But wait. It’s not the way it seems like. First of all, you must know that both yoga and gym come under one category and that is ‘Fitness’. But if both come under one category that doesn’t mean they should be compared. Yoga has its own advantages and so do the gym. Why can’t we think over to the point that both are beneficial for us to workout because in reality, they do. It’s just that which workout you like and which you don’t. Also, there are many myths regarding yoga and gym which one should definitely get over with. So let’s discuss them:

The myths of yoga:

• You must be good at stretching
• There is something like mantras involved
• You can replace it with other forms of workout
• All types of yoga are same
• Yoga connects body, mind and soul

The myths of gym:

• Gym is for the adults
• Lifting weights will give you more mass
• The more you do gym, the more you will be benefited
• You have to take supplements
• Gym is good for older people

I know it’s hard to believe that each of these 4 points are myths and nothing more. But you are going to believe it because one by one we will be discussing the reasons for each of the four points. And I’m guessing its easy to believe when there is a proper scientific background attached to any reason.

Many of you’d thinking- why the 5th point is in bold- what so special about it? Its because the fifth point is not a myth instead its the fact. Yes, we will discuss it with scientific reasons too. But before discussing the myths, don’t you think we must know what actually yoga and gym do? And for that we must study them in detail. So let’s start with yoga first.

YOGA

As we all must know that all our languages are originated from sanskrit, that means every word has his own meaning in sanskrit. Therefore, in this manner the word yoga is defined- ‘to unite’ or ‘to add’. As I said earlier, yoga connects mind, body and soul because yoga means union, integration or discipline.

Thus, the whole meaning of yoga comes out to be uniting or integrating discipline. Yoga is the best medicine to stay fit, control weight and reduce stress level. It also helps in meditation practices and calming the nervous system. Besides, if a male practice yoga then he will be called ‘yogi’ and if a female practices yoga, she will be called as ‘yogini’.

Yoga have seven principle branches, such as Bhakti yoga (the yoga of devotion), Hatha yoga (the yoga of physical discipline), Jnana yoga (the yoga of wisdom), Karma yoga (the yoga of self- transcending action), Mantra yoga (the yoga of potent sound), Raja yoga (the royal yoga), Tantra yoga ( the yoga of continuity). Also, there are various asanas in yoga. Such as

Standing Poses

• Adho mukha svansana                    
• Malasana
• Tadasana
• Uttanasana

Seated Poses

• Badha konasana
• Sukhasana
• Dandasana

Resting Poses

• Balasana
• Padangusthasana
• Masyendrasana
• Viparita karani

Balancing Poses

• Vasishthasana
• Vrksasana

After poses and principles, here it comes the yoga breathing or we usually call it as ‘Pranayama’. It teaches you the real science of breath control or breathing techniques. Basically pranayama comes from three words and that are: prana- life force, yama- discipline, ayama- expansion. Thus, pranayama is a way to take deep healthy breaths. And its a great help to prepare for the meditation practices.

Now, the inhaling and exhaling in yoga breathing is defined in four  different stages. It involves reversals in the direction of the movements of muscles and of expansive or contractive movements of lungs, thorax abdomen. These stages are: Puraka i.e. inhalation, Abhyantara kumbhaka i.e. pause after inhaling or the full pause, Rechaka i.e. exhalation. Bahya kumbhaka i.e. pause after exhaling or the empty pause.

Also, there are two more breathing techniques named as ‘kapalabhati’ and ‘Anuloma viloma’. In kapalabhati, we breathe faster and use only abdominal breathing, not the chest breathing. It is helpful specifically for cleansing the air passages and blockages in the chest. On the other side, in anuloma viloma we inhale through one nostril, then hold and exhale from another nostril. The ratio to be maintained is 2:8:4. The left nostril is called ida and the right nostril is called pingala.

