The reasons most will not crush their fitness goals in 2019, but YOU can!

The truth is approximately 2/3rds of adults in the United States who make New Year resolutions have set fitness goals as a part of their resolution. Of those, 3 out of 4 people give up before meeting their goals. A research suggests that most Americans want to be in better shape, but few are putting in the work to get there. It also goes on to say that if the reason for staying fit is rooted in love for yourself or being around for your loved ones, chances are that you will succeed. On the other hand if you are motivated merely by looking good, the probability of you sticking with your fitness routine is lower.

A big THANK YOU to my 75 responder friends. Now while 75 responses is not statistically significant, as a marketer, numbers are just a tool to guide insights and hunches. So here's what we got. I will tell you though that 80% were women, which is expected from any social media survey :).

Now, close to 1/3rd of this audience considered themselves moderately to extremely fit. The other 12/3 considered themselves unfit or highly unfit.
In terms of fitness goals and aspirations 63% said they would like to exercise at least 5 days a week, close to 15% said they would like to exercise at least 2 days a week and close to 9% said they would like to learn a new form of exercise and about 8% hadn't thought about it.


Now here's where it gets interesting. Of this audience, 40% wanted to exercise because they needed to lose weight and 16% had health issues. So basically close to 60% absolutely needs to start exercising.

And then, while 14% always made time for exercise, the top 3 reasons for not being able to exercise were - Kids take up all the time (31%), lack of time (20%) and it's boring (15%). 

Motivation (51%) apparently rated as the toughest part of keeping a fitness routine, followed by time(42%) and company(5%).

So while the spirit is willing and recognizes the need to exercise, the flesh has been weak in terms of starting and sticking to an exercise regimen.

There are various practical solutions to get around the reason that's holding you back from not exercising. But you most likely are already aware of these. Here's what I believe at a more psychological level, are the reasons people don't get around to exercising even though they would like to

1. It involves discomfort - Till you reach a point where you really miss working out when you don’t, it's actually a physical discomfort. Mentally, a lot of people want to look and feel fit in the longer term. However, in the short term, actually sweating and working hard is not something they are willing to do. We trade in our long term health and fitness for short term comfort of avoiding a disciplined fitness routine.
2. Most of us don’t really believe we can get fit - Whether it's conditioning, not being athletic or whatever reason, deep down we don't really really believe we can change. We think the reality of being beautifully fit is somewhere over the horizon, just beyond reach.
3. It couldn't happen to me - Every day we come across stats of lifestyle related diseases and we believe that it couldn't happen to us...until of course, it does.

Well, if you do want to get fit, make it intentional. Don't wait for to make your resolution over your last wine (or vodka, tequila, beer or whatever your potion of choice) on New Year's eve. Put your workout clothes out NOW and set the alarm for tomorrow morning and Just do it. 

Action cures fear. Action cures lack of belief. Action busts myths about yourself that are not serving you well.

If you haven't really been exercising for a long time, find a friend or send out a general message on Facebook and ask for someone you could join on a walk, jog or run.

And if you still are convinced you don't have time, reach out to a friend. He or she will help you look at your schedule from an unbiased perspective and help you find 3 slots to fit in your exercise. Or help you with your chores so you could make time. Today is all you have, make it count.






And my message to those who are already crushing their fitness goals, continue to shine and inspire those around you.

If this blog resonated with you, made you think or made you feel something, drop a note, like it and share it. There is great power in people inspiring others, that's how ideas grow into movements.

Look out for my next blogpost on real stories from real people who made their health a priority and changed their lives around.

Cheers to everything that 2018 taught us and to a fulfilling 2019 that beckons!

Ayesha@Choose WellThee

Choose WellThee is about making choices that enhance your Mental, Physical, Emotional and Spiritual wellness. We do events, marketing, sales and distribution of healthy and sustainable products and services. Currently in USA and India.

Pictures courtesy: Greggory Papas, Alec Douglas and Freddie Marriage from Unsplash.com

Foods that just don't go together

The other day at the Miami airport, I was at the Starbucks cafe waiting for my sandwich, courtesy running out of food due to delayed flights. As I waited, I struck up a conversation with a co-passenger. During our conversation she opened a sachet of honey and poured it into her tea, and chuckled about her small efforts to be healthy.

Despite all my effort to hold back unsolicited advice, I politely responded telling her that adding honey to hot liquids only makes it toxic.  She was surprised; as you probably are as well. Anyway, that day I made a mental note to write about the not-so-compatible food combinations. And here we are.

Food in its simplest form is most nourishing. In our quest to either rustle up something quick and simple or try something exotic, we sometimes forget or overlook food compatibility with our bodies and digestive systems.

The list of compatible and non-compatible foods can be a bit overwhelming. My goal here is to give you some broad guidelines, and encourage you to take your journey deeper based on how your body responds and what your lifestyle and life stage permits.

But first, I will draw on Ayurveda (the world’s most sophisticated and powerful mind-body health systems dating a few thousand years and used in conjunction with Yoga) to provide some context.

