Wondering what to eat this season to beat the heat???

Go ahead reading about nature’s best answer to acidity, bloating, headache and more.

“RICE – Food to have this summer” : my inputs for today’s ASIAN AGE

Here’s why rice & traditional rice-based dishes are great for your summer diet-

1. Rice is a natural coolant, it reduces body heat

2. Many communities in the Eastern part of our country (Bengal, Assam and Orissa) have traditionally been cooling cooked rice in water and leaving it overnight. This fermented rice is then consumed in the morning. It is known to prevent heat strokes and stomach ulcer

3. Phodni cha bhaat, a typical Maharashtrian dish, made from left over rice and combinations like curd rice are rich in probiotic bacteria and Vit B12. Consuming these meals promote healthy diversity of gut flora, relieves you of constipation and will make you look thinner & flatter in your tummy

 Other Indian summer foods & drinks that will benefit you-

1. Sugarcane Juice- A Summer Drink To Relish
2. 10 Reasons to Eat Mangoes in Summer
3. Enjoy local Tadgolas (Toddy palm) in Summer
4. Are Sabja Seeds part of your Summer Diet?
5. Cool and Healthy Indian Summer Drink- Variyali Sherbet
6. The ancient and exotic Neera!

Watch Ravdeep Singh from Ludhiana talk about his weight loss journey to 15kgs lighter and tonnes more happier and fitter!

Check out the video to know the top points that make a “weight loss” diet last forever –

1. Should allow you to eat according to your region, religion and liking. Food is very personal.
Food is more than its calories

2. Should make you feel happy, energetic and fit. NOT dull, tired, fatigued and depressed

3. Your diet should blend with your lifestyle. NOT you trying to create a new lifestyle that
would ‘fit in’ with the diet plan

4. Should be as simple as divinity itself. NOT complicated that you cannot sustain it forever

Trying to lose weight without going on an extreme diet? Let dietitian & nutritionist Munmun Ganeriwal who specialises in Indian food help you with a holistic weight loss program. Contact us now to know more or set up a consultation!

“Kyun lena hai difficult option?” SRK, a.k.a Dr. Jag, asks Alia Bhat (Kaira) in the movie. He mentions that, often, the answer is that we unknowingly like to punish ourselves, because we believe that until we go through some suffering, there can be no rewards.

After watching Dear Zindagi, I came out of the theatre with a feeling that Mr. Khan has nailed it yet again (oh, yes! I am a SRK fan). After all, don’t we do this to ourselves on an everyday basis?

You visit a white-coat dietitian and she gives you a list of ‘DO NOT EAT’ foods which is invariably longer than the list of foods you are allowed to eat. After much struggle, you finally make it to your gym only to hear your big-bicep trainer say, “No pain, no gain.” The words we associate ‘weight loss’ with are deprivation/ suffering/ punishment. You eat your raw kale salad but in your mind, you are romancing with the hot gulab jamun soaked in its juices. And to make things worse, you end up feeling guilty just thinking about it, let alone eating it.

Like Dr. Jag in the movie, the point I am trying to make here is simple: Take the easy option. Because losing weight is not about choosing the difficult one!

To further elaborate my point, every time that you deny yourself of your favourite foods, you are deprived of Vitamin J (Joy). Now the short-term effect of Vitamin J deficiency is overeating and its long-term effect is weight gain!
Here’s how—

1. You eat more food than you would otherwise, in an attempt to get the necessary level of satisfaction.

Poha/ paratha/ thalipeeth for breakfast or oats: what is more satisfying?
Every time you try a tasteless and ‘guilt-free’ alternative to your favourite foods, you actually end up eating more than you would otherwise.

2. You deprive yourself of Vitamin J at one meal, only to overcompensate for it at the next.

Have you ever noticed yourself reaching for that late night chocolate treat after a ‘no carbs’ dinner of soup and salad/ chicken breast? When your dinner fails to hit the spot, you end up craving for more carbs and calories later.

3. You make it easier to ‘fall off’ and harder to ‘get back with your diet.

You are more likely to ‘fall off’ from a diet that is not inclusive of the foods that you like. The end result is that you see yourself yo-yoing from having lost some weight only to gain back double of the weight lost.

The alternative—

1. Let go of the idea of ‘on-plan’ foods and ‘off-plan’ foods.

There is no ‘diet’ food or ‘anti-diet’ food. Include foods that you like and that you have grown up eating as part of your diet. That way you are more likely to not fall off the wagon. The more sustainable it gets; the more weight you lose. That too in a sensible and reasonable manner.

