We often treat health as a one off objective but what happens once we achieve our goal? Do we fall back to our previous habits? While keeping health goals, it is important to always look at the big picture. While losing weight is a good target, being healthy should always be a lifelong goal! This is something our player Mukul Bhartiya understood during his journey with GOQii. Let’s look at his journey in his own words.
Finding GOQii
I started my journey with GOQii around two and half years back and my purchase decision was a result of meeting Vishal Gondal in 2012 at IIT, Mumbai where he was one of the speakers. I was looking for a fitness band and while researching, I came across GOQii. I immediately jumped in without having a clear idea of what I will do with it. Unfortunately, after just a month or so of purchase, I became very busy with work, having very little time to spend on my health. There was a disconnect with the coach and the 3rd coach assigned to me was a tough task master with his own ideas of fitness and health. So I decided to quit the journey.
I am a Black Belt in Shito Ryu Karate Do, but left practicing it around five years back due to personal issues. I kept myself active for a couple of years but after that, I became lazy, spending lots of time on social media, following twitter trends, validating my view point through anonymous writer’s rants. This time, around four months back when I looked at one of my pictures, it gave me a clear idea that I needed immediate help. I was weighing 84kg. Around 10 years back when I signed up for a weight loss program, though I lost 11kg, it was at the cost of my health. This time I needed certified people guiding me, so I went for GOQii!
Mukul Bhartiya Begins His Journey Again
My coach Ms. Falguni Bhojak is a patient and understanding coach and mentor. She asked me about my routine and my health objectives. She encouraged me to speak more about my health objectives, challenges and limitations and it resulted in a personalized health template for me. I years back. I wanted to lose weight fast, but she drilled down a few things in my mind, like “not everyday will be the same, I need to focus on the bigger picture and not allow failures to bother me”. We set a target of 1.5-2kg weight loss per month and made it a one year project. She also said that though weight loss is my immediate target, good health should be my lifelong target.
Ms. Bhojak’s first and foremost interest was to pull me out of laziness and make me active. She told me, “Mukul, can you start with half an hour of low intensity activity?” and guided me with the same. Now, what was “half an hour activity” around three and half months back, is “more than three hours activity” ranging from moderate to high intensity. In three and half months, I have lost 12.5kg. I am walking around 14-15km per day, spending around 30 minutes on martial arts, 20 minutes on yoga and eating healthy. Even on a bad day, I walk more than ten kilometers.
What Were Some Key Learnings?
- Start always matters, even if it is small: I started with around 15 minutes of lazy activity and now I keep thinking how can I incorporate exercise in every activity.
- There should be a bigger picture than the big picture: My coach’s question made me think what will I do after losing 20 kg? I have created a bigger picture for that and it has made my big picture look like a journey than just an end result.
- Break the big picture into smaller pixels: Big picture may look daunting and many people back away, so break it down into smaller targets. Achievement of targets work as a reward mechanism for efforts we are putting in.
- Stay consistent: Not everyday will be your best day. If you have a bad day, work hard the next day and make it better than your best day.
- Everything needs time: You can’t make things happen by the snap of your fingers. Every result is the outcome of many actions you take on a daily basis to make it good.
- Have someone who can critically analyze your actions but will be considerate and a helping mentor. Ms. Bhojak encourages me to ask questions, list out my challenges, immediately points out my deviations and keeps exercise routines which interest me.
There are options in the GOQii Arena where players can share their achievements, their story and their now-then photos and people share their achievements daily. Then there are “active month” challenges where participants can see their points, badges and ranks. There are some feature stories of achievers as well. There are many like me who either learnt or re-learnt something during their journey with GOQii. If everyone shares their stories, their journey, challenges, pain, achievements and guides each other from their experiences, moderated by experts, it can create a Facebook of “Health and Healthy Community”.
What Does Coach Falguni Have To Say About Mukul Bhartiya?
Mukul joined with a goal of losing 20kg of weight. He was doing meditation but workout or physical activity was missing due to the lockdown. We started with 30 minutes of workout. Moving ahead, as he was a trained Martial arts karate player and enjoyed doing it, we started with Martial arts as his exercise along with 20k steps.
He was following healthy eating and early dinner, but portion control was needed. So, we started working on it. He was quite determined and with his consistent efforts and hard work, we were able to see a loss of around 14.7kgs in 4 months.
The best quality of Mukul is that he is a very active GOQii Player who keeps updating his routine on the app and also discusses his challenges and progress with me on a regular basis – which is very essential in achieving any goal.
Does the journey of Mukul Bhartiya inspire you to begin yours? Head over to the GOQii App or our website to begin your journey today! For more inspiring stories, check out Healthy Reads.
#BeTheForce
It wasn’t that long ago that working from home was considered a luxury that only a few could afford. But with the pandemic setting in, working from home (WFH) became the norm. And suddenly it doesn’t feel like all that it was made out to be. To start with, the pandemic forced most people to switch from work-from-office to WFH, irrespective of their preference, and studies show that perceived lack of choice can add to people’s overall sense of unhappiness and dissatisfaction. Secondly, even for those who may have preferred WFH, the suddenness of the change deprived them of the opportunity to plan and prepare for it. In many households, the added responsibility of children being at home, with the schools going online, only added to the chaos. 
With India slowly unlocking, all the public places which were high risk areas are slowly opening. With some ease in restrictions in many parts of the country, local gyms and yoga centers are reopening gradually. Despite this, we can’t overlook the fact that India is still in the top 5 affected countries. This begs the question if it is safe to go to the gym or avoid it completely! 
