Here’s a great thing to know: the cooler the weather, the more fat you burn during exercise. No kidding. The metabolism works overtime in the cold to maintain body-warmth. And harder still when you exercise. That’s why when you jog up and down the winding lanes at a hillstation, you return from your holiday a few kg lighter.

For the same reason, December is not for dawdling indolently over tea and bhajiyas. It’s for dancing, bending, twisting to make your body sweat and your mind soar. It’s for belting out a full-throated falsetto to let your spirit unleash its unbridled energy and let it all hang out. This, dudes, is the spirit of fitness. To breathe life into laziness, hope into doldrums, courage into panic.

In this spirit, you can do anything: Stick leech-like to a diet and exercise routine to lose fat and gain muscle. Be steely in your resolve to study something new and true everyday. Help others in small but significant ways. It’s Life Unlimited.

The fact is, if you huddle under your blanket for warmth, you’ll never understand that there is another kind of warmth. The warmth of arising when it’s easier to burrow into your bedclothes; the warmth of deciding when it’s easier to delay; to believe in yourself when it’s easier to doubt; to prepare when it’s easier to daydream; to work when it’s easier to wish; to persist when it’s easier to quit… This is the warmth of the victory of the will over negativity and sloth. It’s the empowering warmth of making life come to life.

Whenever you feel unwell, uneasy, it’s the unused energy stagnating in the body. If you’re an exerciser, you’ll feel this way if you haven’t worked out for four days. Just get on your stationary bike and pedal away—you’ll feel a beautiful inner easing on the 32nd minute, followed by a joyful serenity, then a compulsion to leap off your bike and get on with the day.

Gyaan: The more regularly you push yourself to get up and go, the fewer lethargic obstacles there are to overcome.

The writer is co-author of the book Fitness for Life and teacher of the Fitness for Life programme.

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