Radhika has just turned 40. This, mentally and emotionally, seems to be a defining moment in her life. She has always thought of 40 as the age she turns ‘old'. However, she is full of energy and her days are brimming with things she enjoys doing. She has decided to stay as healthy as she is now. Her weight has been creeping up over the past few years and she is looking distinctly matronly. Radhika is determined to go back to what she weighed at 30.
Ruma is 53 and has come back perturbed from a health check-up. A strict vegetarian, she was shocked to find that her cholesterol and triglycerides were unhealthily high.
Her physician has explained to her that even a vegetarian with poor food habits and a genetic predisposition could suffer from abnormal lipid levels. She has to follow strict dietary rules and exercise regularly to burn up unwanted fat in her blood.
Setting goals
In these days of ‘master health check-ups', annual office health work-ups and over-all awareness of health hazards, women are constantly promising themselves that they will take care of their health.
These lofty undertakings, however, flounder soon enough, because realistic goals are not being set. “I am going to lose five kg this month,” or “I am going to eat only steamed vegetables for the next six months” are goals doomed to failure because they are not realistic or sustainable.
For your goals to be achievable, they need to be:
Specific: For example — weight loss, fitness (climbing stairs without getting breathless) or control of diabetes
Attainable: For example, the realistic goal of losing five kg over six months, fitting into jeans one size smaller or fitting again into the blouses that are sitting in the back of the cupboard
Measurable: For example, loss of inches around the waist or loss of weight in kg, decrease in total cholesterol levels, or increase in HDL (‘good cholesterol') levels
Realistic: For example, if you are 55, it will be more difficult for you to lose weight, but you can certainly increase your stamina, strengthen your muscles and improve flexibility and balance
Time bound: For example, do not say, “I will join a fitness class some time this year” but say, “I will join a fitness programme tomorrow and stick to it.” Give yourself time frames for getting fit or losing weight or getting your sugar levels under control (if you are a diabetic).
Making time
Take a hard look at your lifestyle. It is very easy to say that you don't have the time. As a physician who is constantly advising women on fitness and dietary goals, the commonest excuse I get is, “Doctor, I just don't have the time!”
Remember, if you don't fight to carve out time for yourself now, you will soon have all the time to brood over it, when you have to start sitting in doctors' waiting rooms with various health issues.
Thirty minutes of walking can be fitted into your schedule, at least five days a week. If you don't find it easy to go out for a walk, walk up and down the stairs at home or at work, for 20 minutes.
Boring? Oh yes! But you can make it interesting and fun by taking your husband, a friend or a neighbour along.
And you can always start a trend at work by having a bunch of your co-workers march up and down the stairs with you! Don't forget- listening to music on your earphones will make the time zip by.
Being a realist
All of us have fantasised about going on that magic diet, combined with an effortless workout, which causes the fat to just melt away within days and weeks! Get your determination reinforced with a dose of reality.
For a significant loss in weight and inches, you should eat less than you think is required and exercise more than you think is enough! Don't be disheartened as soon as you start your fitness regimen. You may be caught by surprise at the daily effort it takes to reach your goals.
Your body may revolt in the beginning but over time you will build strength, endurance and coordination. Once exercise becomes a part of your life, you will get addicted to it. And this is one addiction that is not toxic!
Next column: Setting and achieving calorie goals
The author is an obstetrician and gynaecologist practising in Chennai and has written the book 'Passport to a Healthy Pregnancy'.
