My business Food Fitness Fashion has been an organic journey.
Years ago, I started a Facebook private community called Glamor Niche that provided inexpensive fashion. The intention was to create an awareness in the community to find the comfort shopping online, take suggestions from a personal stylist (me!), stretch beyond the comfort zone in terms of your unique style, and investing in new styles of accessories and clothing, without having to spend a ton of money on the same. This was around the time that companies like StitchFix, Le Tote were coming on the affordable fashion scene. What they were missing then was someone who could talk to you, know you on a personal level and work with you to find your new flair.
While Glamor Niche was a fun adventure, I was hitting my mid 30s. I didn’t have the best food habits, and exercise was the 3-hour dance lessons I used to take per week. It didn’t take long before I began to realize that these habits weren’t enough to keep up the energy levels I needed throughout the day, and that my belly or luv handles would be keeping me from a good enough physique to wear swimwear confidently and comfortably.
Eureka moment! I signed up for various online 30 day challenges month after month like the Little Black Dress challenge, plank challenge, squat challenge and so on.
I built a small Facebook community and encouraged friends to participate. While we all benefitted, lost weight and were motivated to continue, these challenges made me aware of my poor breathing skills, low stamina, unstable energy levels. The biggest realization was how my muscles and joints had not moved in any direction besides the pattern they knew from my weekly dancing. Something was missing.
At that time, my husband had taken a year’s break from work, was heavily invested in HIIT and had taken on a new high-protein low-carb diet. We added smoothies into our daily routines. We also added lots of dark green, good protein, changed to complex carbohydrates, healthy fats and strictly followed meal timings with discipline. While this was supporting the intense exercises we both were putting our bodies through, our results were coming in slow.
The first biggest change came in when we eliminated the junk food from our pantry and cut down tremendously on added salt and refined sugar. I categorize junk food as fried salted or sugary food in a bag or a box that has a long shelf life. We were big “namkeen” eaters, my Indian friends know how palatable these snacks are!
We eliminated namkeen from our pantry. We eliminated refined sugar cereal like General Mills and Post brands, only because we sometimes ate cereal 3 times a day and that was too much sugar. We eliminated sweet “biscuits” (think Parle G!!), only because we’d eat the entire pack in one seating!! (that’s how delicious they were with tea!) and white flour cookies and other white flour goods were also removed from our pantry.
The second biggest challenge was to eliminate night time snacks. We replaced our movie-snack time binge with drinking mint tea. Then we eliminated late nights. These two actions were “game-changers” for us. Now, we essentially do intermittent fasting for 12-14 hours regularly, staying away from late night TV and snack cravings and also fueling ourselves with good sleep.
We had hit a jackpot! Through these customizations, we had now embraced a lifestyle that was repeatable, enjoyable and sustainable. Yielding high returns like good physique, balanced well-being and tons of energy were just a few of the benefits in lifestyle change! We were approaching our 40s and looked better than ever before. We felt more energetic than ever before, like we could take on the world!
My final stop was to get formal education in this field and I invested in to get certified on Nutrition, Wellness and Fitness.
After reading through my journey, hope you identify yourself as someone who gets inspired to take on a journey to sustainable health for yourself, and your children, to get on a healthy fun filled life.
Do good for your health. Carpe Diem.
