Experts in healthcare and nutrition discuss with Rachna Virdi how the right diet constitutes to your body health and fitness!
There’s a common health adage, ‘You are what you eat’. Diet, obviously, is the most important constituent when it comes to staying fit and healthy. This is because your body actually consists of what you eat. Eat right and your body gets nourished. So what really is the right diet? Is it available in packages at supermarkets for you to just buy it and have it? No, it’s the right mix of nutrition suggested by your nutritionist—according to your body type—and varies from one individual to another. Mumbai-based Nutritionist, Pooja Makhija describes the right diet as the best mantra for optimum health. “Nourish thy body, love thy food. Most of my clients ‘fear’ food. Their past experiences have made them wary of eating. This is because we are what we eat. If we eat junk, we have boggled minds and an overweight body. But if we nourish our body with healthy food, we reap a disease-free being and alert mind, other circumstances notwithstanding,” she opines.
How right is ‘right’?
The right diet is a healthy balance of food options in accordance to your body composition and the nutritive value of food in terms of vitamins, proteins, carbohydrates, fat and minerals. It reflects good health. According to television actor Sanjeeda Sheikh, “Healthy food and rigorous workouts (like dance) are the best way to stay fit. Eating healthy is very important. Our skin reflects the food we eat. Junk and fatty foods are bad for our body. Most of us Indians suffer from heart attacks or fatty liver and this is because of the unhealthy food that we consume. We should include fresh fruits, green leafy vegetables, fish, egg and pulses in our diet. We should also ensure that the food is cooked in less oil,” states the actor who strictly avoids junk foods and aerated beverages. Her stay-fit solution is dance. “I make sure that I dance at least for an hour daily. Dancing is a simple and natural way to lose weight. I don’t believe in crash diets as such fad diets are bad for skin, hair and health. If you too want to lose weight, you should go with the natural form of exercises that do not have any side effects,” she affirms.
No short-cuts please
Eating right certainly helps you shed weight, but it’s no short-cut to weight loss. “Long-lasting weight loss is not a sprint. It’s not something that needs to be won. Like a marathon, it is simply a journey of endurance. The only difference is that it is a journey to a destination of your choice at a pace set by your body. Your job is just to reach the finish line,” suggests Pooja Makhija, who has recently penned a book Eat.Delete. The book focuses on the ‘The Anti-Quick Fix Approach’ to weight loss. “Years of solid research and, more importantly, your body will tell you that there is no such thing as a short-cut to stable weight loss. If you want to increase your metabolism, want good health, wellness and energy and want to keep the weight off for good or if you simply want your body to respond with thanks and appreciation, there are a few choice routes from the starting gun to the finish line and everyone has to take the same path,” she adds.
Go slow and steady
Take Sonam Kapoor’s example. As a teenager, Sonam was grossly obese. She indulged in all the wrong foods and weighed 86 kilos on the weighing machine. Growing up in a family where her mother ran a chain of gyms and her father always kept fit, obviously made her feel terrible. It took her two years and a whole lot of struggle to shed those kilos and look right for her debut role. But Sonam didn’t starve herself. All she did was switch to the right foods (comprising light and healthy meals) and stay away from unhealthy foods like cakes, chocolates, ice-creams. Her trainer Zarine advised her to eat six small meals a day instead of three bulky ones; and the meals were high in protein and low in carbohydrates. “I eat every two hours; still I manage to stay slim, all because I have my priorities set right,” she has said in an interview. Today, she stands as a perfect example of having a slim and fit body. She practises yoga and Pilates apart from doing cardios and weight training.
Make it a combined effort
Many a time, people start a diet with great enthusiasm but leave it midway or stop it after one failed attempt. Pooja Makhija says, “Understanding why we eat is the best place to start to understand why our numerous attempts to ‘diet’ fail. Maybe, we struggle with losing weight time and time again because by only anxiously restricting our intake, we address only one part of a bigger problem.” Keeping fit is a combination of lifestyle changes along with the right diet. It’s the best mind and body approach to stay fit. For TV actor Reshmi Ghosh who stars in a serial on Sahara One, the key to her hot body and perfect figure is eating right. “I don’t believe in dieting. I try and eat every two hours, which helps in curbing my hunger pangs. I team it up with yoga and cardio. Since I suffer from a medical problem, I can’t do much in terms of working out; so I just stick to stretching. I believe in having a healthy body and mind and eating right and healthy. That is how you either gain or lose weight. Eating the right food has helped me maintain my weight and kept me fit and energetic.”
Say no to fad diets
A food study states that a diet that limits the food portions to a very small size or that excludes certain foods to promote weight loss is never effective in the long run. So, all your efforts to follow fad diets and starve your body are a total waste. “Fad diets affect the health and body and should be strictly avoided,” mentions Sanjeeda adding, “If you want to lose weight in the right way, you should eat right and exercise right to burn your calories. A healthy body also reflects a healthy mind.” Pooja Makhija agrees with this. Her best advice for weight watchers is: “Eating is health, and all foods are healthy. It’s the method of preparation we wrongly choose that makes innocuous food troublesome. So eat everything without fear; just remember that there are two items that you should have super powerful antennas to detect (and run away from). They are ‘oil’ and ‘added sugar’.” So follow these diet tips and principles and eat your way to a healthy body and mind!
