monsoon

While the principles for healthy living and healthy eating remain the same throughout the year, certain seasonal rules apply. Just as summer and winter bring their unique environments and nutritional needs, the monsoon creates its own set of dietary restrictions, particularly pertaining to the intake of vegetables. Here are some veggie dos and donts:

RAW LEAFY VEGETABLES

The rainy season is probably the only time of the year when I would not recommend leafy greens. The rainy season generates a great deal of humidity, spurring bacterial growth which tends to thrive on the surface of the vegetables we eat. Transportation conditions and storage arent particularly hygienic either, which means that we need to stay away from vegetables that arent peeled. These include raw spinach, lettuce, methi, kale and other ones that go straight, unpeeled, uncooked from farm to table. Needless to say, if these vegetables are cooked, there is no problem with their consumption.

Other options for non-leafy veggies include snake gourd (tori), gourd (dudhi), pointed gourd (parval), yam (suran), apple gourd (tinda), bitter gourd (karela), and cluster beans (gavaar) along with your usual onions, turnips and potatoes. If the sound of tinda or gavaar doesnt appeal to your kids/family/spouse, try saying apple gourd or cluster beans instead. It might just work.

SPROUTS

Like vegetables, sprouts is one of the best things for your body but unfortunately, the rainy season brings with it pathogens that tend to infest this particular food. If you must eat it, lightly steam them prior to consumption.

CAULIFLOWER & BROCCOLI

There are greater chances of cauliflower and broccoli infestation during the rainy season. When I mean infestation, I mean insects making a nice little home for themselves on the leaves. If you can skip the raw versions entirely, its better.

CUCUMBER

This made it to the list because cucumber is eaten many a times with the skin on. Peel it.

FRUITS

While fruits are not vegetables, be partial to seasonal fruits. Unseasonal ones are more likely to be prone to infestations. Your best bets are pomegranates, bananas, mangoes, apples, plums and whatever else is in season. Again, peel the fruit instead of eating it with the skin on.

**A NOTE ON WASHING

For vegetables and fruits with peels, try and do a final rinse with potassium permanganate. Add enough potassium permanganate to a vessel with water for the water to take on a light pink tint. Soak fruit and vegetables for about five minutes. Rinse thoroughly to effectively remove bacteria, pesticides and assorted pests.

Enjoy the best of healthy vegetables this season.

It’s raining buckets. You theatrically sigh in pretend lament as your heart secretly does cartwheels no exercise today! For those of you who find it hard to reign in the urge to skip rained-out workouts, I’ve got bad news.I am going to suggest ways to lose weight, eat smart and exercise within the four walls of your home. Don’t hate me.It’s all for your own good.

Unless you have a home gym or a place of exercise that doesn’t involve some travel, there will be days where you genuinely won’t be able to make it. But I find that a lot of people use this season as a pretext to get off the health track entirely. Why gain when it rains? Look at it this way: a healthy monsoon means that when the party season rolls around, you are looking smoking hot. Instead of taking a rain check this season, take in the rain checklist instead…

FOR FOOD

You don’t have to plough slippery streets and negotiate overflowing gutters to get to a nutritionist. Online meal plans as well as online home delivery options abound. Nutritionists have also started online programmes so, after preliminary health checks and blood tests, the meal plan gets delivered straight to your inbox.

If you aren’t going to a nutritionist, do your research online and carefully choose diets that consist of about 25 per cent protein, 10 per cent (good) fats like MUFA, PUFA and Omega-3 and 65 per cent carbs (which includes fruits, vegetables, breads, pastas and the like). Needless to say, your carb intake needs to tip in favour of healthy fruits and vegetables. Check with your doctor that the diet ensures weightloss or maintenance (whatever your aim), and will not affect your general health. Also, don’t forget to monitor your oil and sugar content during the programme: depending on your lipid profile, 2-4 teaspoons of oil a day is all you need to ensure that your low-cal food has both fat and flavour. I’d also advise you to break up any diet you take into smaller meals and eat every two hours. The process of digestion burns calories and smaller meals help keep your body in the digestion mode for longer.

One of the most fun parts about going online though is tracking your progress -there are tons of weight tracker apps out there. But be honest to yourself.

FOR COMFORT FOOD

There’s something about the monsoon that heightens the senses and the food cravings with it. Avoid common comfort food traps. While bhujiyas and pakoras are standard monsoon comfort fare, other healthier options also work. Corn-on-the-cob or bhutta is a brilliant and incredibly healthy masala-filled option. Corn-in-a-cup also works. Boiled black chanas, piping hot idlis with yummy sambhar, masala rava idlis, hot masala chai (without tons of sugar), hot soups, boiled peanuts, kebabs, chicken tikka (with low oil), grilled vegetables, dosas, neer dosas, uttapams and upma -all have the ability to satisfy your craving for something fried in the rains.

FOR EXERCISE

If you can’t make it for a walk or the gym, you’d be surprised with the kind of workouts DVDs can give you. These may even go one step further, providing that missing bit of variation to your workouts, leading you to exercise mus cles that may not have been active in your regular workouts. Or just climb stairs or jump rope: both are amazingly simple ways to get your heart rate pumping just enough to lose weight.

So there you have it. The no-excuses guide to monsoon fitness. And a no-holds-barred solution to looking your best during the monsoon months.

Wet your appetite

**A NOTE ON WASHING

RAINY SEASON WEIGHT LOSS CHECKLIST