Plate And Portfolio: Sustainable Strategies For Finance And Fitness

An empty tub of ice-cream in the fridge on the night you ate salad for dinner. Heavy feeling in your heart after you spent a little much, complaining you don't treat yourself.

A greasy feeling after devouring a cheat meal after a full week of working out and eating clean. The worry that engulfs you after you swipe your card for the last time at the mall.

Consider sugar and splurging a sin and we've all fallen short at some point.

“Setting goals is important because otherwise, you start running and then realise you don’t have the stamina to get to where you want to get,” said Vishal Dhawan, founder and chief executive officer of Plan Ahead Wealth Advisors Pvt.

Working toward the goals consistently over time is not exactly romanticised, but the shortcuts and trends are advertised loud on platforms like Instagram and X.

“Fad diets may give you results in a short time, but what it does to your hormones or metabolism in the long run would not be ideal,” said Avinash Mansukhani, founder of Fight The Sunrise, a body fitness and health platform.

Doing things like cutting out carbs for fad diets may be quick fixes, but the sustainability of these diets is the question. Similarly, with get-rich-quick schemes, they do not promise that you will stay rich. It’s important to think before you sign up for these quick fixes as a lot more permanent damage can wait on the other side.

Fundamentals, like simplicity, are the key to achieving the goals and are often forgotten in both food and finance.

It is also important to remember that finding a sustainable plate and portfolio with proportions that work for you will take time.

Plating the nutrition that you need through meals will need to be planned after considering what works for your body and budget. Pulling together the various elements that come into play, like type of exercise and calorie intake, will need trying out various options.

In exercise and assets, time and trial will help find a proportion that works for you. Slowly but surely, you will find a balanced proportion that will help you achieve your goals.

Not all debt is bad and there are many kinds of debts, according to Dhawan.

Loans for education or home loans may be good because it pays back eventually, while there is also bad debt.

“Overleveraging, assuming the future will be like the past is bad debt,” said Dhawan. He explained that credit card debt and buy-now-pay-later schemes are also bad debt as one can get trapped.

When it comes to fitness, there is good sugar from fruits and healthy food, which is fine. Apart from the good sugar, there is no avoiding unhealthy sugar completely. So, Mansukhani encourages finding a place for sugar in the diet, and then planning for it.

Finding a place and planning for it is basically allocating a certain amount for you to mindfully consume rather than indulging every now and then.

“When you get a bonus, you tend to treat it differently, as extra money,” said Dhawan. You can divide this bonus into buckets or portions, which you can use for various needs, he advises.

Dhawan recommends dividing the budget into three parts—self-improvement, luxury, and future.

One portion, which can fund your self-improvement goal, could involve something like an upskilling course and this could potentially pay you back in the future.

Another part can go towards the luxury splurge that you can spend in whichever way you want.

The last part can go towards helping you retire quicker, may come in need in the future or may help you pay off debt.

“Cheat days undo the progress you make through the week,” said Mansukhani.

There are loads of things that are out of our control that impact our life. Nothing can prepare us for these events, for the most part but not in finance.

“Risk management gets little attention as ways to make money take the focus,” said Dhawan, talking about how one can anticipate some emergencies and take insurance in advance.

If you faced setbacks or injuries physically, it’s important to start working on your goals again as soon as you can, according to Mansukhani.

“Getting a financial planner or a personal trainer may be hard, but it will help to get some outside help,” Mansukhani said.

When setbacks happen financially, you need to go back to the drawing board, according to Dhawan. One can scale down goals or extend the timeline according to the setback and proceed at a pace that you can manage, he said.

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