Salads are not just boring pieces of greens, smoothies - not just pretty looking tasteless milky flavours and diet is not simply a tool of weight loss. Healthy living need not be an oppressive strict diet control regime that you eventually look for ways to escape!
With nurturing and insightful methods you can create a wellness programme designed to bring about a healthy lifestyle change. This is the philosophy behind Kaushalya , a group that propagates the concept of inculcating a healthy lifestyle, especially among women.
Founded by nutrition consultant Anjali Dange, healthy food blogger Sonia Ganti and pulmonary critical care specialist Dr Kavita Pattipati – it is a platform that addresses the need for women to get into the path of fitness and good health by tweaking their food habits and with right physical activity. The group’s first workshop was held on Woman’s Day which saw a crowd from diverse age groups.
Workshops
The trio look back at the three-months of Kaushalya with a sense of accomplishment. “Caught up in the usual rigmarole of life, women often ignore their health needs. ‘
Small things like which oil to use for cooking, how to plan healthy meals and inculcate a fitness regime in the daily life are important elements that shape the lifestyle of a family. Our workshops address these areas,” says Anjali, who runs her own nutrition clinic Starlite at Peda Waltair and has been in the field for 15 years.
Kaushalya ’s workshops also help to bust many myths like ‘weight training is suitable only for men’ or ‘if you have dal for lunch, there is no need to also include vegetable’. “There are several myths that surround the idea behind women’s fitness and what a balanced diet is. Also, whether a woman is heavily-built or lean, she is always subject to body shaming. Our wellness programmes and workshops are structured around the concept of rooting out these myths and issues. Ultimately, fitness is not just having a shapely figure. It is leading a healthy lifestyle,” says Dr Kavita, a pulmonary critical care specialist for ABC Hospitals.
Millets
For food blogger Sonia Ganti, a lifestyle change requires self-motivation – something that she herself came to terms with after several failed attempts at bringing about a healthy alternative to food preparations. “I used to hog on street food and find it so difficult to resist. It took me a while to understand that I should change the way of looking at my food choices,” says Sonia. She today blogs at fitfoodiediary.com where she writes about her experiments of healthy food recipes and include indigenous food into the lifestyle. “The return to millets is part of a growing health-food movement around the world. In India too this trend has picked up. Through the workshops at Kaushalya , we bring about an awareness and share simple recipes where millets like ragi and kodo rice can be introduced in breakfast and lunch,” explains Sonia.
Eating right
The group’s philosophy centres on the idea of balancing meals and eating in right proportions. “Remember the portion plates? That used to be ubiquitous at homes once upon a time and had a scientific approach towards eating in measured proportions. The portion plates teach you that,” explains Anjali. Through its future workshops, Kaushalya plans to spread its concept of being more ‘health-focussed rather than weight-focussed’.
