People are highly stressed these days due to the lockdown or Work-From-Home situation and have been bearing surplus responsibility towards their family as well as towards work, owing to the changed format. They tend to put their personal goals on the back burner for a while.

Women, especially, tend to prioritize their families’ needs over their health, with the result that their health starts suffering sooner. However, this is quite a long period to take health for granted.

Some of the manifestations of lockdown on our day-to-day life are:

• Not being able to go to the gym and leverage the benefits of exercise.
• Walks, outside in the parks is also not an option.
• Group activities like Zumba, Pilates, Calisthenics, or Aerobics exercise batch are off the accessibility too.
• Even the Yoga studios that had been giving advanced-level practice guidance are closed these days.
• Food items available are limited.
• Home delivery setups are disrupted, for obvious reasons–hence there is restricted access to the food items required to maintain a healthy lifestyle –quite contrary to the utmost easy & fast deliveries that everyone had gone accustomed to
• Increased stress almost in all cases results in overindulgence of food. We all seek comfort in ‘comfort’ foods!
• There’s always a need to reduce the variety to be prepared; some of the items required for one’s desired or required (per a health issue) eating may be ignored.
• Women, particularly, have the habit of compromising on their needs; they design their meals as per what the rest of the family wants–in a lot of cases this may have a big adverse effect in the long run on the woman’s health graph.

The biggest mistake one can make right now is to put their “diet plans” on hold. Now more than ever, when we are confined to our homes, we need to pay more attention to our health. If we were to pause our diet program, the various advantages gained so far, like better health parameters, the excess weight that one has lost due to perseverance will come back with gusto, as it is always lurking around the corner.

There is still a lot of play possible within these circumstances that can be maneuvered to gain health advantages. Here, more than ever, counseling plays an important role as one needs expert guidance to, at the least, adhere to our practices, if not to improvise on them.

A personal dietician can work on the principle of “availability” and “do-ability” to help the client lead a healthy life.

There are several scenarios whereby a dietician can guide a person towards the correct path:

• Personal diet counseling is not just about creating a diet plan, the dietician’s job is to shift set patterns and practices in a manner that helps individuals avoid any missteps; to sustain them for a long time while encouraging healthy eating habits.
• Nutritionists impart tools on how to acquire the practices that take one towards one’s healthiest version.
• They just don’t recommend the diet charts for you to eat better; the dieticians tailor-make each person’s diet according to the client’s requirements, taking into account the routine, be it traveling, socializing, erratic sleep patterns, low moods, or even decreased immunity.
• If due to some issue, a client is not able to manage the recommended food, they, then, attempt to address the food habits in a manner that’s flexible and still, effective.
• If a person does not want to cook separately for self, especially during, they would recommend ways whereby one can eat the same meal as prepared for the rest of the family, but add or obliterate a food item from their meal in order to adhere to their optimum diet plan.
• As in the prevalent circumstances, many food items may not be easily accessible, they can suggest easy substitutes to the people.

If there was any time one needed diet counseling, it is now. Everyone needs to be at their healthiest self right now so that instead of becoming an obligation for their loved ones, they can help and support others physically and emotionally. A weak physique can’t house a strong mind! Hence, mindfulness and intuitive eating should be key.

At niwi.ai, we have helped thousands of clients transform their lives and feel stronger, more energetic, and definitely more confident in how they look and feel, by improving their relationship with food!