"Oh, this is also how I could feel."

Welcome to Truth Be Told, the weekly food and fitness newsletter published by The Whole Truth Foods.

Editor's note: Hi there, Samarth here. We went on an unannounced break, but we're back to our regular programming. I'm kicking off the year with some reflections on fitness from my own journey over the last twelve months.

— Samarth Bansal (samarth@thewholetruthfoods.com)

I.

At the start of 2025, I was trying to do two jobs: I was building TWT, and I was trying to build a magazine. I loved doing it, but both asked a lot of me, which meant I had to extract more hours in a day, which on some days meant editing a journalistic piece at 12:30 am at Starbucks, inhaling Kenya Roast pour-overs, in the mistaken hope that maybe caffeine could make up for my lower cognitive ability, because work had to be done.

I am not complaining. I chose this. It was a phase—a phase where I told myself mad effort is needed till I find my equilibrium. And at that point, even if I told myself "yes you must go to the gym"—you know what happens.

And so when fitness discourse talks about inputs—the plan, the calories, the consistency—without talking about whether your life actually has space for those inputs to land, it's missing the thing that matters most.

II.

When I did reorient my work in the middle of the year, things fell into place. I started mapping everything in my calendar, which made me confront the finiteness of time and gave a solid reality check of what was actually possible. And when you sit and plan intentionally, when you know fitness matters to you, that you want 7 hours of sleep - you plan to ensure there is space for that. You plan so you can wake up and hit the gym.

And once this set in, things changed. If the first half of 2025 led to a slight degradation in my fitness levels, the second half turned it around: I found a new gym where I found community (read about it here), which made me want to show up 4-5 times a week to lift weights. I ensured I was sleeping on time most days. I intentionally didn't let overflowing work be the reason to deprioritise fitness.

I have been the biggest proponent of how being fit is the greatest input into productivity, and that has been true for me over the last four years. And yet, just a life change in those six months and then getting back from it reconfirmed that. We go through phases. And that's okay.

Morning Marine Drive run with TWT Truth Seekers' Community. Mad fun!

III.

Transformation feels hard not because the inputs are hard. Those remain the same—and the biggest input is just consistency. It's hard because different goals ask for different levels of focused cognitive effort: do I want to "be fit" or do I want to "get to 15% body fat"?

This distinction is so underrated because it makes context invisible. I could be lifting regularly and hitting my protein targets, but if I haven't called out "I am working towards this exact goal," my entire relationship with the practice changes.

It's the difference between a general lifestyle and a series of minor acts of resistance. When you're chasing a specific number, every 5:00 PM cookie or extra slice of pizza becomes a high-stakes negotiation. You have to ask: 'Yes or no?' every single time. These choices don't necessarily make you 'unfit,' but the mental tax of constantly saying 'no' to keep the plan on track can be a bit exhausting. It's a level of cognitive friction that I realised I didn't want to pay for in this phase.

My primary interest, right now, is in feeling energetic through the day and having a body with the functional capacity to move well. As long as that's happening, I feel fit.

And because skipping the gym even for a week makes my body feel off, I go regularly. Goal-less.

IV.

I've started noticing when my body has truly had enough. I am not talking about work-tired or deadline pressure. I am talking about an overloaded nervous system, thanks to our environmental load. The Bombay traffic noise. The air quality. The constant sensory bombardment of the city. It accumulates.

Six Types of Rest Your Body Really Needs

When I feel this, "rest" doesn't mean watching or reading something. It means zero sensory load. It means sitting on my sofa and staring at a blank wall—telling all the "wants" of productivity to wait. I know I've hit that zone when I feel a physical sensation in my head. It's hard to describe scientifically, but it feels like a racing heartbeat inside my skull. A race is happening, and the release is like knots finally unlocking. I can actually feel the movement when I touch my head.

Fitness, I've realised, is as much about identifying these invisible stressors as it is about physical movement. To give my nervous system the space to actually relax.

Oh, the struggle. Me doing sandbag lunges at a HYROX simulation. Good stress!

V.

Learning to "listen to your body" always felt abstract to me. Since I can't see inside, I never really knew what was happening. When I felt sore, I'd wonder: is this the "good" kind? The kind where muscles break down to rebuild stronger? Or is it something else?

Through massages this year, I learnt something I genuinely didn't know: muscles can stay chronically contracted. Not workout-sore. Just clenched from how we live.

When I'm at my laptop, I'm holding a static pose. My muscles aren't moving, yet they're working incredibly hard just to keep me upright. If they don't get enough movement or release, that "invisible" contraction becomes the new normal.

I didn't even realise how heavy I felt until those knots from the contraction were taken away. Because once those muscles finally let go, I felt a lightness I hadn't known was possible.

In that sense, the transformation that makes the most sense to me is experiential. Each fitness upgrade—physical or mental—is simply experiencing a state that says: "Oh, this is also how I could feel."

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