A healthy 2009!

Let's make a resolution to eat healthier this year while reminding ourselves that healthy eating is not just about dieting and body image

NAINI SETALVAD

 Another year has dawned and young and old alike have made their new year resolutions (never mind if we do not end up following most of them). Let this year be different. Other personal resolutions withstanding, let us make a resolution to eat healthier this year while reminding ourselves that healthy eating is not just about dieting and body image. Health is wellness of the mind, body and the spirit. It is something not very difficult to achieve and yet, most of us are unaware how to step towards good health and wellness. You are what you eat! This is a profound statement and it could not be more true today. Mahatma Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela and all our spiritual guides preach the same thing. Unfortunately today we are brought up on a cocktail of pesticides, additives, chemicals, genetically modified foods. This deadly cocktail is topped with high salt, sugar and processed foods. A lethal combination that blasts our brains and bodies! No wonder we are the disease capital of the world. So let's begin this year with a toast to health! So that the future will look a lot more brighter for all of us.
Here's how you can do it!
    Eat a diet that is comprised of 60 per cent vegetarian. Fruits, sprouts and vegetables are the most balanced and nourishing choices followed by whole grains, roots and tubers, nuts, seeds and cold pressed oils.
    Drink a green juice like wheat grass or leafy green.
    Water is your best beverage. Drink it in plenty!
    Limit fat in your diet: Eat cold pressed organic extra virgin oils. Combine it with coconut or ghee.
    Stop using immune-suppressing ingredients. These include salt, refined sugars and flours, and food preservatives, additives, stabilisers, and colourings. Cut back on table salt. Use limited amounts of rock salt and sea salt.
    Avoid microwave and fried foods, which can suppress the immune system and lead to cancers and heart and circulatory disease.
    Eliminate alcohol and drugs.
    Eat plenty of oxygen-rich green foods. Put yourself in an oxygen rich environment, gardens, mountains.
    Get outdoors and into the sun. For twenty to thirty minutes daily, get direct and/or indirect sunlight.
    Don't smoke or expose yourself to secondhand smoke.
    Exercise moderately. Engage in stretching, aerobics, and resistance exercises at least five times a week for thirty to sixty minutes a day
    Get adequate rest. Sleep and rest helps to recharge the immune system.
    Keep a smile on your face. Maintaining a positive attitude is a key to having a belief system that supports immunity,
    We eat to get energy or life force. Unfortunately none of today's foods which are served in schools, colleges, canteens and grocery stores as packaged foods have any resemblance to real food that has life force or Prana. Food is the fuel for the body and we need to treat our bodies like a Rolls
Royce. Healthy food, healthy mind, healthy body, healthy nation, healthy universe! (The writer is a city-based nutritionist)

GET FIT: Engage in stretching, aerobics, and resistance exercises at least five times a week

WITH A PINCH OF SALT: Cut back on table salt and use limited amounts of rock salt and sea salt