After an acute spike in my blood sugar in November 2020, I embarked on a strict process involving keto diet, intermittent fasting and strength training exercises. More than 5 years before that, I was diagnosed with fatty liver which I largely ignored and was visibly overweight, reaching 90 kgs. After the intervention, I probably lost around 20 kg of weight and 4 inches in waist size over a period of around a year.

Exercise was indispensible part of this process. Cost many times does indicate quality, but when it comes to knowledge and learning, it is always a contra indicator. What is costly is priced for the easy path shown to acheive a metric, which by requirement needs to be easily measured. But these metrics are only a proxy for the outcome that you desire, which only time can reveal. I was always wary of buying education.

I viewed my exercise journey as an education process and decided to seek out high quality sources which aren't manufactured specifically to sell to me.

I started with Rowen Row's channel on Youtube with mostly following this no equipment exercise routine.

After a few months I wanted a bit more of variety and started on a 28 day fitness program based on videos by a person called Ashley Conrad. I still remember not being able to stand on one leg without holding on to a support when doing the standing quadricep stretch. It is likely an early indicator of the neural damage which can lead to Parkinson' disease. After more than 3 years of practise, I have gained my balance.

One of the real world uses of strength is in fights and Mixed Martial Arts or MMA piqued my interest. I enjoyed watching the fights and read through The Ultimate Mixed Martial Arts Training Guide by Dann Plyler. This talked more about the philosophy and techniques used. The book, Trainig for Warriors by Martin Rooney had a bit more on exercise routines and I diligently practised them for a few months.

As with any good habit, it is easy break a streak and getting back on track is difficult. I often lose interest and many times my thrifty thought of "exercise is a waste of time and resources and instead I should rely more on manual work", takes over. Also now that I am in a far better shape, I am no longer motivated enough to do the strenuous 1 hour sessions I used to do.

This is when the DAREBEE website helps a lot. I found this a year back and it was my next stop after the MMA encounter. DAREBEE has bite sized pages that focus on a specific theme and has multiple difficulty levels. These can also be conveniently downloaded as a PDF to help refer during exercises, wherever you are. Now that I am familiar with the basic movements and their functions, I no longer need complete videos. The wide variety of the exercise collection and the interesting gamification in some of them all help sustain the streaks.

Also whenever I am in this mixed mood of not wanting to exercise but also feeling awful because I am not, I push myself to do 10 squats and 10 pushups before my morning bath. This often helps me get back on my streak.

A word of caution: most body weight exercises have very little risk of injury compared to external weights. But always listen to your body and not over exert. Do sufficient warmup before your exercise and have sufficient breaks and rest days, during and after the exercise. You will hear this a lot from everyone, but it cannot be over emphasized.