Viewing healthy living through a fashion lens
- Shraddhaa Shetty
- Feb 8, 2018
- 4 min read
As the fashion industry becomes more liberal with it's model selections-finally opting for diversity in varied body shapes and sizes, and the world around me increasingly watches their fitness choices, I thought it was apt for me to attend the monthly event of The Wedge Asia which surrounded the topic of Healthly Living.
Elika Fit a health coach gave her take on food terming it as her 'medicine' and Liv Lo a yoga-loving Reebok ambassador unpacked life as a model and striking a balance between the demands of the industry and finding what she loves.
Elika Fit She was an executive but switched her field and is now a health coach and certified raw vegan chef, but above all, she was a foodie from the very beginning. Her journey on the road of health and fitness happened by default. When she first moved to Singapore, she took a plunge into the world of Asian cuisine and incessantly ate at hawker centres for 9 months during the period of which she fell sick regularly and was forced to see a doctor- a visit which served as a turning point in her journey. The tests revealed that she had liver damage, and was overweight, in addition to the insomnia and sugar addiction that she was silently suffering with. She dug deeper into nutrition in search of what went wrong and stumbled upon facts that made her change the way she approached food- now it wasn’t about how the food tasted but what was in it and where it came from. So Elika began her quest to heal herself naturally and below are synthesised bits of her learnings.
Nutrition:
If it is a plant eat it, if its grown in a plant don’t eat it. Read your nutrition labels: The more ingredients, the less real food in it
Foods to avoid:
Wheat- We are not eating wheat that our ancestors ate
Dairy- 70% of people are lactose intolerant
Refined sugar- 8 times more addictive than cocaine
Non-Organic soy- Genetically modified plant that our body doesn’t know what to do with it and stores it
Processed oils
Commercial cheap meat
White flour
Foods to include:
Cruciferous vegetables
Mushrooms
Bone broth- A cup a day
Blueberries- Superfood
Seaweed
Kefir/ fermented veggies
Education:
Go to cooking classes- learn how to substitute
Health food shops
Health coach
Functional medicine
Podcasts
Eat where you know where the food is sourced from
Focus on eating plant based foods
Opt for high-quality protein sources
Eat good fats as your primary energy source
Incorporate 80:20 in your lifestyle
Customise your meals
Allow the body to self heal
What should be on your plate:
25% protein
25% good fats
40% veggies
10% whole grains/ complex carbs
Q: What would your suggestion be as a good meal to start the day with? A: Main micros- fats, proteins and carbs. Start your day with food that will fuel your day. At the start of the day- have protein source (eggs etc), then looks for a healthy fat (coconut oil, olive oil) and then a carb (starch veg like sweet potato).
Q: Eating healthy and organic is expensive, how to go about that? A: Customise what you like to where you are living. Pick stuff thats in season and you’ll know how to do this depending on the price. Dirty dozen (foods that are sprayed a lot and she buys this organic: strawberries etc) and clean 15 (foods that have a protective layer and aren’t sprayed as much and she doesn’t buy this organically: bananas etc).
Q: What oils to use that have a high cooking temperature- olive oil doesn’t
A: Coconut oil, avocado oil, sesame oil (Chinese cooking)
Q: How do you know what to eat for your body? A: You need to listen to your body. Write down what you eat in a day on your phone or diary and then write down how you feel- constipation, bloating, skin rashes etc and then you’ll see a trend and when you’re suspicious remove that thing from your diet for a minimum of two weeks and you’ll know for sure.
Liv Lo
Started as a model- not healthy and found that it wasn’t maintainable- (became bulimic, took laxatives, her hair stopped growing= very unhealthy lifestyle). Modelling- she felt overworked, and highly bullied. She got trapped in that life and it took her 10 years to get out of it but she’s grateful because it brought her where she is now.
She did her mass comm, she was working out a lot (yoga), and she loved the feeling it gave her- being able to connect with herself- her mind, her breath, her body. She moved to Singapore, she changed the people around her. “Fitness is a lifestyle not a goal.”
How to start taking action? People would ask her what she wants to do and she would be like I DON’T KNOW. And then she figured out that fitness was her passion (she loved spending time doing it, she spoke about it a lot etc. The action to take to start: Choose something, start somewhere. Choose the way you eat/ choose the way you interact with friends and one thing would lead to another. Bold beautiful body:
Started mixing yoga with HIIT to mix the intensity of HIIT fuelled by the intensity of Yoga. She has 12 videos and throughout this she wants to teach you what you can do with what you have. Mind body breath are the strongest assets to good health.
For personal fitness journey:
Keep a journal
Don’t lose the things you enjoyed doing as a child
Sports and fitness will help you go through all the way to the end
Find what works for you and rave about it
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