Building A Lean And Agile Team? Here’s Why You Should Become Lean And Agile First

If you are an entrepreneur or an executive who is at the top of your organization, you are probably concerned about how you can make your team lean and effective.

A lean and agile team can make a significant difference to a company’s bottom-line regardless of the competition, market conditions or any other external factor.

And we are always looking for ways to build that lean and agile team.

But when it comes to our own body, we throw this concept out of the window and choose to carry unwanted baggage.

Just like how having a lean and agile team can do wonders for the success of your organization, a lean and agile body can do wonders for your productivity and focus.

In fact, it will help you lead from the front and build that lean and agile team you have always wanted.

Making your body lean and agile is easier said than done. However, it’s not so different from building a lean and agile team.

Building a lean and agile team consists of a complicated multi-faceted process where you will be forced to overcome a myriad of setbacks and tribulations. In the end, it’s a journey worth going through.

The same can be said of your body. In my personal experience, I’ve come to the realization that there are 3 core areas that can help you make quick progress towards that Lean and Agile Body…

Hydrate Yourself

Most busy entrepreneurs and executives are extremely miserly when it comes to drinking water. It’s not that they don’t want to drink water.

It’s just that their environment has been designed in such a way that they never feel the need to drink any water. Their cubicles are often air-conditioned and they are served all kinds of drinks every now and then right at their desk.

… And not drinking enough water regularly has a detrimental effect on your health. Drinking water helps boost metabolism, improves clarity and acts as a natural appetite suppressant. You can refer this brilliant article by Harvard Medical School How much water should you drink to know more about this aspect.

A study conducted by nutritionists at Virginia Tech proved how beneficial water can be for fat loss. About 48 subjects aged 55 – 75 were asked to follow a low-calorie diet for 12 weeks.

Half of these 48 subjects were requested to drink 2 glasses of water before each of their meals without fail. And the other half were asked to go about their normal routine.

The results were astounding. Subjects that followed just the diet only lost an average of 3.3 Kg whereas subjects that drank water lost about 5.4 Kg on average. There was almost a 30% plus body fat reduction in just 12 weeks.

So if you are really serious about getting lean, start by drinking at least 6 – 8 glasses of water a day. Try drinking some water before your meals.

Your Sleep Pattern Is The Key

A recent study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine studied the effects of sleep deprivation. It revealed that 4 days of consecutive sleep deprivation will decrease your body’s overall ability to respond to insulin by a whopping 16 – 20%.

This causes your body’s cells to store more fat and eventually leads to lifestyle diseases such as Type 2 Diabetes (especially among Indians).

And that’s just a long-term side effect. In the short-term, sleep deprivation will lead to reduced emotional control, increased impulsiveness and excessive lapses in concentration.

Sleep management is one of the things that I emphasize on during my coaching sessions. Almost all physical and emotional transformations occur while you are asleep. Make sure that you discipline yourself to get anywhere from 7 – 9 hours of sleep each night. If you are someone at the leadership level and managing large teams, then this insights in this video will shake you up.

If you aren’t disciplined when it comes to sleep, you have little or no chance of being truly successful in the real world… because sleep is everything. It makes you grow both from the inside and outside.

Track Your Calorie Intake And Calorie Burn

Almost every single weight loss study conducted in the last hundred years or so has all come down to one simple conclusion:

If your calorie intake is less than what you burn, you will lose weight. And if it’s the other way around, you will begin to gain weight.

It’s so simple… You do not have to follow any crazy diets or any such thing for that matter. If you can just make sure that you burn more calories than you take in, you will be on your way to losing weight and becoming lean.

Many people I know do not make time for breakfast and end up overeating during lunch or dinner. Eating multiple small healthy meals or eating healthy snacks every now and then can help suppress your appetite and keep you from overloading.

Once you are aware of how many calories you are taking in daily, it’s just a numbers game. You have to burn more than what you take in with exercise. This blog of mine Struggling to burn fat? will help you hit the ground running in no time.

And burning calories doesn’t mean you must do something complicated. A simple activity such as walking can help you burn calories.

You would be shocked to know that most people walk less than 1000 steps a day. Such a sedentary lifestyle can wreak havoc on your health goals.

So make sure that you start with something small such as walking, schedule it in and be consistent and then you will begin to make progress.

It’s easy to monitor and stay on course if you are tracking the calories. You can also input how many calories you burned through exercise. And you can use this as a solid reference point as you move forward.

If you are serious about becoming lean and agile, track your caloric intake and burn as much as possible during your waking hours. There are tools on the market that can help track your calorie burn such as the “Samsung Gear Fit” which I personally use.

If you are looking to become lean, healthy and productive once again, go here right now…

Free 20-Min Introductory Call

Working with a professional coach who can listen to your frustrations non-judgmentally and support you can help you get results faster.

Besides working with clients 1 – 1, I also engage with corporate teams through my Group Coaching Sessions, Through these sessions, your team will be able to…

•  Manage subordinates more effectively
•  Co-operate with colleagues efficiently
•  Accomplish stretch goals faster

If you are an executive who is struggling to improve your team’s overall productivity, please click on the link below to fix up a Strategic Intervention by me personally.

Strategic Intervention

You can also reach out to my team by sending out a mail to the following email id [email protected] One of my team members will be happy to reach out to you and discuss about these “Strategic Interventions”.

Thank you for reading my post. I regularly write about Leadership, Peak Performance, and Health & Wellness.

If you would like to read my regular posts, then feel free to connect with me through Social Media via Twitter, Facebook , Google + and LinkedIn.

Yours Sincerely,

Satish Rao

PS: If you find this article helpful, I’d appreciate if you can spread the message with your friends and co-workers. 

ABOUT ME

With an industry experience spanning more than a decade, my last assignment was being the Head of Operations of a Large Delivery Center based out of Bangalore. I then chose the Entrepreneurial Path to leverage my industry experience as well as serve my higher purpose of transforming the lives of people. 

It has been close to a decade now working as a Professional Coach with high profile executives and helping them get to their breakthrough in the areas that matter the most to them. 

My niche area is to help professionals get unstuck and find a more meaningful purpose in their lives. I genuinely understand when clients say that they’re looking for a change, but don’t know what it is or how to achieve it or keep postponing it for a tomorrow which never comes. I've been there, done that and got the badge.

Through my professional coaching over the years I have had the privilege to work with some of the most successful executives working for EMC, IBM, Cisco, Wipro, Infosys etc … business owners & industrialists, to help them transform their lives & business through my coaching engagement, speaking assignments, books and published articles. 

That is not all … Having interviewed some of the top CEOs across India and having done extensive research for my upcoming book, I have got some deep insights about high performance executives.