Watch That Waist

By Dinesh Dagar Yoga expert & instructor/Mail Today
Dinesh Dagar has done a BSC in Yoga and is also a gold medalist from the Himalayan Yoga Olympics. He is currently an instuctor with Bharat Thakur Artistic Yoga. In a wellness series for LIFESTYLE, he will share yoga techniques especially tailored to combat the stress of urban lifestyles.

HOW often have you looked at your wedding picture and thought “I really wish I could look like that again?” Do you think it is impossible to get your teenage waist back? Do you think its too late to change your habits?

Is there really a way to get there?
The answer is yes. If you practice yoga regularly it is possible to delay ageing and regain your teenage waist.
Why does the abdomen become thickened by middle age?
Due to lack of exercise.
Over eating, if you overeat and don`t exercise regularly you do not burn the fat so it gets stored in the body as fat. Eating at the wrong time. If you eat late in the night and go to sleep the body will convert the food to fat.
Pregnancy. During pregnancy the abdomen gets stretched immensely. These muscles will regain shape afterwards if you resume exercise and if you don’t gain more than 9kgs. Women often gain excess weight during pregnancy which should immediately be shed after delivery as it tends to be stubborn.

One of the most common issues after pregnancy women have is that their waist is just not as small as it used to be. They just want to get back into their normal clothes and while the rest of their body seems to be getting back to normal, the waist just doesn’t seem to be getting there. Most of the weight gain happens in this region. These muscle become very weak due to over stretching.

Try these simple postures below and see the fantastic results in three weeks only: Before you begin this practice make sure you do a warmup as this prepares the body Gently jog at one spot. Move your neck shoulders and arms and shake up the muscles for ten minutes.

1. Parighasana Variation
Stand on the knees.
Stretch right leg sideways to the right, keeping it in line with the left knee.
Inhale interlock your fingers behind the neck.
Exhale bend to the right side, and push your hips forward.
Make sure that the head and face should be forward.
On the same side move your upper body up and down 20 times.
Repeat the pose on the other side also.
2. Parivritti Janu sirshasana
Sit with the legs about a metre apart.
Bend the left knee and place the heel against the perineum. Inhale raise your left arm up and bend towards your right leg.
Hold your right foot with the right hand and stretch the left arm over the head.
Hold the pose for a comfortable length of time.
Repeat the movement on the other side.

3. Naukasana Variation Lie down on the mat.
Interlock your fingers behind the neck and lift your neck and shoulder off the mat. Inhale raise your legs up 45 degrees. Bend your left knee and touch your right elbow with the left knee. Now touch your left elbow with the right knee and left leg straight. Move on both the sides 20 times

4. Trikonasana Variation
Stand erect with the feet about a metre apart.
Inhale stretch the arms sideways at the shoulder level. Exhale, bend to the right side, don’t lean forward. Now stretch the left arm over the head and slowly stretch right arm forward straight
Now move your body up and down 10 times.
Repeat on the other side also.
5. Tiryaka Tadasana
Stand with the feet about 2 feet apart.
Interlock the fingers, inhale and raise the arms over the head. While exhaling, bend to the right side from the waist. Don’t bend forward or backward or twist the waist. Inhale and come to the upright position. Repeat on the right side.
Practice 8 to 10 rounds.

REASONS TO STAY FIT

Fitness plays an important role in improving your quality of life

Can you think of five completely fit adults that you know?

People who have no health problems whatsoever?

No backache, no heart or cholesterol problems, no weight issues, no digestive disorders.

How many did you count?

With our stressful urban lifestyle, the incidence of health problems has become all too common. We need to reverse this trend, by taking care of our bodies. This is actually simpler than it sounds.

Our bodies tend to respond positively to the right stimulus. Exercise and a healthy diet can change your quality of life. The important thing is to be consistent, and embrace a healthy lifestyle as part and parcel of your life.

Once you get into a regular workout schedule, you will see the rewards. Your body will look leaner and fitter and you will feel much more active through the day. In fact, all that extra activity will also help you get a good night's sleep!

Apart from enjoying all the health benefits that go with being fit, when your body is in peak condition, your physical appearance improves too. Glowing skin and shining eyes are the best accessories for your brand new look! Chances are you will be smiling a lot more too. Especially with all the compliments that will be coming your way...

A little goes a long way

Regular exercise reduces the risk of disease and illness by as much as 20 to 50 per cent. How much exercise is necessary to improve health? As little as 30 minutes of exercise five to seven days a week can make a big difference to your well-being.