Okay! Now, we know that yoga connects mind, body and soul. So lets move onto the other myths that we have discussed above. People think if you want to do yoga, you should be flexible. But the truth is yoga itself gives relaxation to mind and body which implies it helps you to be stretchable and more flexible. Also, There is no such things like mantras, it can be any short word or phrase which calms your mind and maintain peace within your system. For religious persons it can be ‘Om’, ‘hallelujah’, ‘hail marry full of grace’ or ‘I surrender all to you’. And for the non- religious persons it can be ‘one’, ‘peace’, ‘me’ or ‘love’.

Some people thinks that yoga can be replaced with any other form of fitness exercise. But I must clear that yoga is not just about fitness, it unites ones body, mind and soul. Also, people believes that all yoga are same. No, is the answer for that because there are various forms of yoga like lyengar yoga, bikram yoga, ashtanga yoga and many others. And each of them is different from one another either in mental or physical discipline. Therefore, yoga comes with a meaning way beyond that one think it would be.

That’s a lot about yoga, now lets focus on gym and what it really means.

GYM

‘Gymnasium’ Is the word from which ‘gym’ came from. So basically, gym is an indoor large place where people come together with the aim to get fit using equipments and machines. There are various types of machines placed to train and target each different muscle group of our body, effectively. The Greek word, gymnasium means ‘school for naked eyes’. Also, they made this a locality to educate the young men physical exercises I.e. gymnasium. They had this custom to do exercises with naked body and then bathing and relaxing. After bathing, they may go to hit the libraries.

In the gym, either we play with our body weight or we use some resistance or weight training. Most of the people join gym for various personal purposes like some wants to reduce their weight or some want to gain their mass or some just want to be fit and maintain their physique. In resistance or weight training, exercise is performed to contract the muscles against any external resistance and all of this helps to increase strength, mass and endurance. Also there are different styles to perform with weights in the gym such as olympic lifting, power lifting or weight lifting.

Gyming is an important practice to be performed in this era, because long ago when we hunt for food, our muscles do a workout in making shelters, hunting for food and lots of other work to stay alive. But now, our life has become so easy with the replacement of humans to machine. And due to all this our physical activity and workout have been stopped. That’s why the gyming is of so much value for this generation of people, where everyone use lifts rather than climbing staircase.

Now, let’s focus on the myths about gyming and how can we overcome them? Yes, of-course by gaining some real knowledge about how actually things work.

After reading it all, you must be thinking yoga is damn good and gym is much of a need. So what to do- yoga or gym? See that’s the thing, that’s the speciality of both because you can perform your workout by combining both of them. We can do stretching before( warm-up ) and after( cool down ) gym with yoga poses. Thus, to get better results, you can perform few more asanas of yoga in your workout schedule. Therefore, Yoga will give peace, flexibility and calmness to your mind, body and soul. And gym will provide you the strength and power. Also if you are practicing gym workouts, just add some of the yoga poses and see the difference.

‘Try yoga and gym combine’

The post YOGA or GYM – Which one is better? appeared first on Vskills Blog.

Does it sound like the synonym of food?

Because many still believes that diet and food are more or less the same. Okay. Let me elucidate, traditionally.

“Diet” is any food that an individual or community incessantly eats Or Any kind of product or substance that a living being intakes to stay work and healthy. However, we also use this word when a person restricts themselves to eat much either to lose weight or for medical reasons. That has a whole different meaning to it. We’ll discuss that later. But first we must focus on diet and why it is important at all. And yes, now at least you wouldn’t be seeing food and diet as same. If still, you have any doubt left. That’ll be good because sooner or later you will be getting everything on a proper and balanced diet.

Why do we even focus on what we eat?

Why we always have to take care of what we are taking inside our body. I Know, many of you are wondering, ‘WAIT WHATT!!! we don’t even think like that’. Now that’s the key difference between a Healthy Heart and a weak Heart. we have to understand that’s the main loophole. That’s the part from which all our infections, diseases, illness or maladies get their way inside our body. A Healthy heart means a healthy body and everyone can achieve his or her healthy state if he/she focus, think and care of what is going inside their body. What actually they are going to leave or eat. The only difference between a fit and unfit is what you choose to eat. Either you choose a balanced diet or an imbalanced diet. A Proper one or just the random stuff.

