Good Vibes - All about food - Vol 1

To have rhythm, to be in sync, is to be healthy. But not just any rhythm will do.

Germ theory—and its related breakthroughs of sanitation, vaccination, and antibiotics—was the groundbreaking health development of the past century. It prevents infectious disease and led to the most dramatic rise in longevity in any century in human history. Yet living longer does not always mean living healthier. In fact, we are now witnessing a rapid increase in chronic diseases of both, the mind and the body beginning in early childhood and stretching through old age. Luckily, we are beginning to understand the causes: one of them is food we eat and how we eat it.

All of us know the importance of paying attention to when we eat, what we eat and how much we eat. Yet, we often find ourselves scrolling through the phone, working on the laptop or watching television, while stuffing food into our mouth even when there is no true hunger. 

You know the importance of eating right and enjoying every meal. Yet, how sacred is mealtime to you? Does your schedule permit mindful eating? Mealtime needs to be a sacred ritual, but today most of us eat mindlessly and in the middle of distractions. 

Practice mindful eating - listening to your body signals of when to eat and how much to eat. Once we pay attention to our hunger and signals of fullness, it becomes easier to avoid overeating. 

Stick to eating right quantity, to neither be starved nor be stuffed. When you listen to your body, you take care of how much food it needs. This is a huge step in ensuring health and well-being. 

100Days Health Challenge kicked off yesterday. To all who have chosen to be on the journey to get fitter, best wishes and more power to you. I am sure most of you will get into a habit of fit life by the end of these 100 days.

If you enjoy reading the newsletter, and believe it helps in your journey to deep health, you have a zero-cost way to support this endeavour by sharing with your friends, family and on your social media.

And, as always, please give me feedback on Twitter. Which article did you like most? What do you want to read more or less of? Any other suggestion? Just send a tweet to @SandeepMall and add #GoodVibesWithSandeepMall at the end for me to find it.

Stay strong, stay fit and stay healthy.

Thanks

The 100 Day Health Challenge kickstarter yesterday. Some of you must be part of the 100 Day tribe, determined to take fitness discipline seriously.The collective enthusiasm, of 800+ participants from 4 different countries and 27 Indian States and Union Territories, is such a high! What will be really important is to keep up the consistency. Choose any or as many different activities that’s feasible for you to do in the current scenario, but be sincere and regular. Keep sharing your stories of overcoming challenges and how you keep yourself motivated to exercise regularly. Your tweets and stories will be inspiring many others in the tribe on their challenging days. 

On day one, it seemed to have rained in many parts of the country. It was amazing to see so many of you finding alternatives to ensure you didn’t miss your exercise - it inspired me to cycle even on my rest day :-). 

Don’t forget to use the hashtag (#AdmireYourself) in all your tweets related to the Challenge. It will help us find your stories and retweet them to inspire others. 

During the 100 Days, we will be announcing a few WildCard fitness challenges for fun, giving random opportunities to participants to boost their points. 

If you have missed all our previous updates about the 100 Day Challenge, visit www.sandeepmall.com to know all about this one of its kind community fitness drive.

Stay tuned for updates on the Challenge. #LetsGetFitterTogether

The cornerstone of any good fitness plan is getting your diet right, and to do that, the first thing you need is, to determine what your daily Caloric Needs are. A crude way to find out your daily Caloric Needs is to multiply your target weight (not your present weight) in pounds with 12. As an example, my target weight is 67 kgs which is 148 pounds. That makes my daily calorie intake 148 X 12 = 1776 calories.

If you wish to look like a fitness model, then you have to fine tune it. But if your goal is to get in really good shape, lose weight and look lean and fit, then managing your calories this way works well.

Now that you know your Caloric Needs, it will be good to know your macro nutrient breakup. This is a guideline. First determine what your body type is

Ectomorph: Naturally thin. Skinny limbs. Struggles to build muscle/gain weight.

Mesomorph: Naturally muscular. Wide shoulders. Fits right between ectomorph and endomorph build.

Endomorph: Naturally broad. Wide hips. Shorter limbs. Gains weight easily.

Now convert these percentages into calories. I am an Ectomorph. So, in my case, Protein = 444 calories, Carb = 977 calories, Fat = 355 calories. Total 1776 calories as determined earlier.

