When Asmi moved to New York City, she was so excited to be there. This fast paced city had so much to offer, with so many experiences and adventures just waiting to be discovered.

The challenging part was the NYC social life that revolved around experimenting with new and interesting foods (rainbow bagels and avocado ice-cream cake, anyone?) and of course the happening nightlife.

NYC’s glitter and glamour drew Asmi and she was having a fabulous time. However, she was gaining weight, was feeling tired and drained of energy. Before she moved to NYC she had lost a lot of weight. She had followed a Keto diet and was doing a few HIIT workouts a week. But the city lifestyle got to her and predictably, she rebounded, gaining all the weight she had struggled to lose in the first place.

The RNT Mindset

When Asmi joined RNT there were a few obstacles she had to overcome. Her biggest concern was how she was going to fit into the NYC lifestyle and still follow her plan. She was worried about what her friends would think about her.

“It was hard initially, hanging out with friends and not drinking. Then I started to form new circles of friends who liked hiking and enjoyed doing things that weren’t based around food and alcohol. Then eventually I got comfortable hanging out with friends who were drinking and I got comfortable with just having a soda or an appetiser. What really helped was that a few of my friends were also doing RNT so I would see what they were doing and follow them. Once they came to a boozy brunch and just came with their own coffee and didn’t eat or drink anything, they just socialised. This was the first time that I wasn’t just going with the crowd.”

There is so much truth in the statement - ‘you are the product of the 5 people you spend the most time with’ - it is in fact an RNT life skill we really believe in and promote to all RNTers. To enable this in our Transformation Platform - RNT Pro, we set up intimate cohorts of 5 RNTers to share the journey with. This intimate support group ramps up accountability on a peer level (adding to accountability to self + coach/expert), and means you can share tips, advice, and offer support when striving towards similar goals!

Asmi’s way of dealing with the social and peer expectation of drinking and indulging was to audit her social circles by surrounding herself with like-minded individuals who believed in prioritising their health. Once she had established her path and was comfortable with her personal choices she found it easier to re-enter social circles that were focused on an indulgent lifestyle but on her own terms.

“I realised I didn’t need to do all of that. I realised I can have fun without food and alcohol being the central piece. I realised that it really doesn’t matter what other people think, what I’m doing is really for me not for them. And that was a huge realisation it’s all about me and not how they see me and their judgements. It is funny because now those same people are so inspired by my transformation. They are now asking me about what I did! the fact that my choices could influence them was unexpected.”

The Muck During The Grind

The Grind is arguably the most intense part of every RNTers journey. You are low on calories, you have a daily step target of 20,000, you’re hitting the gym 3-4 times a week. All of this on top of normal life. It’s at this time that real transformation occurs; the action forces you to truly introspect on what matters, and this is when the butterfly emerges from the cocoon.

When Asmi went through The Grind, she was so taken aback by the thoughts that bubbled to the surface she wanted to write down her thoughts to document her journey and mark her progress as she went through the gruelling phase.

“I was so low on energy and low on time that I started becoming an essentialist. I started cutting out all the fluff.

I was getting frustrated and losing energy about things and I realised… why don’t I say something, why don’t I say what my expectations are… I didn’t really do it before. I am a people pleaser, I wanted everyone to like me. I didn’t want to disrupt the energy, so I inhibited myself. I didn’t express myself and my desires. I didn’t want to hurt anybody, I wanted everyone to think, ‘Dr. Sanghvi is the best’. I didn’t have the energy to deal with the negative emotions from the stress that I was getting when I wasn’t speaking my truth and saying what I wanted.

Suddenly I started being more assertive. At first it was a bit weird, but then things started happening the way it was supposed to and I didn’t have to lose energy and stress out and it was great! Growing up, society says the feminine energy is sweet and nurturing but in some situations that’s not enough, you have to be more assertive and aggressive.”

Speaking your mind and speaking your truth respectfully is hard for almost everyone, we always worry about the ramifications our words will have on our jobs and our relationships but most often as Asmi discovered speaking honestly has so much more value. To ensure that she didn’t slip up and the new behaviour was firmly rewired into her personality, Asmi uses a lot of journaling, meditation and affirmations to help her stay true to her beliefs.

One of the affirmations she still uses that she got from the RNT team is:

I am in control of my body and mind. I achieve the goals I set for myself. I know my limits from taking myself extra. I am proud of the body I have and I am proud of the person I am.

