The Three Pillars for a Healthy Living !

The three top culprits are lack of exercise, improper diet and high stress life style.

Exercise
Here are some ideas:
1. If you have a treadmill at home – watch your favorite TV show walking on the treadmill.
2. If you have access to a gym – perform weight training exercises at least 1 day a week in addition to your cardio.
3. Walking in your favorite mall with your spouse for 30 minutes.
4. Invest in exercise bands for weight training . They are light weight and you can carry them in your suitcase if you travel.

Eat & Drink Healthy
Many of us can consider the following changes to our diet.
1. Add more fruits and vegetables in place of rice and chapatis in your diet.
2. Try brown rice or wild rice instead of white rice.
3. Try adding alternate protein sources – soy protein powder in your cereal, tofu instead of paneer in your “saag paneer”. Try TVP (Texturized Vegetable Protein) chunks available in most health stores. TVP chunks can be hydrated by adding them in boiling water. They can then be added to most Indian dishes.

Here are some choices for what we drink

1. Replace aerated soft drinks with water – 100% juices are also a good substitute.

2. Replace coffee with tea – consider green tea. In addition to the dose of caffeine, tea contains several anti-Consider adding supplements to your diet – Calcium, Vitamin E, B-complex, Omega 3 (Use Flaxseed Oil if your vegetarian beliefs prevent you from using fish oil capsules). Omega 3 is most lacking in our diet and lack of omega 3 is believed to cause sugar and carbohydrate cravings.

If you travel a lot and prefer a vegetarian diet, try out these two websites that list good vegetarian restaurants all over the world:
www.happycow.net & www.vegdining.com

Meditation and Prayer
Most of us visit the temple or say daily prayers. This may be the most beneficial thing we do. Spend 15 to 20 minutes using any of guided tapes available for meditation 3-4 times a week (ex. alpha meditation technique by Jose Silva & Hans De Jong. Even if you don’t care for spiritual aspects of meditation or prayers, you will see tremendous improvements in the relaxation response you get. It will help to reduce your stress levels.