A fit man is a fit man, A fit woman is a fit family!

Like millions of Indians, I was born and brought up in a middle-class, conservative family. One good (and big) thing, though, was that the system in my home was very supportive and open towards girls getting good education and ladies going out for work. Girls were provided the same motivation and encouragement to pursue studies, take up jobs and being independent, just as the boys. All the females in my family (actually, my extended family) worked all their lives in reputed jobs. My mother and all of the aunties contributed as much to their families’ income as their male counterparts. And, in retrospect, this makes me feel proud. There was one aspect, though, where I feel my family did not fare well when it came to equality between boys and girls, the freedom for women to invest time in and cherish their own fitness.

I remember the early mornings in my house pretty well. My mother, my aunt and my grandmother were the first creatures to wake up. Their chores started before the first ray of sunlight. Their primary job was to ensure that everyone had their breakfast, lunch was packed and all was ready for us to be ready for reaching school/office on time. In prioritizing all this, they never took out time to focus on their fitness and nutrition. My mother missed her breakfast at least a couple of days in the week. I never saw her doing any exercises. On the contrary, their male counterparts, although very supportive, reserved the first hour of the day for themselves. At times, they devoted this hour going for a walk/jog/run, or, exercising. The system was naturally set up this way and it functioned the same without any tinkering from anybody.

The same arrangement started trickling over to the next generation of me, my brothers and sisters. We fell in line and became part of the system. What I realize now is that this system didn’t work effectively for anybody. None of us ever got the fitness we deserved. Now, when I dig deeper to find the root cause, I have come to realize and acknowledge that a fitness conscious male could only impact himself, a conscious female, on the other hand, can change the entire family. And, it is not very difficult to figure out why.

A woman controls the most important aspect of healthiness - the food we eat. She makes, defines and owns the kitchen. Achieving the goal of a healthy body and mind is more than half met if our food is healthy. And this goal is automatically aligned if the woman in the family is conscious of physical fitness.

The other thing that a woman controls more than anyone else is the mindset of her children. In almost all cases, she is the one who spends most time with children and directly controls everything that they take in – food, ideas, philosophies. It becomes easy to permeate healthy habits to children if the mother herself is mindful of her fitness.

Other than impacting her family, a woman has a bigger circle of influence outside it as well. That is because women tend to socialize more than men. They share almost everything with their friends and colleagues. And this acts as a major medium of transmission of practices across families. And these are practices which directly impact everyone in the family.

Women, naturally, have more energy than men. If channelized in the right direction, it can change things. A woman with right thoughts and opinions, in today’s world, always has a big chance to impact hordes of people. She is heard and followed across levels of society and garners unconditional respect. In the field of health and fitness, women running YouTube channels disseminating information on right nutrition, physical fitness and healthy living are more recognized and subscribed to. Sportswomen are more recognized, praised and emulated upon compared to their male counterparts. Thus, a woman following and spreading fitness is definitely likely to impact more individuals and families.

Since our childhood, we have heard requests, demands, protests on women being provided equal quality of education, jobs to be given based on merit and not gender, removing the discrimination in pay checks for male and female employees. But, there has never been a movement around women getting the same opportunity to be physically fit. This needs to start. There is nothing more important that can lead to fit families, fit societies and a fit country.