“I am an exercise strategist,” starts Sheela Nambiar, an obstetrician-gynaecologist and fitness and lifestyle trainer. Her interest in fitness dates back to her school days. “My parents were disciplined about their fitness routines too. Exercising and games have been a natural part of my life.”
When she began practising medicine, she noticed that women with poor fitness levels had more health problems. “Just including a simple comprehensive fitness routine into their day improved their quality of life. So she “took a conscious decision to extend my medical practice into the field of fitness” and got certified with the National Association for Fitness Certification (NAFC). She has distilled her experience of 16 years into two books — Get Size Wise and Gain to Lose .
Excerpts from the conversation
An increased interest in fitness seems to go hand-in-hand with an increase in lifestyle diseases. How do you reconcile the two?
There are two aspects to this. One is making lifestyle changes. It’s not just about exercise and food.
Working hours, night shifts, travel, smoking, alcohol, a sedentary lifestyle even with an hour of exercise a day… all these play a role. It’s not enough to just work out for an hour. You need to make other changes in your lifestyle for an improved quality of life.
The other aspect is heredity. People inherit a propensity for diabetes, hypertension or heart disease. But this is not written in stone, unlike things like eye colour or height.
If you change your lifestyle, chances are you will not only change the course of your life but that of your progeny too. So stop blaming your forbears for your bad health genes and get down to correcting them.
What about women who don’t get time to work out?
That’s a real concern. Women need support not just from family and friends but from society at large. We pulled off the “no smoking in public places” policy. We need to do something like that here too. Why can’t employers provide spaces and facilities so that women can work out? One can create a routine; like transforming TV time into workout time. Don’t to stop watching TV; just workout before it.
Assuming this happens and women start working out, how does one know what to do?
In an ideal case, it would be through your fitness trainer. I’m not sure if the quality of training for them is good enough. Many of them come from the body building mindset, which is not what women want.
You’re a passionate advocate of weight training for women. How do you deal with the fear that this will lead to bulking up?
That’s why I wrote Gain to Lose . Indian women need to add muscle mass. We are born with a lower percentage of muscle mass than our Caucasian counterparts. Our current lifestyle predisposes us to an accumulation of fat, especially around our abdomen. This, in turn, predisposes us to several other diseases. Building muscle can effectively combat many of these problems, helps burn fat more effectively and keep it off once it is lost. But, how do I combat the mindset? Slowly and gently!
We’re hearing a lot about superfoods. There’s talk of an organic revolution, a back-to-the-millets movement. What do you advocate?
Eat seasonal; eat local. Apart from this, one has to have a diet plan unique and suitable to one’s lifestyle. A lot of the hype about food is driven by corporates. Some of the stuff may be good but is it even necessary? Take the fuss about quinoa for instance. Why can’t you just eat amaranth?
Say you can’t give up rice. Fine, don’t. But don’t eat the polished white rice. Make it the unpolished hand-pounded variety. Limit your quantity. Eat everything in moderation. Drink lots of water, add protein and vegetables into every single meal, cut your calories from bread/cereal group.