• Think of your digestive system as the furnace. Anything that you eat along with your foods should help the furnace burn/cook the food. In Ayurveda, "Agni" is the Sanskrit term for the “digestive fire” that breaks down the food and other things we ingest from the environment, assimilating what is useful, and eliminating the rest. 
• Also, every food has its own taste(rasa), a heating or cooling energy(virya) and a post digestive effect(vipaka). So while it is true that agni largely determines how well or poorly food is digested, food combinations are of great importance. When two or more foods having different taste, energy and post-digestive effect are combined, agni can become overloaded, inhibiting the enzyme system and resulting in the production of toxins. Yet these same foods if eaten separately, help stimulate agni, can be digested more quickly and get rid of toxins.

  Here are some examples of foods that are bad combinations

1.  Honey and heat – Technically heat is not a food but I needed to put this as number one because I see it being used so widely. If I had a penny for each time I saw someone adding honey to their tea or baking with honey.....I would be very very rich. Raw honey has many benefits however, when heated beyond 40 degrees centigrade, it takes long to digest and its molecules become like glue. The molecules then tend to adhere to mucous membranes in the digestive tract producing toxins, called ama. Ama is waste that arising out of improper digestion, that is then not discarded. It is considered to be the root cause of most ill health in Ayurveda with heated honey one of the most difficult forms to detoxify.

2.  Fruit and Dairy- Fruit should be eaten by itself and not combined with anything in general, and last of all milk. Fresh fruit is light and very easy to digest and it also ferments very easily. If you eat fruit with food or after food that is heavier and more difficult to digest, it will stay in your belly too long and will over-digest. In short, it will turn the whole contents of your stomach into slightly fermented goo. You should particularly avoid eating fruit with (or just after) heavier foods like milk, cheese, yoghurt, meat, nuts and eggs. So banana or other fruit smoothies, mango lassi (a very popular indian drink during summers) are a no no if you want to be kind to your digestive system. However, if a parfait is something you just cannot do without, go for room temperature yogurt and add raisins instead of berries. Also the exception to this is dates and milk. Dates go well with milk.

3.  Dairy and Seafood - Two types of food that should never be combined, according to Ayurveda, are dairy foods (including cream, cheeses, milk and yoghurt) with fish or seafood. This is because they have deeply antagonistic qualities. It simply means avoiding or tuna and cheese salads or sandwiches, smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels, seafood pizzas and yoghurt or cream sauces with fish or seafood pastas. 

4.  Liquids with food-If you remember my reference of the digestive system to a furnace, stated above, you can imagine how water can douse the fire and go against digestion. Liquid tends to pass away immediately into the intestines taking away all the digestive enzymes thus inhibiting the digestion. Liquids should be taken at least 20 minutes prior to meal and not immediately after or along with meal but can be taken one hour after meal. I don't think any of us sits down for a meal without water or a drink, whether it is at home or at a restaurant. Small sips of warm water during a meal might be ok but drinking extremely cold water during the meal is not good as the body uses too much effort to move it through the digestive tract, which should be saved to digest your meal. 

5.     Beans and Dairy or Beans and Seafood - I know, your taco nights just got a tad less interesting, case you can’t load up on black beans and cheese and sour cream all at the same time. You have my sympathy and empathy since mine did too. Beans are astringent and have a cold, dry, and heavy quality. Dairy is cold and heavy as well and so the two together can lead to a dousing effect of digestion. That’s why beans are prepared with heating spices to allow for optimal digestion. But when Raita or buttermilk is made with the right spices it can be a good accompaniment. 

We can’t and don’t always eat perfect and so here are a few tips and workarounds that can help the digestive process in general. These would be beneficial to practice as part of your routine, but could be even more beneficial when you are consuming food that you know is going to be difficult to digest

• 1/2 a teaspoon of grated ginger with a pinch of rock salt before the meal stimulates the digestive system
• Spices and herbs are added to food to make them more compatible or ease the powerful effect. For example the addition of cilantro can be cooling and help in digestion of spicy food
• A cup of lassi (1/4 yogurt with two pinches of ginger and cumin powder with 1 cup of water) at the end of the meal helps aid digestion
• When the ingredients are cooked together, they become more compatible and hence one pot stews can be very nourishing
• Eat till you are 2/3 full. Imagine your stomach like a mixer grinder, if it is full, it really wouldn't be able to process the food inside it
• Also, chew your food, about 20 chews per morsel so that the saliva gets mixed with the food and the food is well broken down before it enters the digestive tract

Incorporating these factors into everyday life is a work in progress even for me.

As a friend of mine who is a clinical ayurveda specialist says, food is hard to encapsulate in sound bytes. It all depends on a person’s Agni.The idea is to take small steps, observe, evaluate and improve. And do it with gratitude, joy and without anxiety, because only then can food actually benefit and nourish us. 

For further reading, you can refer to the following links

https://www.ayurveda.com/pdf/food_combining.pdf

https://www.curejoy.com/content/food-combination/ 

https://www.banyanbotanicals.com/info/ayurvedic-living/living-ayurveda/diet/ayurvedic-food-combining/

Cheers!