The ‘Why’

The Grind really pushes you to the brink as it’s such an intense time. It forces you into some dark places; during The Grind you learn what you really need to work on and it always causes a shift in perspective.

“When I started RNT, I wanted to be visually recognised as someone who is fit and strong and a hard worker.

During The Grind my ‘why’ changed.

Before my ‘why’ was pretty much focused on how other people would see me. Just like in that initial obstacle when I was concerned that if I didn’t drink or eat all those crazy foods like everyone else, they would judge me. I was so focused initially on what everyone else thought of me, and that was what drove me.

And then, during The Grind I started to focus more on myself and what made me happy and how I could get to my goals. I changed my thoughts from how people will judge me if I don’t go into the NYC social scene, to how I would feel about myself, I became more internally focused.

And then, when I started doing that, I started impacting more people. By focusing on myself and focusing on my desires and my wants I have a better effect on other people in a positive way.”

From Negative to Positive Self Talk

Asmi is now in her Investment Phase and although she has made huge changes to her physical and mental health her mind could still get the better of her. This is where the affirmations and journaling helped her.

“I’ve always had a lot of negative self-talk, I have a hard time appreciating where I am and how I got here. I always think about what I haven’t done. It’s good, it helps me achieve what I want to achieve but it doesn’t help me mentally, spiritually, or emotionally. It’s got better slowly through my RNT journey. Now that I am in my Investment Phase, I found myself getting upset and frustrated that I wasn’t hitting PRs in the gym as fast as I wanted to. I wasn’t seeing the physical change as fast as I wanted to. and I wasn’t where I wanted to be. Then I checked myself and looked at myself from where I started in Jan and realised I have come a long way. Something that I learned that was so valuable from RNT is that physical change is something you can measure with the numbers and photos, it forces you to stay in the present, which is something I need to work on.”

Physical Is The Vehicle

When Asmi joined RNT she wanted to look better, she wanted to feel fit and strong and have a positive influence on her friends and family.

She also had a completely new point of view in how she wanted to approach her life and her career. Always busy with her hand in many different projects simultaneously she always felt stressed and mentally scattered.

Now she is able to handle the stress of seeing her patients and juggling her projects with a lot more ease.

“Stress has always been my biggest issue. RNT has made me slow down and focus and deal with the stress. The stress from work and dealing with patients used to bother me, now if I can do something about it I do it, otherwise I move on and focus on something else. It’s such a different mindset! It’s true what they say, you change your mindset, you can change your life.”

Weight Training

Weight training has played a significant role in helping Asmi with her positive, growth mindset. It’s given her so much confidence!

“I can leg-press 4 times my weight and by doing that I realise that things that you didn’t think were possible are actually possible. Each time I surprised myself in the gym I thought, what else can I do? How I feel, the amount of energy I have, the way I look, going to the gym is the happiest I am, seeing the gains and hitting PRs is so confidence boosting. I did go to the gym before but there was no real progress. During RNT, I would send the videos and the team would say, you can do more. That’s too low, you can go higher. Having somebody challenge your status quo is the biggest shift with RNT.

Through RNT I have learnt that there is a difference between self confidence and self esteem. Self confidence is your abilities at the gym and even at work helping someone’s skin look better or bones look better. Self esteem is having more respect for yourself and knowing it’s you, it’s internal. Through RNT, I learnt that I do have what it takes and can inspire others.”

High Performance For High Performers

Asmi has always been dedicated and disciplined and prided herself on her impeccable work ethics. Her experience during The Grind propelled her to take a paradigm shift even in her specialist field of medicine.

“I am also approaching dermatology and cosmetic surgery in a similar way that RNT structured the journey for me. It’s about mindset and changing the way you think about yourself and how you are to the world and how the world sees you. Thinking about it in a more holistic way so people can get to the skin that they want. I want to address things like sleep and stress levels and diet and gut and microbiome all of which play such a big role in any kind of transformation. I want to help people with their self confidence from the physical changes they get but also boost their self esteem and self respect which is more internal.”

Asmi’s journey with RNT continues, she wants to make more progress in the gym and keep hitting those PRs. She continues to meditate and uses positive affirmations to ensure that these new behaviors are firmly hardwired into her psyche.

We’re excited to see Asmi continue to impact the people she interacts with creating a positive domino effect that is what we at RNT strive for, changing the world one transformation at a time.Listen to her conversation with Akash here: