Frankly, that would be difficult to pinpoint with hundred per cent accuracy as it depends on your build and bone density. However, it is nice to have 'the ideal weight' as a goal to strive for. Which is why we have given a weight-chart for Indian men and women. Use it only as a reference point and not as an absolute bible. The main thing is that you should feel energetic and joyously alive all the time.

How fit are you?

Your state of health and fitness, however, does not begin and end with our weight. How much you weigh is one more milestone on the road to health. This section of the chapter has been carefully designed to awaken you to your optimum potential- physically, mentally and spiritually.

Initially, medicine came into being when people fell ill. Something was required to make them feel better and, if possible, cure them. Slowly, the face of medicine took on a different hue. Knowing that cures were available, people began to be rather complacent. The small voice of reason that said, "prevention is better than cure" was somewhat lost in the act of swallowing pills and undergoing surgery.

Somewhere in this race for pacemakers, however, the insistent voice continued to speak out. And world over, a new awareness crept in which redefined life not as mere existence, but living. Where health was seen not as an absence of diseases, but as a positive state of wellness. And where illnesses were viewed as the effects of a certain lifestyle, the result of this new thinking made such people believe that taking responsibility for their health lies more in their hands than with the family physician.

Take the example of a friend of ours - a typical, urban executive who makes a living out of creative confusion. He is always living on the edge ­running late for an appointment, invariably scrambling to find a file, even as the telephone is stuck to the shoulder as a physical extension. By day, he chases future contracts before finishing existing commitments. By night, he chases highballs thinking that they can "unwind" him, since work flies at him like angry hornets disturbed from their hive. Thus, his professional life is akin to a one-handed juggler trying to keep four balls in motion.

In short, our friend is the kind of chap who makes the Tolstoy hero - out to claim all the land he can walk on - look like a stay-at-home. He is worse on his rare days off - haring off to a club, tearing off for a play, entertaining entertainment without end. Sure, the man has a lifestyle. But the basic question remains: where is life? Is it any surprise that his medical bills are as high as his petrol bills?

That brings us back to the fundamental question raised by the new awareness.

Who is responsible for this man's health? He himself, with his chosen lifestyle, or his doctor?

The prevention-is-better-than-cure banner can now be raised on the pillars of health bringing us to the seven key habits that most of us learnt at our mother's knee:

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