Holistic Lifestyle Coach Luke Coutinho, an expert in Integrative Medicine will be available twice a month to answer questions on health, nutrition, lifestyle, disease management, prevention, cancer care and more. Please send in your questions to us at info@yogalifeme.com
- What is the best approach to take to lose weight? – R.P
There is no one magic food, exercise, pill, breathing pattern, yoga asanas that can help you lose weight. The reason or root cause behind weight gain differs from person to person, so the approach towards shedding off that excess weight will also differ.
It’s about identifying what led to weight gain and working out an approach to help address that. For one person it could be chronic stress that lead to weight gain and for someone else it could be lack of physical activity and a sedentary lifestyle.
Having said that, there is one aspect that holds true in every weight loss case. Self -discipline. We don’t need fad diets, rigid exercise programs, supplements. We need “action”, with self-discipline. This is the centre of all achievements in life, including weight loss.
Without self-discipline, we will keep chasing one gym after the other, jump to diets after diets, complicate our lives and spend loads of money. Instead let’s teach ourselves about self-discipline.
- What is the best way to combat lifestyle diseases like Hypertension which are a result of stress in today’s fast paced life? – V.P.
There is a thin line stating the difference between “having stress” and “being stressed”. Almost everyone has stressors in their lives and of varying intensities, be it a kid, young adult or a senior citizen, but the choice to fall prey to it is ours. Stress doesn’t have to consume our lives and habits unless we choose to let it. This is precisely why simple tools like pranayama, spending time in nature, sleeping well, positive affirmations, meditation, visualisations, praying is important because it gives us the strength and power to handle the stressor without letting it affect our health. It may not take away your stressor, but will put you in a space and frame of mind to handle it in a better way.
Stress that’s chronic and not managed the right way can cripple our immunity and immunity is everything when it comes to our health, the way we heal and the way we prevent diseases.
Additionally, todays fast paced life is disrupting sleep patterns for most of us. Information overload on the mind, technology overexposure, long hours of working has messed up how our body is naturally designed to sleep. Sleep is crucial for our health whether we are healing from a disease or preventing its onset. Prioritising sleep, no matter what the stress maybe should be of utmost importance if one wishes to heal and prevent diseases.
- What is the best way to eat healthy and mindfully? – S.A.
The best way is to eat healthy and mindfully is to develop a healthy relationship with food. Most cases of overeating, undereating, unhealthy choices stem from a relationship with food coming from a space of fear and guilt. The relationship which we have with food can be unknowingly the major obstacle to lose weight and gain health.
Turns out that it’s not about the food any more, its about the person eating that food. The mindset and attitude he has created around food.
Consider a piece of chocolate cake. We’ve all enjoyed it while growing up.
Now a days when you label a chocolate cake or an ice cream as a bad or fattening food, so subconsciously every time you consume that piece of ice cream or chocolate cake, it’s going to behave exactly that way you have visualised it, i.e. fattening.
We need to change our mind-set, belief system, attitude and the way we think and the way we relate to food and then mindfulness and healthier eating patterns will follow automatically.
Send in your questions today!
