Get Healthy to keep up with your New Year resolutions

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Get Healthy, the right way – no crash diets and no crazy pills. Small changes can go a long way to helping you become new.

According to statistics pulled from Google search results, “Get Healthy” is the most popular New Year resolution of 2017. It’s the mantra that’s always at the back of your mind, all day everyday-when you’re fighting the urge to enter the candy aisle at Walmart, when you’re at the produce aisle, when you’re at work having lunch at the cafeteria and you look over to see what your colleague at the next table is having – it’s a resilient thought that hardly gets any closure nor finds the right place in our lives.

Health fads and diets come and go and most of it is just industrial conspiracy. In the 1960s and ’70s, Fat was bad – it caused heart disease, cancer and what not. Now, carbs are bad and Gluten is the enemy. Tomorrow, who knows what component of our food will become the new super villain. There is some truth in these fears, but the same can be said of any ingredient that is consumed at a higher proportion than your body actually needs. Protein, fat and carbohydrates are converted into energy your body needs. If you eat more than you need, the excess energy is stored as fat in your body – and no good can come from stored body fat, unless you are planning to put yourself in remotely adverse conditions in the near future (berry picking on Mt. Everest, going to see the penguins in the Arctic, or take a quick stroll through the Sahara).

Now don’t freak out and eat salads all week, only to lose your mind and stuff yourself with an entire pizza come Friday night. I get a lot of people ask me what ‘diet’ I am on. It’s a question that always makes me giggle inwardly, because aren’t we all on a diet – our natural diet? For some reason, the word ‘diet’ has come to automatically mean a ‘weight-loss diet’ – because what else could it be??!!!

1. The best kind of diet is the one you don’t know you’re on.

Unless you are living a junk-food-everyday kind of lifestyle, the best thing you can do for yourself, is to not make any drastic changes. Our body reacts to change adversely, if you deprive yourself of food, the next time you eat, your body will store up everything (as fat) for later, fearing that you will starve it again. Never Go Hungry. Instead, keep eating smaller and often. Remember, you are what you eat. So eat good things.

2. Stock up on ‘Fillers’

4 o’clock is the most evil hour of the day. It’s way past lunch hour, but too early for dinner – the classic coffee break time when the devils in your head conspire with the demons in your gut and work utter chaos. This is the time when you are eating purely for hunger and not so much for bodily needs. So the worst thing you can do, is feed it stuff that will inadvertently be converted into fat. I usually soak a cup of legumes (chickpeas, black eyed peas, black bean, white bean, what have you). You can just boil them with a bit of salt. Lightly temper them with mustard, cumin and grated coconut. Or top with fried onions, peanuts and fried red chilli flakes.(Burmese Chickpea bowl). Get creative.

3. Increase your vegetable sides

Moving past rice is the hardest thing for an Indian to do. I cannot imagine not having rice everyday. Rice is carbs but isn’t as bad as you think. Carbs (like fat and protein) get converted to energy and you need energy to keep you running all day. When you eat more carbs than your body needs, the excess gets stored as fat. So as long as you eat only what you need, you and carbs can have a long and happy relationship.

So instead of cutting carbs completely, reduce it. I suggest making 2 vegetable sides instead of one. My mother’s rule – if you fill half your plate with rice, roti, pasta,what have you, then the other half must be vegetables. If you want to refill rice, you must refill with equal amount of vegetables. Not a bad plan, eh? You’ll find yourself fuller with half the amount of carbs, now that you’ve replaced it with more plant protein. No more sacrifice, but a very do-able compromise.

4. Warm Soups are magic

Learn something from the Chinese: Soups are a perfect conduit to carry flavor and nutrients in a warm liquid form. Not only are they comforting, studies show that warm foods increase body temperature, thereby increasing your metabolic rate, helping you shed some fat without even trying. If homemade soups sound like a lot of work for a weekday lunch, try Campbell’s Well Yes!™ Soups – made with all natural ingredients (seriously, read the label! There’s nothing in there you don’t already have in your pantry!). And the chicken is antibiotic free!

And there are a lot of {interesting} flavour choices for you to pick from – not sure what to buy? Ask your local Walmart if they’re hosting an in-store demo for Campbell’s Well Yes!™ Soup between 2/16 – 2/19. Taste it. Like it? Buy it! You’ll find the soups in the usual canned foods aisle, and if not, keep an eye out for the in-store TV ads (at the start of each aisle). They’ll guide you to the right aisle.

And all you Sunday couponers- look for a Well Yes Soup coupon in the papers on 3/12 and take advantage of the low pricing at Walmart.

5. Slowly cut-off white things

While refined sugar, dairy and refined (all-purpose) flour seem like things you cannot live without, trust me, the change is possible. Switch up your regular white sugar with low GI coconut sugar. I still can’t taste the difference in my morning coffee. Cut down on dairy, little by little until you need it no more, substituting with plant-based alternatives (coconut milk, almond milk, soy milk…) when needed. And whole wheat flour has more fiber and nutrients than refined flour (which is stripped of them during processing). Whole wheat pancakes are just as good as the regular kind.

Making these small changes to your life little by little everyday (don’t do them all at once, you’ll just overwhelm yourself) will find you moving closer to your goals of getting healthy – and not just temporarily!

Good luck! Now let’s get healthy!

Do you have any tips to make subtle, but positive changes to your lifestyle? Let me know in the comments below!