Health

Lose Your Weight, Not Your Mind - 21 Diet Tips for Weight Loss from a Celebrity Trainer

While I was in India, I was running “Wellness and Lifestyle Excellence Center”—a yoga studio that was committed to help people develop excellent lifestyles and live healthy based on yoga principles. Among many, I was helping one of the clients who was suffering from PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome), weight gain and inability to conceive. We worked out a customised plan based on her needs, body structure, activity levels, etc. She has started to lose weight and in about year’s time, she conceived too. She was so happy.

She gave me a nice book to read—“Don’t lose your mind, lose your weight,” This is written by Rujata Diwekar, India’s top celebrity fitness trainer. It is really an excellent book written with a lot of simplicity, passion, and wisdom. I really enjoyed reading the book. It resonated so much with what I believed about diet and lifestyle.

Here are some of the very interesting and very fundamental points from her book:

Simplicity is profound—don’t complicate simple thing as eating or feeding yourself, just follow one thing: EAT RIGHT QUANTITY AND QUALITY OF FOOD AT RIGHT TIME. MODERATION IS THE KEY.
Eating correctly has to be our lifelong commitment, and our diet should be reflection of this.
There is no such thing as going ‘on’ or ‘off’ your diet.
For diets to work, they have to be PERSONALIZED based on your ACTIVITY, WORK LIFE, LIFESTYLE, FITNESS LEVELS, LIKES, DISLIKES, GENETICS, etc. Just as everyone is different, everyone’s diets have to be different too. Don’t try someone else’s regime.
Basics of your diet/healthy living remain the same regardless of your shape, size, gender, age, nationality, etc.
ALL FOOD IS GOOD and contain nutrients which have their own role to play in our body. Don’t make angels and demons out of different foods: they’re all just as good or bad for you.
There is no bravery attached to weight loss; instead, what is most important is that you feel good about yourself, treat yourself well, be committed to eating properly and exercising regularly. eight loss, rather fat loss, will just happen.
Diet is not starvation. You must eat to lose weight.
Dieting is not about ‘going on’ a diet. Never go on a diet; modify your lifestyle.
There is nothing like ‘punishment or compensation diets’.
Extreme diets just don’t work, don’t go for diet plans which deprive you of food or make you eat only one type of food. They are not sustainable.
The human body is designed for continuous activity. Any program which discourages you from exercising is worthless. Exercise is non-negotiable. Unless you exercise, you’ll never see results, despite all your good eating habits.
Make sure you know what’s in low fat or sugar free foods. They aren’t all that healthy and should not be consumed in excess. If you must eat chakli or chips, make them at home and fry them with a sparing use of oil or bake them.
We associate our happiness with eating something or not eating something; thus, we are looking for happiness in the wrong place. Happiness is within us and when we get in touch with ourselves, our true being, we will discover that happiness. Dieting or eating correctly, is a process, a learning tool, to go within. When we see or experience that glimpse of reality within ourselves, it will (has to) reflect in our physical body.
If we want to get toned, muscular, fitter, and healthier, then we need to establish a good relationship with our stomach - one of mutual love and respect.
Loading the stomach when it has no capacity to digest is criminal. It’s a human rights violation.
As the sun goes down, so does our stomach’s digestion and assimilation ability. Its ability to digest food is highest between 7am to 10am. You can keep the digestive fire active through a disciplined lifestyle, regular exercise, and optimistic attitude.
Overeating can be defined as eating more than the body’s ability to digest at that point of time. If the stomach lacks the fire or the power to digest at a particular time, then even a slice of apple will amount to overeating. So overeating doesn’t just mean eating large quantity of food, it means eating that food at the wrong time.
The key to eating right is to focus while you eat: switch off the TV and cell phones.
Stress can make you fat.
It is better for you to have a paneer paratha (Indian style bread stuffed with cottage/curd cheese) than a pizza. How many nutrients a food has is much more important than how many calories.