Dear reader, good morning. Getting older is something we look forward to as kids and then get to ignore as adults. Not forever though.

We now know that even getting older—aging—has facets to it. There’s our chronological age of course, which we calculate by the birthdays we celebrate. But most of us also know there’s biological age—how healthy the cells, bones, muscles, and tissues of our bodies are. You see that mentioned on an increasing number of health check reports as “Actual Age”.

I’d argue that there is also something called mental age, or how old we feel.

I first “felt” middle-aged a few years ago when I turned 45, and it was all of a sudden. After a few years of low-grade shoulder pain that came and went with the intensity of my workouts, things got worse. I suspected a rotator cuff tear and decided to go see an orthopedist instead of a physiotherapist. The doctor recommended I get an MRI.

The MRI report said I had “mild to moderate degenerative arthritis” in my left shoulder’s AC (acromioclavicular) joint, a low-grade “tendinosis” in one of the rotator cuff muscles, and a partial tear in another.

The tear didn’t bother me as much as the word “degenerative arthritis” did. (It was only a year or so later that my physiotherapist told me it was both common as well as the lowest grade of joint and tissue damage).

But on that day, I suddenly felt middle-aged. And mortal.

I won’t lie. It took me the better part of a month to accept the fact that my brain was out of sync with my body. My mental age and biological age met and said hello to each other that day.

Though I’d been injured playing or working out more than a few times, I’d always recovered. I even took recovery for granted.

But it was at 45 that I first felt that a switch had flipped with my body. Thinking of it as a car, I realized I just couldn’t hit the accelerator to the floor when I felt like it. I had to make this “car” last another 40-50 years.

I had to learn how to drive my car in “maintenance mode”, not “push-it-to-the-limits mode”. It was the day the meaning of Fitness changed significantly for me.

Welcome to First Principles this hot or rainy or cloudy or humid Sunday, depending on where you are. We’re finally upon our Fitness Quest. This is a long and special edition.

It started in February when we kicked off our inaugural “Quest”.

Three hundred and seventy-nine of you took the survey for the Fitness Quest. But instead of four-six weeks, it would take me three months to process (remember “dreadful caves”?) what you said into a Sunday newsletter.

Here it is.

Fitness means different things to different people. Even for the same person, it means different things at different stages of their life. What does fitness mean for you?

Perhaps you’ve forgotten, or perhaps you never took our Fitness Quest Survey. But that was the very first question we asked. These were the other questions:

1. Has the definition of meaning of fitness changed significantly for you over the years? How would you say it has changed?

2. Most of us try to measure or live up to our own ideals of fitness using some metrics. For instance, resting heart rate, HRV, BMI, or even daily steps. Do you have a favourite? What is your favourite fitness metric? And why?

3. What would a great community-driven *Fitness Quest* be for you? What are we searching for? What answers should we seek?

4. If you had to recommend one fitness habit to the rest of the First Principles community, what would it be? And why?

5. Is there a book that has made a significant impact on how you understand and practice fitness? Why?

6. Would you recommend a product (no subscriptions or services) that you feel has significantly helped you become more fit?

7. If I were to ask you to name a person whose opinion you value when it comes to fitness, or perhaps someone who embodies fitness for you, who would that be? And why?

Three hundred and seventy-nine of you took the survey and the vast majority answered most of those questions. 

Which means I was dealing with a few thousand qualitative responses. My wonderful colleagues Jonathan, Anushka, and Hari helped sort and make sense of the recommendations. I then roped in my colleagues in The Ken’s editorial design team led by Adhithi to help present some of the results in graphical form.

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But I was still left with the question of how to present close to a thousand answers in a newsletter! So, I decided to go through each one of them and see what patterns emerged. And they did! And in order to stay true to the community aspect of this Quest, I’ve decided to quote verbatim responses at length. Reading other’s views on fitness in their own words has a raw and authentic quality. I’ve also decided to not carry names next to each comment, because I don’t think it matters. Besides, I’m sure many of you gave made-up names (and that’s okay).