Need motivation to exercise?

Take a look at what exercise does -

Reduces the risk of heart disease

Lowers blood pressure levels

Decreases bad (LDL) cholesterol and increases good (HDL) cholesterol levels

Reduces the risk of osteoporosis

Promotes weight loss

Helps de-stress and improves quality of sleep

Improves posture

Improves agility, balance and flexibility

Improves immunity levels

What kind of exercise?

A well-structured exercise routine should include cardiovascular fitness, strength and flexibility training.

1. Cardiovascular fitness: This is the foundation of fitness. The heart is the most active muscle in the body and regular exercise makes it work more efficiently. The type of exercise that conditions the heart is called cardiovascular or aerobic exercise. Examples are walking, jogging, cycling, swimming or skipping. A minimum of 30 minutes, five days of the week is necessary to improve functioning of the heart, lungs and circulatory system.

2. Strength training: Strong muscles allow you to do activities with increased energy and ease. Strength training improves bone density, builds strength, enhances the metabolism, improves posture and shapes the body. You can strength train on various types of equipment in a health club, gym or at home. Train each major muscle group two to three times per week.

3. Flexibility training: Studies indicate that stretching is crucial for every sport or fitness activity. Flexibility exercises keep the body supple, flexible and free from muscular stress. They also help increase blood flow and nutrient supply to joint structures, relax muscles, mobilise the joints and improve posture. Often neglected, this aspect of fitness is as important as cardiovascular and strength training. Include stretching in the warm-up or cool down phase of your exercise program. Or better still, do a yoga or Pilates routine twice or thrice a week. TOI

Monitoring Diabetes

Regular monitoring is the key to keeping your diabetes in check and living a healthy life.

The secret in being a productive diabetic is to monitor blood sugars and use it as a base to make informed decisions regarding dietary and life style modifications. So what is smart self blood sugar monitoring?

Help your diabetologist by taking a spread out of blood sugars - pre and post meal (two hours after the meal) on different days, coupled with one or two readings of 5:00 pm sugars, bedtime sugars and 3:00 am sugars.

Bedtime blood glucose level should be maintained between 100 and 140 mg/dl. If bed time glucose is less than 100 mg/dl consume a carbohydrate (CHO) snack before going to bed. If the 5:00 pm random blood sugar is less than 80 mg/dl, there is risk of going into hypoglycaemia at night.

If you are a physically active person, check your sugars pre-exercise. If it is less than 90 mg/dl, consume a carbohydrate snack and also check on your insulin dosage.

If the difference between pre and post meal sugars is less than 50 mg/dl, it indicates that the food choices are working well.

If blood sugars are more than 240 mg/dl, check back on food, medication and limit vigorous exercise.

Make notes on deviation in sugars with the changes in meal pattern or exercise schedule or eating out. Check out self-monitoring devices to achieve this.

What your self-monitoring device should have :
Pick a monitoring device that’s easy to use. You want to be able to monitor your glucose as easily as possible rather than it becoming another chore. Some of the latest devices have a variety of features, which include:
Auto-coding: The calibration code is embedded on each strip. One does not have to manually feed it and thereby eliminates coding related errors.
Results flagging: Some devices have the ability to separately store fasting and post meal readings, so you don’t have to maintain an additional log book to record results.
Small pricking devices: Another feature to look out for if you want to monitor your blood-glucose painlessly.
Temperature sensor: This sensor helps you get temperature-corrected results.

Happy to be dieting

Here’s how you can stay motivated when trying to follow a diet plan

Identify the triggers

If you want to stay motivated towards your health, you must identify your problem areas. This will help you deal with them in a planned manner. Various people use food to deal with depressing emotions, like disappointment in office, rejection in relationships or even boredom. Analyse your problem area and figure out how you can deal with it. Also, change your lifestyle a bit. Don’t stock high-calorie food so that you won’t binge during a crisis. Instead, stock healthy options such as fruits, low-fat yoghurts and sugar-free gum.

Don’t go hungry

It may sound ironic, but the biggest cause of overeating is undereating. Studies have shown, that if you go for too long without food, chances are that you will reach a point where you won’t be able to control yourself and end up bingeing. Rigid diet plans simply don’t work. Always opt for balanced and planned snacking options to keep your hunger pangs under control. Also, indulge yourself with a small treat once a week.

Find a motivator

We all need our support systems. These can be in the form of a spouse, a friend and even an online friend. Think of a couple of people around you who would qualify as your cheering buddies, and rely on them for support and encouragement to help you reach your health goal.