By the way, we are lucky, at least we can choose. Unlike our born which was fixed by our fate. Apart from sarcasm, we have this advantage to choose before eat or the course of diet we’ll be taking. So why don’t we choose wisely and adopt a balanced diet. But for that, one must know what is a balanced diet.

Now, what really a balanced diet is?

Why there is a need to take such diet?. First of all, a balanced diet is the mixture of all the nutrients, vitamins, proteins, carbohydrates and minerals which is to be taken via the different variety of food and liquid drinks in the right proportion body needs it. Now, why do we even need it. If we take a balanced and proper diet then there would be an optimum utilization of all the ingredients and not a single percentage of any valuable vitamin or mineral would get wasted.

Although, it is appropriate and economical as we don’t take any product which isn’t in need. And all of this will give us good and better health. Contrary to the balanced diet, here it comes the imbalanced diet, you take anything and everything that is available near you. Whether it’s benefiting you or harming you, till its taste is good on your tongue you continue to intake. Sometimes, you take the imbalanced diet just because it’s your favourite food or it tastes good.

But we must know what the consequences of such diet are. An improper diet may lead you to deficiency or excess of any vitamin, mineral or protein in the system which may forefront you to many severe health problems. Such health hazards are high blood pressure, heart problems, obesity, diabetes and a lot more. So let’s not focus on the worse side because we can prevent it by handling our diet and by being diet conscious.

You must know why we are focusing so much on a proper diet because the whole world, national or international every person needs and deserves to be fit and healthy. Even the aged people, pregnant woman, lactation, small child need to take proper enriched diet because what you take will decide what you give. It’s better said that ‘the output will reflect what the input was’. so let’s take a step and improve our input for better and healthy us.

Now we know, what balanced diet is. So let’s focus on the procedure to follow a balanced diet. We must start by the components of a good diet chart:-

1. Protein

This nutrient is very important for human body because everything in our body is made up of protein. Our muscles, cells, tissues, organs everything. It helps in bodybuilding, mass gain, growth and development. Its major work is to make new cells and repair old ones. In a period of 24 hours our body needs 20% of protein in our diet. It can be taken through various food products such as egg whites, chicken, soya beans, milk and many others.

Protein Rich Foods

2. Carbohydrate

Also known as ‘carbs’. It is the basic nutrient that the body needs because it provides energy to all the functions of the body. When we eat carbs, our body digests it in the small intestine and convert it into ‘calorie’(unit of energy in our body). All our voluntary and involuntary actions take place due to calories. Thus, if we don’t add carbs in our diet we may feel weakness in our entire system and may lead to different problems. However, there is a diet called ‘keto’ diet, in which we take a full balanced diet with just excluding carbohydrate from our diet. It is been performed in order to use the fat stored in our body as the fuel of the body in exchange of calories by ketones produced during the process. The main food products to take carbs are wheat, grains, rice, johar, bajra, oatmeal and others.

3. Fats

Fats have a strategic role in our body. It is basically a storehouse for energy. It also helps in circulation of vitamins throughout the body. The excessive fats that have been taken by the body are converted into fatty acids and then stored in the fat cells for future need. As these fat cells can be broken into calories whenever there is a requirement of energy in the body. Also, there are two types of fats – good fat and bad fat. As the name suggest Good fat are good for the body and bad fats are bad for the body. Fats can be taken through unrefined oil rather than taking it from refined oil as it contains more nutritional value.

4. Vitamins and Minerals

These are also very important in our diet. They play a role of completing our diet. And they also help us in regulating body metabolism and protecting from infection, diseases and any metabolic imbalance. There are different vitamins such as Vitamin A,B,C,D,E,K. Also minerals like chlorine, phosphorous, potassium. These can be taken by various veggies, dark colour leafy veg. Like broccoli, spinach, beans and others.

