Start your New Year’s Resolution Today

You don’t have to wait till January 2009 to start your New Year resolution. The world’s most popular New Year Resolution is to get fit and lose weight. The world’s most easily broken resolution is the same.

Many would argue that they could enjoy the last month of this year and start with extra devotion on Jan 1st 2009. Please note you could be 3-5kgs more than you are today on Jan 1st if you indulge for a whole month. It is wiser and healthier to get started with your diet and exercise regimen and follow it strictly until December 24th or 30th and indulge just for a few days before the New Year.

There are 3 important principles we need to understand and practice for weight reduction. Strictly avoid eating Fatty Food. If you want to pull out fat from your body you can’t be putting fatty food into your body. You cannot touch chips, and fries, snacks and sweets, nuts, pastries and pies, cookies and cakes, no mayonnaise, butter, ghee, cheese, paneer and rich red meats. Also you have to use only skimmed milk.

Hey, but all the yummy stuff is in this list. How can we live without all this? Here’s the nice part, its not forever, it’s only for a short period of time. One month to lose 3 kgs. About 3 months to lose 10 and 10 months to lose 30kgs. What’s 3 months or 6 months or even a year in your lifetime if you can be fit and beautiful at the end of it. Just think you have an allergy to these foods for a short period of time. Another good way to correlate this is to think of the treatment for a broken leg. If you fracture your leg there is only one single treatment, i.e. you have to put it in a plaster cast. Terrible, difficult, most inconvenient treatment but if I want to walk again, I simply have to do it and bear it. Only nice part is, it’s not a lifetime treatment but a short-term treatment – 6-8 weeks. We have to immobilize the leg, similarly, we have to immobilize fatty food from going into our mouths for 90 days.

Here is a help line – During these months I know it wont be easy, your mouth will water, your eyes may water, but tell yourself, “I have eaten all these goodies for so many years, nothing will happen to me if I don’t eat any of them for three months or even for a year. When you finish your weight reduction you go into a maintenance level where you are permitted to eat your goodies again but with caution. You need to follow a budget system and limit your self to one or two treats per week.

The second principle is that you follow a balanced and healthy eating plan, starting now and going on forever so that it becomes a way of life. In this plan you never skip a meal, you eat 3 balanced meals, which are divided as 40% breakfast and 11am fruit, 40% lunch plus tea and 20% dinner. Every meal must have a balance of carbohydrate and protein foods and there has to be 2 fruits daily, 2 salads & 2 servings dhal/pulses (1 at lunch and 1 at dinner) and 2-3 glasses milk/curd daily.

Thirdly, one needs to eat plenty of fiber that comes as whole cereals, atta bread, phulkas (dry roti) corn or wheat flakes, bajra or jowar roti, ragi roti or ragi ball, raw salads and fresh whole fruits (please avoid juices as they lose the fiber). The fiber helps to make your body working harder every time it has to be digested. Therefore you spend more calories or burn stored fat even as you digest your food, internal exercise is happening.

1. Avoid fatty food
2. Practice healthy eating
3. Eat Plenty of Fiber

To these 3 principles you need to add Walk and Water. You may try a 30-45 min walk once daily or do 25 minutes in the morning + 25 minutes in the evening. Any one session of walking must not be less than 25 minutes as the heart rate comes up and stays raised only after you have walked continuously for 20 minutes. Top up all the above with 2 and a half – 3 liters water which keeps you fresh, more active and alert and cleans out all the waste products of fat break down. Walk, Water, Diet is the miracle formula for a new you!!!