Balancing Life, in association with Indulge, The New Indian Express, a workshop on enhancing mental and physical energies was recently held at the Spring Club in Kolkata, featuring a a city-based nutritionist and fitness consultant Puja Agarwal and lifestyle coach and author Sweta Sureka.
The workshop essentially aimed at helping people balance their energies and to help them understand their well-being better. Both Sureka and Agarwal have been working in the city for a while now and have observed a growing pattern of unhealthy dietary habits and mental issues rise in the urban working populations. The joint session was a way of addressing the issues which affect us all everyday, and yet we don't get the time to acknowledge or rectify them.
Designer and activist Agnimitra Paul was the guest of honour at the event and had some very crucial contributions to the conversation. Here are four essentual lifestyle hacks which we picked up from the talk:
Butter is a friend
"When I go for a breakfast with a friend, I order a four-egg omelette with lots of cheese and butter and I also ask for an extra helping of butter. People are always surprised at this. But we should know that butter is good for us, our body needs saturated fats and we have to give it that. That's where we go wrong," said Agarwal as she stressed on the need for allowing ourselves to eat the god fats.
The nutritionist often recommends a low-carb, high-fat diet to her clients as a way of keeping healthy. "There are so many people who tell me that they practically don't eat anything and they are still overweight. They tell me that all they eat are fruits, but then again fruits are fructose and simplified sugars. So, we need to think about everything we out in our body," adds Agarwal.
Success can't equate to screen time
Agnimitra Paul shared some of her personal observations to reflect upon how we have all let our work life overshadow the need for personal well-being. "The younger generation now has diseases which only attacked aged population till a few years back. We need to take a look at where we are headed. We sspend most of ur day in front of a computer, we eat in front of it, we work on it,, we even make friendships on it. It's a sedentary lifestyle, we don't even walk down the neighbourhood, but we take the car. We take the elevator for a single floor, all of it is affecting our health in a massive way," said the designer.
How to say no everyday
As a lifestyle coach, Sureka stresses on the need for good and positive changes and a mindful and vigilante fitness routine. "When you say no today, it's all the more easier to say no to that piece of cake tomorrow. Will power is like a muscle, you need to exercise it. It is okay to have slip-ups, it is essential to not give up," she remarked.
Almost all the oils are toxic
Agarwal pointed out something about our household staple, the cooking oil, which may just be an eye-opener for you. "The oils we use today are poly unsaturated fatty acids, whenever they are heated they are oxidised and turn rancid. So the first thing I tell my clients is to throw away the oils you are using. Saturated fats are good, because they don't get oxidised. Coconut oil, butter, ghee or unflavoured oil are good alternatives; the second best things are mono-unsaturated fatty acids which are present in mustard oil, rice brand oil and ground nut oil," Agarwal remarked.