We must add variety of colourful food products in our diet as many as possible because the more colourful it will be, the more nutritious value it contains. Thus, this will help us to achieve our target of well-nutritious diet.

Now, you would be thinking, when and how much to take these food products. Well in that case, let’s quickly go through the diet chart which you can follow. There can be 3-4 meals in a day for healthy and full diet. So here are the categories for the diet chart:

1. Breakfast

It should be like king size breakfast because your body is in true need of food and water after a gap of 7-8 hours(sleep). You must start by taking approximately 7-8 glasses of water with a bowl full of variety of fruits and followed by some cereals like oats, daliya, cornflakes. After that, the main meal should be eaten which should be full of carbs, proteins etc. And at last, after a gap of 30 min., you should take 500ml. Of milk. So that throughout the day your body would be getting enough proteins to work properly.

2. Lunch

It should be taken like queen size. A lot of combinations can be done with rice and varieties of dals like rajma, chola, channa, arhar. Even brown rice can be eaten with fish curry. And the important care should be given to salads because roughage is vital component in every meal you take. So never skip salads in your meals.

3. Evening

In the evening, you can take a cup of tea or coffee, whichever you like, with some dry fruits. Also 3-4 whole egg can be taken. This meal should be very light. And always try to avoid snacks which contain maida and stuff on a daily basis because it contains a lot fat which is of no use to the body.

4. Dinner

Dinner must be taken like a beggar. A little of everything should be there in this meal. A chapatti with vegetables and colorful salad. Paneer and chicken can also be taken. And at last, again a glass of milk for about 500ml. must be taken as it helps the body to digest it for the whole night and to slowly absorb the nutrients while you’ll be asleep.

Therefore, if you follow this diet routine daily it will help you to stay healthy and fit. And this can be your reason to live more joyfully. Because ‘happy stomach means happy you’. Always remember, only the ‘Healthy’ you can make it to the 60’s in this era where the average age of humans is declining. Even if you are in your 30’s or 40’s or even in your teenage, remind yourself that what you are eating is counting on your future health. So follow the correct diet plan and protect your future, today.

At last, Let’s talk about the other meaning of diet also called ‘Dieting’. Which people (auntie’s) usually talk while they’re gossiping. like

Aunt. 1-  Hey! Seema did you notice Reema. She is loosing weight, I think she’s on dieting.

Aunt. 2-  Yeah, I noticed it too. But why is she looking so weak and tired?.

Okay!! Jokes apart. Let’s get more into dieting.

‘Dieting’ is performed by various individuals for several different reasons. Either by restricting there diet by eating less carbohydrate, fat, protein or by including a limited amount of meals in there diet. There are various reasons to do so as some individuals want to reduce their weight and some wants to stabilize it. Also sometimes individuals go for dieting to achieve a short term goal. It can be anything like a wedding or some party or to get the beach body. But… the main question is -Is dieting really helpful?

Now, for this question to be answered one must know how actually dieting play a role in losing a person weight. So basically When you are on dieting you reduce your calories intake which leads to calories deficiency in your body and due to deficiency your body breaks down body fat into glucose which then provide energy(calorie) to function efficiently. So Now, Do dieting really helps to get rid of the body’s fat?. The answer would be- yes! To a point it helps. But is it really a good way to be fit via dieting?

No, I would’nt recommend anyone because there is a strong reason to say so. While dieting, you may loose weight due to heavy loss of water from your body in the process. But when you stop dieting your weight may come back. Therefore, in the firstpace you never really get fit. Moreover, dieting leads you with weakness in your body which Seema (Aunt. 2) do notice in Reema because of dieting in above gossips. And how can a weak body be fit.

Thus, My view is clear. Why to even go for dieting when you can eat a perfect healthy diet. And for the over weight, one must start functional or resistance training exercises. Also, Yoga would be.

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