January marks the first month of a new year and this is the month wherein the resolutions are made and people get focused on trying to stay in good health and knock off the extra weight thus marking this month as - Healthy weight awareness month. So, in honor of the month of new beginnings, we at Medicircle have begun this series wherein we are interviewing the experts in the field of Health and Wellness to give out correct information to all our viewers and readers

Karishma Shah, Nutrition Consultant is a Plant-Based Food Coach, a Weight Loss Expert, Diabetes and PCOS educator, and a certified Psychologist of eating. 

Healthy-fat and unhealthy-thin

Karishma shares her views, “The first thing we need to understand why these terms are called healthy-fat and unhealthy-thin? We Indians are actually not high on our weight, but we have a lot of fat accumulation on different parts of our body, and it happens primarily because of a bad diet, a bad lifestyle which is a sedentary lifestyle, and being too dependent on our vehicles, technology, and not actually doing things that we should be doing in a more organic and sustainable way. So this is one of the reasons why not only food, but the way that food is reaching you the way that you are cooking food the way that you are eating it, and also what happens before and after every single activity plays a very big role in your overall weight,” she says. 

Everybody is a doctor through Google

Karishma sheds light on the subject, “There are a lot of challenges that everybody faces in the healthcare sector as everybody is a doctor through Google, everybody is their own dietician through Google. One of the major reason is misinformation in the form of doctors not providing complete solutions to their patients, people not talking about lifestyle changes, diet changes, instead of just simply prescribing medicines, more and more people need to start understanding how better and beneficial it is to actually change your lifestyle, change your food, change the way that you function every single day, and then see the results in your overall health, instead of just going to a doctor and popping pills and then waiting for that result to come. It usually gives you a little bit of relief in the symptoms for a while, but then the root cause never goes with that. So I feel the dialogue needs to change from ‘what medicines should I eat to what lifestyle should I follow?” she says. 

The best way to lose weight is to not think about losing weight

Karishma explains, “The best way to lose weight is to not think about losing weight. It works when you actually focus on the problem areas. If you are somebody who's struggling with weight loss, there are certain reasons why you are not being able to lose weight. It is not just the kind of food that you are not eating or are overeating, there are lots of other factors in and around you that are contributing to you not finally losing weight - how is your mental health? How is your environment? What kind of diet are you eating? What kind of products are you not eating for your health? What is the frequency of you eating outside? What is the frequency of you eating at home? What are the other daily rituals or routines that you are following in order to support your health and support food? So I feel the focus should be on transforming your personal self and not just losing weight. A lot of people are just stuck on this because they stand on top of a weighing scale and wish to be 5 or 10 kgs lighter. But that's not how it works. If you stop eating, your body is going to stop responding to you as well. Because that is the fuel that you are giving your body so that the body understands that you're taking care of the body, and the minute you stop giving the right kind of fuel to the body, you start starving the body and playing around with it creating chaos within your body and when there is chaos, you don't get a solution out of it. So sit down with yourself and look at the areas of your life which are not working out for you or which are the areas that you want to actually progress in and start working on those and you will see the weight loss happening,” she says.

Align your body, mind, and soul

Karishma shares her opinion, “Please pay attention to what you are doing, I think all of us are so out of tune with ourselves and our bodies, that we feel that we can abuse our body, we can abuse our mind, we can do whatever we want, and yet we are going to get the results that we want. For example, If a person says I will drink alcohol, I will smoke, I will not sleep well at the night, I will not drink enough water in a day, I will skip two meals in a day, and then I'm expecting my skin to glow and the weight to come down, but that's not really how it works. So look at what your body really wants, and then start to give it that. My advice to anybody who is trying to align themselves with their weight, or trying to lose weight or trying to gain weight, or become healthier, is that ‘align your body, mind, and soul’, there is magic in that. The day you start aligning what your mind needs, what your body needs, and what your soul needs, and you start providing it automatically you're going to experience so many changes not just in your weight, but also in the way that you have been functioning on a day to day basis. Why do people make resolutions, and then they can't keep it up? We need to start talking about things, find out why the resolutions are not working, what is becoming a hindrance for me, every time? And then find solutions to it. Once this approach changes within yourself, you will automatically start recognizing your own patterns, and then the minute that you realize that you're getting into the same pattern, you'll try to retract from it. So that's how I see the whole New Year's resolution thing,” she says.

 You can reach out to Karishma at www.KarishmaShahNutrition.com. You can also follow her Instagram handle- @karishmashahnutrition

(Edited by Rabia Mistry Mulla)