Healthy & Fit Diet For Professionals

Healthy & Fit Diet For Professionals

Fitness Diet

Earlier days there was not so much of work pressure, so mostly only men in the family used to go out and work and the ladies used to do the house hold work and cook healthy and yummy foods for the family. But these days you find every adult both men and women going out for work and together earning about 5 to 10 times more than we used to earn in earlier days. In the present days of such busy schedule are you really eating well and taking care of your health? Most of us are trying to cope with this competitive expensive world by putting in a minimum of 9 hours of work daily and some people even work for about 12-14 hours a day. In such a daily schedule, it really becomes difficult to even concentrate on what we are eating and know if the food we are consuming is right for us or not. For the working individuals it becomes difficult to take time out to plan and cook a healthy diet for the family. So we all tend to get tempted and eat out or order for a take-away at some good restaurant. Now that we earn good, we can afford to buy or order food from out even on a daily basis. But do we realize or even give it a thought; "How good is this food for us?"

Wrong food habits like this on a long run lead to all kinds of health problems starting with Obesity, which is a major cause for a lot of other diseases/disorders such as Diabetes, Hypertension, Heart problems, Infertility, etc. All the efforts and the time we spent in earning that huge amount (at the rate of spoiling our health), we in turn spend it all, in restoring our health. Sometimes we might have to spend much more money than we expected, in treating a certain health problem. Is there any pleasure in such a lifestyle? Are we heading to where we actually wanted to go? No, this doesn't lead to anywhere but just health problems, worries, tension and more stress. Instead take a few small steps in your daily schedule to take care of the good health God has given us all. Let us not do the mistake of not caring for our health now and repenting on it later when we cannot do anything to avoid getting into health problems. Always remember "WE ARE WHAT WE EAT." 

Here are a few small tips that will help you in improving your overall diet and ultimately your health status:

• Start your day with a good breakfast. Breakfast is a very important meal of your day, so never skip your breakfast. Keep some easy-to-make breakfast stocked at home, such as corn flakes, breakfast cereals, whole wheat bread, eggs, etc. So that how ever early you need to leave home or how ever late you are to office, you will have something ready to eat. No matter what, make some time to have your breakfast everyday and never attempt to skip your breakfast, which is the first meal of the day. Even few slices of bread with a glass of skimmed milk or a cup of coffee or tea and a fruit will do. If you cannot have it at home then, carry your breakfast to office and have it before 9.00 or latest by 9.30 in the morning.
• Then in the mid-morning between 10.00 am. and 11.00 am, try to have a fruit or a cup of tea/coffee/milk with 1-2 biscuits or even some sprouts or slices of cucumber/carrot or beetroot. There is a gap of about 3-4 hours between your breakfast and lunch, so it is better to eat/drink something light, so that you are not very hungry when its lunch time and you can make the right choices of food for your lunch.
• Lunch is also an important meal of the day. It should be well balanced. It is better that you avoid breakfast items for lunch, but people who do not have the time to cook separate breakfast and lunch in the morning, carry some protein source like boiled egg whites or dal/pulses along with some salad along with the cereals that you make for breakfast (Ex:Dosa, Idli, Upma), so that you have a 'some-what' balanced meal, if not a completely balanced one. Ideally you can have a rice/roti with dal and some cooked vegetables or a curry. Non-vegetarians can go for a piece or two of skin-out chicken, egg, or lean meat. Vegetarians can include a cup of curd or a glass of buttermilk. Make sure you have some bit of salads, just a few slices of any raw vegetable that you like will also do.
• Mid-afternoon is the time that you tend you get a little sleepy, stressed-out and lethargic. To give you that kick and make you alert again, you can have a cup of coffee/tea. For people who do not have the caffeine drinks, can go for a fist of sprouts or fruits like banana, which actually helps you in reducing the anxiety and stress and makes you more alert. If you do not like any of these, you can go in for any whole fruit that you like such apple, sweet-lime, pears, guava, etc. but is necessary to have something.
• Evening snacks is something that you should be very conscious about. I call the time from 5.30p.m to 7.30 pm, the danger period, as this is the time that most of us tend to eat the wrong foods. If we have not fed our tummy with good and timely food in the first half of the day, we are so very hungry by evening, that we really get tempted to eat all the wrong foods which is more easily available. It is always better that you eat some healthy snacks like grilled sandwich, fruit salad, boiled corn, light biscuits, etc. by 5.00p.m. So that you do not get so hungry and tempted with the yummy but unhealthy foods like chats, samosas, pizzas, fried foods, etc. that is so easily available once we step out of our workplace. The idea is to eat something before we are actually hungry. Because once you start getting the hunger pangs, we will not have the patience to think which food is right for us or go in search of the right food, so we end-up having something which we should not be eating. The common statement that we all make after we have eaten a wrong food is "Its fine, today is the last day, from tomorrow I'll eat right foods". This we tell to ourselves almost every other day and give ourselves some or the other excuse, but this is not right, we are spoiling our own health and cheating ourselves by doing so. So its better to eat the right foods.
• Then comes the last meal of the day - Dinner. A lot of people, would like to eat/drink something as soon as they reach home. By doing this you are actually filling your stomach and you tend to have late-dinners or skip dinners. So it is better to have fruits/ low-calorie beverages like lime juice or buttermilk handy at home, which you can reach-out to easily and not munch on favorite savories like fried foods, mixtures, sweets, etc. which will kill your appetite and you will be forced to postpone or cancel your dinner. It is better to have a light dinner and not to load your system with lots of calories, which you cannot burn in the remaining few hours of the day. By eating a heavy and a late night dinner, you will surely put on weight and end up with other health problems too. It is always better to have 2 hours of gap between your dinner and sleep, and give your system enough time to digest the food that you eat. But for those who have a long day at work and cannot avoid having late-dinners some days, make sure you go to bed at least one hour after having dinner. Try to avoid fried foods and heavy foods at dinner. Keep it as light as you can with roti or little rice with dal and vegetables/greens with salad. Non-veg foods are better avoided but if had, keep it light without too much oil/fat used while cooking.
• Bed-time you can have a fruit again with a glass of warm milk which will help you in getting a sound sleep. It will also give enough rest to your body and mind to wash away all the stress that you underwent the whole day.
• To top with this if you can include some type of exercise in your day, nothing like it. It is always good to exercise at least for 20-30 minutes in a day preferably in the morning so that you stay active and alert the whole day. It also boosts your metabolism.
• It may be difficult to start doing everything within one day. So it is better that you make these small changes in your daily routine taking one step at a time. Do it gradually so that this type of meal pattern can be practical for you to follow for a longer period of time.