“Fitness is a never-ending journey, not a destination. You can never reach a point and say, “Abhi mera goal achieve ho gaya, now I can eat whatever I want, in whatever quantity I want. You will be back to where you started in no time.”

How many times have we strayed from our path of attaining fitness and ended up exactly as Shraddha Gadit, Nutrition expert and Head of the department at Gold’s Gym Fitness Institute, said above? But what is the reason that even when we manage to have an iron willpower and follow our workout and diet plan with dedication, things don’t really happen as we had envisioned?

So, the question is, what goes wrong? Well, thank your lucky stars that we have Shraddha to answer that very query in detail, not to mention some nifty little but crucial details that’ll help us in attaining those unattainable fitness goals.

Excerpts:

What would suggest as the best pre-workout breakfast?

There are two things here – one is breakfast and another is a pre-workout meal. As for breakfast, it has to be in the first hour of waking up and it has to be a combination of proteins, carbs, and other micro-nutrients. So, you can opt for any typical Indian breakfast like poha, upma but make sure that the cooking technique is correct. Use less oil in making it, add vegetables or sprouts to make it more nutritious.

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A pre-workout meal has to be 15 to 20 minutes before your workout and has to be a carbohydrate-rich meal as whatever you eat is used up as energy during the workout. Something like a fruit or a bowl of oats is a good option. After this one shouldn’t forget about the equally important post-workout meal.

Post-workout meal?

Consuming the right nutrients after you exercise is just as important as what you eat before. This meal has to be consumed immediately after your workout so the best to have would be something that is absorbed very quickly. So, two nutrients are required here, one is carbohydrates and second is proteins. For carbohydrates, drink some very sweet fruit juice as when you’re working out, your muscles use up their glycogen stores for fuel. This results in your muscles being partially depleted of glycogen.

You also need protein, as because of your workout your muscles have undergone micro-trauma (breakage of muscle fibers). You need to recover this for you to see hypertrophy (toning) in your muscles.

Duly noted. I have always wondered about those classic Indian foods that we need to re-discover in our diets?

You see, India has predominantly moved into following western food habits, so Indian healthy food items are completely ignored. What I teach my clients and my students is that the most typical Indian thali is the most nutritious. In fact, it is rated number one in the world in terms of ‘balanced diet’. So, instead of oats, you can go for the mommy favorite dalia. It has far more fiber than oats and is easily available.

Also, when it comes to oils, we have given olive oil the top position as the healthiest option available, but not many people know that groundnut oil is as effective as olive oil. You know Indians want to look cool and thus we spend more and go about telling how we swear by olive oil. Better is to use oils in rotation, like today if you are using groundnut oil, make food with sunflower oil because every oil has its own benefits.

Groundnut oil. Image source

Like soybean oil is considered to be very good, especially for women who have menstrual health problems, but it is often avoided because of its nutty aftertaste. Just mix it with sunflower oil and it masks the taste. Also, if you are trying to lose weight, unlike the popular notion, starving yourself is not the way to go. Take soybean atta, vegetables and make those yummy thalipeeths and have them along with curd or you can just have soybean as a pulse. It is low on carbs, high on proteins and will curb your hunger pangs.

Thalipeeth. Image source

So, what other Indian superfoods can replace western superfoods?

The most basic thing that we keep forgetting- khichdi! It is the most ignored food of our Indian culture. Arre, it is given the title of being the National Food of India. You can make veg khichdi, you can make non-veg khichdi, you can make any sort of khichdi. So, anyone who is diet conscious, can make it with brown rice, add vegetables, and have it with curd. Khichdi is not boring, the way of making it is what gives it that boring attribute.

Going by what we gathered from our recent interactions with Indian sportswomen for ‘The Locker Room‘ campaign, oats came out as the most preferred choice. So, any suggestions on how to include oats in our diet the ‘interesting’ way?

First, to remove the stickiness that oats are famous for, you need to dry roast it for 2 minutes in a pan and then add water or milk to it. It is not necessary to have oats in milk only. Make a milkshake, add oats to it.

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Or you can make a nice tikki and add oats to the mixture. You can also replace rava with oats and make oats upma. Add oats to wheat flour and make yummy rotis or paranthas out of it, you’ll not even realize that you consumed oats there.

Banana Oatmeal Smoothie. Image source

As you mentioned earlier, instead of resorting to a healthy balanced diet, people prefer to skip meals…

… and start removing important staple foods from their diet. Okay, maybe you’ll lose 4-5 kgs when you follow this ‘starving-yourself’ method but what after that? What happens when you start eating again? You’ll gain all the weight back plus some more. You need to remove the aloo from your bhaji, not ditch the entire meal. Don’t stop eating chicken, just eat grilled or boiled instead of that fried, masala gravy chicken. You’ve to discover where you are going wrong. Understanding your diet is not rocket science.

But what about this sedentary lifestyle we have nowadays where every single activity is possible with a flick of our finger. How to incorporate ‘healthy’ into this?

What is important is your BMR, Basal Metabolic Rate. It is the number of calories you burn in a day at rest. So, if you want to be fit, your BMR has to be high which is kinda impossible in our current ‘sitting culture.’ In order to keep our BMR high, you have to start working out and follow a healthy balanced diet sans all the starving-yourself crap.

Start eating small frequent meals, because your digestive system is constantly at work. Don’t eat an entire thali every two hours! *she laughs* Have some juice, roasted chana, oats, at regular intervals of two-three hours but go for minimalistic processed food.

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Also, work out! You can schedule your workout at any time of the day, obviously doing it in the morning is the better choice as it burns more fat and promotes weight loss.

Sounds like being healthy is something that needs to be ingrained in an individual from a very young age. But how to teach a child to opt for healthy food over junk food?

Follow the concept yourself. Kids copy what they see the adults doing. If they see you opting for a salad instead of a pizza, they imitate the same. Make ‘healthy’ a priority in the dictionary of your diet and see as your kids learn it by-heart without you lifting a single finger to herd them to the right path.

A big shout-out to our partners – EPIC TV Channel, Oateo Oats, HRX, Gold’s Gym India, for joining us in solidarity and helping us in exploring the challenging road for India’s sportswomen.

We have more sports rush coming your way! Stay tuned for our sports anthems.