Working out is too often reduced to the outcome of how you look. Training at the gym can be an experience that can help shape how your body works and moves. The how you look part is a small part of the outcome. Training is about controlling the environment and objects you interact with to produce predictable outcomes. Case in point a m...

The English language is versatile. One word can come to mean many things. Ducks can go quack quack or you can duck your spouse’s jab. Rockets can take us to the moon or the price of cheese can skyrocket. Metabolism is another word that has come to mean very many things. Metabolism, by the book, is the complex chemical processes the bod...

Walking around with weights in each arm is a very underrated exercise. It is also the simplest way to make a walk more challenging. As an exercise, it transfers quite well to everyday life as improved grip strength means grocery bags, dogs tugging at leashes and packed duffle bags feel lighter than they actually are. Farmers carry hand...

Here is a nifty bit of marketing from a purveyor of bicycles. They are selling the idea that cycling can make your kids (or you) taller. Exercise cannot help you become taller. If you were malnourished or severely immunocompromised (suffering repeated bouts of infections) during the growing stages of your life, you might not attain the...

At our gym, we have over twenty different objects to make you more efficient and effective at the acts of pulling, pushing, squatting, carrying, lifting, throwing and jumping. This is not a flex. OK, maybe it’s a small flex. But do we really need all those different objects in our gym? There are gyms that swear by barbells and only bar...

Strength training almost always involves some form of planking. The plank could be in the form of a push up or it could be a plank held as a plank. Lots of folks pride themselves on holding planks for long durations. But being an impatient trainee myself, I enjoy making planks harder. The ab wheel is a popular tool found in gyms and ho...

All our equipment is just as shiny and terrific as the day we made it. And it got me thinking that Madras is a terrific place to build things.. there’s a lot of scrap yards, plenty of lathes, CNC machines, talented welding workshops and small factories with laser cutting machines and press brakes for folding thick pieces of metal . Ove...

Our interaction with the food we eat every day is romanticised to our collective detriment. A food can taste good, it can make you feel good and it can evoke memories. But calling it a relationship is a stretch. Let’s call it what it is: A transaction. We transact for our food. The way we pay for transport. We pay for shelter. We pay f...

3% fat means in 100 grams of milk there is 3 grams or 27 calories of fat. 4.8+3.3+.7=8.8 grams Let's tally the total of the protein, minerals and carbs in 100 ml 8.8 grams translates into 8.5 % SNF (solids not fat) 100 ml of milk weighs a little more than 100 grams. but the total weight of protein, carbs, and fat tallies up to only 9 -...

We don’t do transformation stories at mealmapper, but this was too good to pass. 1. What did you eat? At least 102 species of plants mostly leaves and lots of fruit. By fruit I mean figs. Like kilos of figs a day. Not the dried, tough chewing gum crap homosapiens eat. Softer, watery figs which feel like a baby’s bum. Speaking of baby b...

Food aggregator and delivery apps make life easier and simpler for us. When we are hungry, an app can present the fewest hurdles between us and a hot meal or cold dessert. Celebratory food is three-four clicks away. This would have been an organised trek with friends and/or family for a get together or celebration. Eating out is expens...

Chocolates are the latest battle ground for those seeking to make foods healthier. Chocolates usually contain cocoa beans, cocoa butter, vegetable oil, milk or dairy products, sugar and emulsifier. The purveyors of healthier chocolate make the claim that using non-nutritive or low-calorie sweeteners can make chocolates less indulgent a...

The fat you eat in the form of vegetable oils, animal fat (eggs, dairy or meat) or fats from sources such nuts, olives and avocados is not the same fat that is found in the body. Your body will breakdown any food into the chemicals it is made of and use the chemicals as building blocks to make everything that the body needs. This way y...

Artificial sweeteners are demonised needlessly. In the low doses that most people consume non-nutritive sweeteners, they do not damage your gut microbiome. Any negligible cons of consuming desserts and beverages sweetened with erythritol, aspartame, sucralose, stevia or one of the many other sweeteners are far outweighed by the pros of...

Exercise/training can be a literal and figurative pain in the ass. But it exists due to two things/phenomenon: *Gravity *Joints Gravity is why any work on earth feels like work. Carrying a bag is harder than not carrying a bag since gravity bestows weight to the bag. Gravity is also why muscle exists. Astronauts quickly lose as much as...

I tell my grad students that we can put a man on the moon, but we still can’t come to a consensus of how much protein to give him here on earth. Dr. Rajavel Elango Why should you care about protein? There is no shortage of trainers, nutritionists and even governments yelling at us about protein intake. The simplest reason to care: The ...

I do only bodyweight exercises. I don’t lift weights. A popular sentiment echoed by the general public, doctors and well wishers. But your bodyweight is weight. And it is bound by the same rules of gravity that govern a dumbbell, barbell or any other weight that you can use on earth. Enter simple machines. A pulley is a simple machine....

There’s a good chance that you will run into a post today espousing a return to our roots or the need to eat as our ancestors did and avoid foods containing chemicals or preservatives. The lack of nuance here is problematic. Humanity has done things to process what they farm or raise to make the nutrients more readily available for abs...

Celebrities are people who got rich doing things that are entertaining to watch. It’s not fun to watch a bank manager disperse a home loan after a back end team parses through your statements. It is not fun to watch your car being painstakingly assembled and finished by robots and humans. But it is fun to watch an actor make an impossi...

• If you listen to the Brits, a cup is 250 ml. If you listen to the Americans, a cup is 240 ml. But don’t let the 4% volume difference throw you off. Bakers use the 240 ml standard for ingredients. • The cup measure is relevant for a simple reason: lot’s of calorie intake numbers are readily available for this measure. • You can find a...

What does it mean when a person is on a high carb diet? How about a low carb diet? How about high fat diet? Or a high protein diet? Here’s the simple math. *One gram of protein provides 4 calories of energy *One gram of carbohydrate provides 4 calories of energy *One gram of fat provides 9 calories of energy *One gram of alcohol provid...

It's easy to fixate on how much, when and what to eat. Not to mention how to prep. But it starts with the 'what to eat'. This post is a simple list to address that. Not comprehensive but simple. 100 calories of these foods give you between 30 and 100 calories of protein. That number means its easier to get to the 70-100 grams of protei...

Content from fitness and nutrition coaches (most folks really) flirts aggressively with self-help content. Its not uncommon to hear things like: Listen to your body Stop eating when you’re full Love yourself as you are Be kind to yourself Most advice is along those lines. I have a bone to pick with this specific bit of advice: ‘Listen ...

Not really seems to be the answer at the moment. Your body operates at 36-37 degrees centigrade. It spends lots of energy maintaining that temperature. The body spends more energy in colder climes to maintain a higher temperature than it does in warmer climes where the temperature of the environment is closer to the ideal operating tem...

The average Indian lifespan in 1920 was 30 years. We now live more than twice as long. Here are a few things that bumped up our lifespan to the age of 71 : *Calories per head and quality of food is up 20-25 percent since 1960. More affordable food production has helped (lack of famines, better agricultural practices, more protein) *Bet...