Good things take time

It’s very simple to see someone with a perfect body and feel jealous. However, what we don’t realise, is that the concerned person has spent adequate time and attention to get in perfect shape. It’s not something impossible. And the most important aspect you must consider, is that it will take time. Also, your body type plays an important part in this. You may even end up trying harder to achieve the same goal but the key lies in appreciating yourself for achieving smaller targets and being consistent.

Source: TOI

BALDING CAN BE REVERSED

Balding at whatever age is not without trauma. You may agree to live with it but it can’t stop bothering you. It is that visible handicap that is constantly nagging by the way people look at you, the way they judge you or the way they perceive your personality, ability and acceptability. Contrary to belief, men and women are equally susceptible to social negativity attached to baldness. Women actually are known to go into irreversible depression and tend to withdraw themselves from social mainstrain exposure. Men who are more prone to what has come to be known as malepattern baldness, lose self esteem and confidence and could become ‘losers’ in all aspects of life. The metrosexual male as we know the modern male urbanite is however no longer looking at baldness as ‘fait accompli’ and is willing to alter his hair status if he can. Same is true about his female counterpart who wants to look beyond covering her head with a dupatta. Fortunately for the present times, the solutions of the last century no longer finds favour with the new generation of hair loss victims, because those solutions never worked. Today, there is hope, for, the world is rediscovering the magic of Ayurveda all over again. Dr Raksha and her research team have been doing a lot of work in the field of hair Regrowth Syndrome and have based all their researches on cure for baldness on the time-honoured wisdom contained in Ayurveda. Her treatment centre, Amazing Herbal Remedies (AHR) has treated many men, women and children for baldness, alopecia and patchy baldness besides premature graying and scalp infections. The Ayurvedic methods used for curing baldness and other hair related maladies have been effective in all age groups. Dr Raksha’s treatment is totally herbal and safe. She has not come across any side effects so far. Her formulations are closely guarded family-secrets while the research findings are often shared with Ayurveda professionals. The most wonderful thing about AHR however is that they have been able to apply Ayurveda in combination with lifestyle correction methods in the modern perspective. The fusion of modern technologies in processing Ayurvedic formulations has made immense difference in quality of their products.

Dr.Raksha and her team can be contacted in person for consultations and check-up at: D-13, G.F., South Ext. I. New Delhi 110047. Appointments can be sought at 011-24648617/18; 41646192.

She also offers online consultations at www.amazingherbalremedies.com / www.herbalhaircure.net - TNN/TOI

How to get your teen to lose weight

Tell your teenaged child to go slow on junk food and aerated drinks. Kids wouldn’t like to give them up altogether, but that’s okay – only these things shouldn’t be part of their regular everyday diet. Your teen must also cut down on tea and coffee intake. Drive home the benefits of stuff like green tea. Gently prod them onto this path and it will work if done subtly. Tell your child how good he or she will look minus all those extra kilos. Change your own eating and exercising patterns. In fact, if you’ve been neglecting yourself lately, this will be a motivating factor for you too. One way of losing weight safely is to have the last meal of the day before 7.30 pm. If your kid feels hungry later in the night, he/she can snack on a fruit or a glass of low fat milk. Vary the exercise routines so that they do not get boring. Incorporate a regimen of walking every day for at least half an hour. As the stamina increases, you could combine brisk walking with jogging for a longer period of time. Get your kid to also join a gym. Meeting other youngsters will also certainly help him or her to feel inspired enough to continue. TOI

EAT FAT STAY THIN

You needn’t cut down on your favourite foods as long as you eat them the right way. Here’s how to have what you want and stay slim .

• SUGAR Go for foods such as fruit yoghurt, sweetened breakfast cereal or even jam, which will satisfy a sweet tooth but aren’t packed with fat and calories. For women on a diet, up to 35 grams of added sugar per day should be fine.

• ALCOHOL A couple of small glasses a day won’t usually cause weightgain as long as that’s your limit and you ideally drink it as an accompaniment to a healthy meal. Alcohol doesn’t get stored directly as fat in the body but if you take more than your safe calorie intake, you’ll ultimately put on weight.

• PEANUTS If you’re strict about having just a handful, nuts can easily be incorporated in your ‘get-slim’ diet. In fact, nuts make a good snack for people trying to shed weight and can help weight control because they are so filling.

• BREAD It can actually be valuable for weight-watchers as it is filling while being relatively low on calories. Your best choice is a grainy type, as it’s digested more slowly and produces a smoother blood sugar and insulin response.