Converting those calories to grams: Protein and Carbohydrates contain 4 calories/gram. Fat contains 9 calories/gram. So, my protein requirement becomes Protein = 444/4 = 111 gms, Carbohydrate = 977/4 = 244 calories, Fat = 355/9 = 40 gms.

So, my baseline macro nutrient requirement is as follows:

Protein = 111 grams, Carbohydrate = 244 grams, Fat = 40 grams.

A huge problem with today’s food culture is the sheer amount of conflicting advice that’s flying about the place. Contrary to what you might think, I don’t necessarily have a problem with any of it. If being a vegan or sticking to Keto is working for you, that’s fantastic. But I simply refuse to believe there’s One True Diet that’s optimal for everyone. All through history our diets have been dictated by geography and climate. We ate whatever food was available. This means the evolved human machine is capable of thriving on a whole range of diets.

One drawback to giving generalized food advice is that the correct diet for any individual really depends on the state of health. Someone who has been abusing his/her body for twenty years will have to make more dietary changes to get to the same place as someone who’s in relatively good shape. The optimal diet for you is likely to evolve and change as you grow older. A child will usually have different health priorities from those of an octogenarian, just as a bodybuilder will, compared to an expectant mother.

BLUE-ZONE DIETS Around the world, there are some apparently almost magical enclaves where the proportion of people who live past 100 is up to ten times higher than the average rate. They are nearly always in good health, with much lower rates of chronic degenerative diseases such as dementia, heart attack and stroke. These places have been coined ‘blue zones’ by the Belgian scientist Michel Poulain. As you might imagine, blue zones have been widely studied by nutritional scientists hoping to discover the One True Diet. And what do you think they found? That the secret of blue zones was low carb? Vegetarian? Gluten free? Not a bit of it. What they actually found was an enormous variety of diets. Some were eating meat; some, like the Seventh Day Adventists in California, were vegetarians; some were eating more fish whilst others, like the Okinawans, were feasting on high-carb foods like sweet potatoes.

Having said all that, there appear to be some very broad and basic principles that are consistent among all the blue-zone diets: None has a processed-food culture. By and large, they eat fresh, unprocessed, local produce. They all sit down and eat meals together. They eat what’s in season.

Perhaps not as quickly as we’d like. Yet over time, the scientific method will cut and prune and do its work.

Injuries happen. The question is: after they happen, how can you help the body heal?

For most athletes and fitness professionals, the idea that nutrition can play a powerful role in injury recovery makes perfect sense. Yet when injury strikes, very few know exactly how to use nutrition to improve healing.

In this infographic, we’ll show you some best practices for using nutrition to dramatically speed up the injury recovery process.

Serves 6

Ingredients 

Method 

Put olive oil in  pot, and saute onion and celery until tender. Add broccoli and broth, cover and simmer for 10 minutes. 

Pour the soup into a blender, filling the pitcher no more than halfway full. Hold down the lid of the blender with a folded kitchen towel, and carefully start the blender, using a few quick pulses to get the soup moving before leaving it on to puree. Puree in batches until smooth and pour into a clean pot. Alternately, you can use a stick blender and puree the soup right in the cooking pot.

In small saucepan, over medium-heat melt 3 tablespoons butter, stir in flour and add milk. Stir until thick and bubbly, and add to soup. Season with pepper and serve.

Serves 4 

Ingredients 

Method 

In a medium bowl, mash together the avocados, lime juice, and salt. Mix in onion, cilantro, tomatoes, and garlic. Stir in cayenne pepper. Refrigerate 1 hour for best flavor, or serve immediately.

Serves  8

Ingredients 

Method 

Preheat oven to 200C. Spread  Pumpkin and Beets over a lined baking tray. Top with thyme ( optional) Drizzle over 1 tablespoon oil. Toss to combine. Bake , turning once, for 25 mins or until tender. Set aside to cool. 

Cook Quinoa. Set aside to cool

Squeeze orange into the bowl. Add  honey, mustard , orange juice and remaining oil in a screw-top jar to combine. 

Toss pumpkin, beets, quinoa, parsley, walnuts and feta in a large bowl. Drizzle with dressing and season.

Twitter @DeeptaNagpal

If we can aim to do our best everyday, we are building a better version of ourselves. Our best will look different every day. And learning to flow with that idea gives us room without making ourselves wrong.

So Best your Best. That’s all you can ever do.