Ayesha@Choose WellThee

Choose WellThee is about making choices that enhance your Mental, Physical, Emotional and Spiritual wellness.

Whole grains, seeds, nuts and legumes done right

Due to various reasons, our generation is witnessing a surge in vegetarian and vegan diets. If plant based foods are common place in your diet, do so with discretion and careful preparation, if you want to reap the benefits. The analogy I put forward should be striking in its simplicity.

Would you ever consider putting a lot of rocks like this one into the gas tank of your car? Even if I told you it contained 10 gallons of fuel? I didn't think so. For the rock to really serve the purpose of being fuel, it has to go through a process that helps extract the fuel and convert it into a medium that actually fuels your car. Plant food is no different. Plant foods are powerhouses of nutrition but IF and ONLY IF prepared and consumed correctly. The focus of the article is going to be plant foods based on seeds/ nuts/ legumes/grains.

Tough nut to crack

Here’s the double whammy. Hulls and husks, the outer covering for grains/ seeds contain enzyme inhibitors because their job is to protect the grain/seed from predators like pests and birds who would feel sick after consuming them. Even though hulls/husks might be high sources of protein/calcium/iron and other nutrients, our bodies do not land up absorbing those nutrients. In addition, they wreak havoc in our intestinal tract as they contain anti-nutrients.

The content of phytic acid (an organic acid) in the seed/nut/grain is also an inhibitor that interferes with digestion and absorbing their goodness.

As a thumb rule:

Phytic acid in seeds> Phytic acid in grains> Phytic acid in legumes

Some people are more affected than others and our bodies do cope over time but again, some better than others. So where do we go from here?

Nuts/seeds/grains to Super Food

We need to be kind to grains, legumes, nuts and seeds so that they can be kind to our bodies. As with all good things, preparation is key. I am NOT adhering to a gold standard preparation where for example certain grains are soaked, sprouted and fermented and the process can take even weeks. Rather, I will share with you today is practical and doable – it doesn't make the grains, legumes, nuts and seeds 100% digestible and bio-available, but it does a fairly decent job. If you suffer from celiac disease or have other intestinal medical conditions , you need to take extra precautions and this post has not delved into those scenarios

As a general rule, soaking gets rid of 1/3 to 2/3 of the phytic acid. The best option is to use sourdough fermentation since the microorganisms unlike humans have the ability to digest phytic acid.

The fundamentals

• Definitely Soak, try and sprout and aspire to ferment before you cook
• Soaking grains, beans and legumes in an acidic medium and nuts and seeds in a saline environment activates phytase the enzyme that helps eliminate some of the phytic acid.
• The process is the same whether they are beans, nuts, legumes and seeds but the time may vary, since at the end of the day they are all seeds of the plant
• Soaking means after you have washed, if you have added one cup of nuts/seeds/grains/legumes, add about double the amount of filtered water and let it stand at room temperature for the amount of time prescribed. If soaking for more than 12 hours, empty the water out, rinse and repeat. a couple of times.
• Sprouting further makes nutrients more digestible and available for absorption.
• Sprouting involves removing the excess water and then letting the grains/nuts/seeds/legumes sprout as they are exposed to air. The most convenient way I have found is to use a regular glass mason jar with a sprouting lid.

Glass Mason jar with meshed lid for easy soaking and sprouting

I personally have been soaking beans, nuts, legumes and seeds and have experienced less bloating.

Below is a cheat sheet that I will be printing and putting up on my refrigerator for easy reference and I think it will be useful to you as well. It's pretty easy once you get a hang of it.

So, as you continue on your health journey, get the most out of the love you put into the preparation of your food.

Also some practical tips

• When shopping for trail mix, nut and seed butter, protein bars etc. look for sprouted. Whole foods, Thrive market have options. I personally like the ones from Lupa’s kitchen.

  

  Lupa's sprouted cereal - my current favorite

• Sprouted flour is the best but it is a tad expensive and I myself don't purchase it and haven't yet got around to making my own
•  Diversify your diet so that you are not consuming large quantities of grains.
•  Do not consume sprouts of larger beans like kidney beans, small red beans, black eyed peas raw as these can be very hard to digest. Preferable to cook them.
• The best way to consume nuts and seeds is to eat them in their moist state after soaking. However, this is not always convenient. If you wish to store them, you can make batches in advance. After nuts are soaked , rinse them off and place in an absolutely " warm" oven (8 hours), say under 225*  or in dehydrator on 130* dry 12-14 hours. Remember, the lower the heat the better. Enjoy!
  
  
  
  

Here are some informational links on the same subject if you want to get into more detail.

 https://www.westonaprice.org/proper-preparation-of-grains-and-legumes-video-by-sarah-pope/

http://www.diagnosisdiet.com/food/grains-beans-nuts-and-seeds/

http://www.yogitrition.com/soaking-grains-beans-nuts-and-seeds-101/

Stay Healthy!

This blogpost was created by Ayesha@Choose WellThee and Lupa Irie.

Choose WellThee is about making choices that enhance your Mental, Physical, Emotional and Spiritual wellness.