2. Eat mindfully and savour the flavour.

Don’t let shame, guilt or fear take the joy out of your food. Allow yourself to fully experience every flavour and texture. When you do this, you won’t need as much to feel satisfied from the meal.

3. Let your Vitamin J come from the right place.

Choose your homemade delicacy over a packaged food product. A homemade laddoo over a cookie not only gives you the much needed Vitamin J in abundance, it is rich in all other nutrients too.

If all this sounds well and good, I hope you will approach ‘weight loss’ as something that supports your life rather than becomes your life, because life is all about joy and love. Love you, Zindagi!

Trying to lose weight without going on an extreme diet? Let dietitian Munmun Ganeriwal who specialises in Indian food help you with a holistic weight loss program. Contact us now to know more or set up a consultation!

Glued to my laptop, I, like millions of Indians, felt proud watching Saina Nehwal play the World Championship finals and while I watched in awe how agile and nimble footed she is, my thought went out for the million, if not more, women across the globe who feel inadequate about themselves, their size and most importantly “their body weight”. These women that I talk about are the ones who are driven by the mindless social convention of the need to lose weight to be seen as ‘beautiful’ (read ‘thin and fair’) instead of being driven by a more logical urge or responsibility towards their body i.e. to make it fitter, leaner & stronger.

Now, try telling any fit and athletic Saina Nehwal, Jwala Gutta, Saina Mirza or Mary Kom that she is carrying more weight on the weighing scale for her height and that she should lose weight at ‘any cost’; and she must look thin, petite, or skinny and these athletes will laugh it off. Because they know that the two-digit number on the scale does not really matter!

So what matters then? you may ask. Well, what really matters and what we really need to ascertain is “Am I light on my feet?”, “Am I able to jump and move around?”, “Am I able to walk the stairs up without getting tired?”, “Can I skip, leap, run whenever required?”. Believe you me, that matter much more than how much we weigh. Simply put – “Staying Fit triumphs Staying Thin”

THE WEIGHT TRACKING OBSESSION

This brings us to the rhetoric question – “Then why do we need to know how much we weigh?” We need to know how much people weigh so that we can monetize it into either a weight loss business or into a medical industry. It makes perfect business sense and see where it has got us today. Businesses related to weight loss have become one of the biggest and fastest growing businesses across the world. Flooding the markets are hundreds of pills that promise to control our blood sugar, cholesterol and what not. Astonishingly, there are now surgical treatments also to make people lose weight! And I fear there are dafter ways which the industry will come up with just to make us slim and our wallets slimmer.

Honestly, we are cultivated/ subconsciously trained by “them” to feel stupid about our bodies. The more ignorant we stay about our health parameters, the more it is likely to go on, and with much more vigor. “What’s my ideal weight for my height?” if we keep asking these questions and as long as we stand in front of the mirror, pinch our bulge and say “Everything else is ok, bus yeh naa, yeh nahi jaa raha“, we will continue to be at the receiving end of “these” big pharma companies making a fortune out of our sentiments and ignorance.

WEIGHING SCALE – THE DUMB SCALE

But the weight is still important, isn’t it? You may still persist. Let me give you an example – “If you keep a pile of books on a scale, what you get is the total weight of all the books combined as a number and not the individual contribution of each. Similarly, the weighing scale reads our body weight as a total number and does not give us the contribution of either fat or lean muscle mass towards the total weight”.

To further stress my point – Two people with the same height and weight can look drastically different due to the difference in body fat%. The person with high fat% will look flabby and weak while one with low fat % will look lean and toned.

Hence, the weight is not a true and reliable indicator of our health or fitness. Just like the school report cards reflect numbers and not learning, the weighing machine reflects number and not well being.

So, now what should we do with our weighing scale?

Well, throw it out of the window – as it’s meant to weigh our luggage when we travel and our body is not a luggage, is it? 🙂

So, next time when you look at yourself in the mirror – smile and say “You are beautiful, you just need to get a little fitter”. Moreover, our happiness or sadness should not be dependent on a number. There’s so much more to life. Let’s move on and put an end to this weight loss hungama!

Trying to lose weight without going on an extreme diet? Let dietitian Munmun Ganeriwal who specialises in Indian food help you with a holistic weight loss program. Contact us now to know more or set up a consultation!