious health issues, there isn’t really any excuse for not exercising regularly and eating healthy. As it is said loosely translated it means that the body is the source of all good deeds.

Finally, nothing in this book should be interpreted as me recommending anything, this is simply a written version of my musings. An experiment with a sample size of N=2, in other words statistically irrelevant!

2.1 Acknowledgements

Besides improving our quality of life, clean eating and exercises also provided me the impetus to finally take up something that I have wanted to do for a long time, writing a book.

This would not have been possible without my dear wife Nidhi, who was not only an equal partner in this journey but was also the head chef to prepare all the tasty & nutritious food (all the photographs including the book cover are courtesy her), the assistant coach who kept an eagle eye on my forms during the exercise and also the one who kept on encouraging me to write. She is also the proofreader for this book, although, any mistakes and omissions are mine alone.

A huge thank you is due to our wonderful trainer and friend, Dawn Kirk. Thank you Dawn for persisting and persevering with us. I wish everyone has the good fortune to have a trainer like you.

Finally, this book is dedicated to my grandparents, my guardian angels. I know they watch over me.

Amit Arora
Clarksburg, Maryland