• CHOCOLATE A 30 gram daily serving provides about 150 calories and nine grams of fat and is an acceptable daily treat.

• CHEESE Go for a strong cheese so you get maximum taste. You’ll only need a matchbox-sized serving that provides less than 150 calories. TNN

HOW TO PREVENT EYE STRAIN

Hours of consistent hard study is the only recipe for achieving good grades in an exam. However, sitting at a desk or computer screen for hours on end can be stressful. The reason for eyestrain is that our eyes are designed to constantly shift their focus between objects that are near and objects that are far away. Eyestrain results when the eyes focus on a single close-up object for extended periods of time. Let us consider some practical steps to prevent eyestrain:

STEP 1: It is a fallacy that sitting in front of a wall improves concentration. The eyes must be able to relax for distant and near objects. Sit facing a corridor or even next to a window where you can relax your eyes by looking far. In case your room does not permit it, place a mirror above you.

STEP 2: Take a five-minute break after every 40 minutes of study as a regular routine of study. Get up and walk around the room for a while. The eyes get tired from being anchored in a fixed position for any prolonged period of time.

STEP 3: Schedule study sessions starting early morning rather than late night. The common concept is, ‘At night, I concentrate better’. For an exam, it’s not how much you read, but what you can remember and most important of all ‘reproduce’ on call. Studying in the daytime is better as you’ll study faster, with a far better reproducible memory than the same amount at night when fatigue causes loss of ability to concentrate.

STEP 4: Adjust the lighting. Though you want the area in your study to be well-lit, make sure it has enough ambient lighting. Studying in a dark room leads to eye-strain as the contrast between the lit and unlit areas is too much. Light coming from a lamp at your side and back is easier on the eyes.

STEP 5: When we concentrate hard, the blink rate of the eye drops significantly. This leads to dryness, blurring, and diffused vision. Blink frequently whenever you study for long periods at a time. Blinking helps to keep the eyes moist. Dry eyes lead to tired eyes. Using tear lubricants is a good idea.

STEP 6: If you need to work on the computer monitor, position your computer monitor or laptop so that you are not looking at the screen straight on. Your eyes are designed to work in a position of ‘depressed convergence’. The top of the screen should not be higher than your eyes. You should be viewing the screen at a slight downward angle.

STEP 7: The brightness of the screen should be the same intensity as the lighting in the room. Increase the font size for easier reading. If you experience a ‘flickering’ sensation from your computer screen, try lowering the screen’s brightness control or increase the ‘refresh’ rate. STEP 8: Cut down on large meals. It simply slows you down and loses concentration. Small meals, preferably non-oily, at regular short intervals is far better. Cut down on excess tea and coffee. It only gives temporary boost. Take your multi-vitamins regularly (shortage of Vit B1 leads to eyes tiring earlier and even slows the memory). If you end the day feeling tired, try incorporating some of these tactics into your schedule. You may be surprised what a difference such minor adjustments can make.
– DR KEIKI R MEHTA, ophthalmologist , TOI

INNER VOICE

Believing is seeing

On the inequalities observed in the way God fulfills the desires of people, Lord Krishna gives an explanation that the difference is not due to his partiality but through how people see him.There are believers and non-believers. Even among devotees, there are those who strongly believe in God and his system of justice, despite the most difficult situations: only their own faith carries them through. And there are believers who believe in God simply because they have been taught to believe.Non-believers however place a strong faith in themselves. Now this is very right since God is within each one of us. But since non-believers attribute every success to themselves and to nobody else, inevitably, the ego takes over. God seems to look after some people with special care because they really believe in God's ability to do so.
One version of a traditional story tells of the little boy who lived in a village and had to go to another village to attend school. To do so, he had to cross through a thick forest alone. His mother instructed him to return home before sunset and added, "In case you get delayed and if you lose your way in the jungle, call out for Krishna. He will surely come to you and guide you home." The child innocently concluded that "Krishna" lived in the forest. One day he kept playing and it was sunset when he started crossing the jungle. Terrified, he remembered his mother's words and called out to Krishna.
A shepherd boy emerged from the trees and playfully escorted him home. The child happily ran in and brought his mother out to meet his friend. But no one was to be seen. The child wondered where "Krishna", his friend who lived in the forest, had gone. On hearing this, the mother was dumbstruck. She knew no one lived in the forest and that any villager who happened to be in the woods would have returned. It was none but God who had brought her child home, drawn by his faith.