About Geetika Patni

Geetika Patni holds a bachelor's degree in physiotherapy, diploma nutrition, certification in cardiopulmonary physiotherapy and yoga 'Visharad'. She has worked with various hospitals as a physiotherapist and holds expertise in holistic fitness. She has been associated with GOQii for + years as a coach and expert consultant. She is a firm believer of the immense human potential and is an ardent follower of meditative approaches for harnessing this potential! Her fitness motto is “Believe in it”. Sharing what she has learnt over the years gives her immense pleasure. She personally indulges in physical activities such as endurance training, Yoga and meditation, and encourages all around her to believe in the power of lifestyle. A strict vegetarian, and pro in fasting therapies, she loves to cook and experiment with vegan recipes.

July 3, 2024 By Geetika Patni 3 Comments

Mindful Eating: Connect Back with your food – Part 5

I hope by now, you are all well aware of the do’s and don’ts of Mindful Eating through the series of four blogs. I have talked about the concept of Mindful Eating and how Mindless Eating can be harmful. I discussed why should you eat slowly to enjoy your meal (https://goqii.com/blog/mindful-eating-slow-down-and-enjoy-your-meal-2/) and shared some tips on how can you eat slowly. Then I took you through portion control and how to be wise (https://goqii.com/blog/mindful-eating-control-portions-and-be-wise-part-3/). In the fourth blog we talked of emotional eating and how it can be avoided (https://goqii.com/blog/mindful-eating-mind-your-mood-part-4/). In the last of the blog in this 5-Part series on Mindful Eating, I will talk about connecting back with food and how one can do that.

Mindful Eating is eating with attention and right intention. It is eating with the intention to care for yourself. It is also eating with the attention necessary for noticing and enjoying your food and its effects on your body.

If you choose to eat each and everything you can lay your hands on, you indeed are disconnected from your food-the very ingredient of life that keeps you alive and going. And, when you are disconnected from your nutrition, you make yourself vulnerable to a host of illnesses, life-threatening disorders, and loss of longevity.

I was wondering-what makes us disconnected from our nutrition as we grow? For I am certain we were connected with our food when we were children (as that is how we learned that seeds sitting in an apple core can grow into an entirely new apple tree! And, that the water we drink doesn’t come from tap but, from a faraway river channel).

So, I have come to conclude that with time, our body just repeats what it has done previously as trained by the mind. These are nothing but habits. And unless our mind makes a choice, the body will not break the pattern even if it is a potentially harmful one. In terms of eating, since it’s the most repeated skill of all human behaviours, our mind has pretty much trained us to ignore eating and be on an autopilot mode while grabbing a bite. Thus, we don’t ask ourselves anymore-where do these strawberries come from? Or what goes into making a Pizza?

If we can turn around our ways and connect back with our meals, learning about the foods that will help us and those that will not, and make a conscious choice to pick the right dish at the right time by breaking the habit of eating everything at any time, a lot of our future troubles will get resolved. Turning into a mindful eater and making an informed choice-an intention to care for yourself-is what it will take.

To help you get connected, I am sharing some simple tips here with you today

1) Connect right from grocery shopping: Most of us go grocery shopping on weekends. And there is usually a long queue at the billing counter. In a hurry to finish our job, we just throw into our cart whatever is more attractive or convenient-which is mostly processed foods. To connect with your food, shop smart at the store itself.

i) Fill up your cart from produce section first. Once you have half filled up your cart with fruits and veggies, you’ll be less tempted to shop for processed and ready-to-eat meals.

ii) Read ingredient list and nutritional labels. Choose food products with short ingredient list, ingredients that you can pronounce, with 0 trans fats, no sugar or if at all, appearing last on the list, mentions whole grain composition, small per serving calories (and not per 100gm) and has fiber serving size >2 units. If a food product matches these criteria, it is worthy to be nourishing you.

2) Be a food critic: You don’t need to write a review or become a fussy eater. But learn the art of analyzing your food dishes. What are you eating? What are the ingredients that go into this dish? How is it prepared? How’s the aroma, texture, color of the meal? How does it make you feel? Knowing the answers to all of these questions will help you know why you eat what you eat and thus will help you turn into a mindful eater.

i) One player once mentioned to me he can’t stop eating ‘vada-pao’ the fried snack tucked between white flour bread. On my insistence, he made the attempt to analyze how he feels while having the snack. To his own surprise, he found out that it was only the act of tearing the bread apart and tucking in the fried snack, which appealed to him. He didn’t really enjoy the taste of the snack as much as he liked the procedure of eating it!

So to know yourself and your eating habits better, be a food critic.

3) Make an attempt to learn about your nutrition

# Know major food groups like carbs, proteins and fats and the minor but essential ones like vitamins and minerals. Know which food dishes you commonly eat fall in these categories and influence you.

# Know alkaline and acidic foods- because our blood pH is slightly alkaline (7.3-7.4) and to keep our system running efficiently, we need to maintain this alkaline pH. Your food choices will play an important role in this physiological action.

# Know various benefits of different herbs-cinnamon, turmeric, coriander, cloves, ginger, garlic, fennel, cardamom, coriander, saffron, fenugreek, garam masala, varieties of pepper, and so on. You have them in each and every single dish. They deserve your attention.

# Know how to eat your fruits right, what time of the day and how much and in what combination is good enough.

# Know combination of foods that can enhance each other’s nutritional values-like Vitamin C with Iron rich foods, Vitamin D and calcium rich foods and know what food combinations can interfere with each other’s absorption in the body like Iron and Calcium heavy foods don’t go well together.

# Know what meals are best options for pre and post workout nutrition

# Learn why you should not eat white sugar, white flour or white salt. Or have an aerated drink ever

# Know replacements for sugar and white salt and what you can do to beat down your sugar cravings.

# Understand why dark chocolates or nuts are good for you despite being calorific or why eating a healthy ‘mukhwas’ (mouth freshner) after a meal can be a good habit.

And, there are many more such small and simple things to know about your everyday nutrition. Keep asking your coach or make an attempt to read and learn yourself.

Mindful eating is much more than learning about your food or food choices alone or practicing slow eating, in the moment eating itself. It encompasses having a relationship with your food wherein you respect your meals and feel gratitude towards them.

To sum up, mindful eating is a way of nurturing your physical self, harmonizing your mental state, and satisfying your soul.

If you have been missing out on mindful eating, get on the mindful eating wagon now! If you found this information valuable, share your thoughts in the comments below and for more insights, check out Healthy Reads or for further guidance speak to a certified expert by subscribing to GOQii’s Personalised Health Coaching here.

#BeTheForce

June 23, 2024 By Geetika Patni 3 Comments

Mindful Eating: Mind your Mood – part 4

My previous three blogs discussed the concept of Mindful eating and how mindless eating can be harmful. In my second blog, I talked about why you should eat slowly to enjoy your meal and shared some tips on how to do so here. The third blog covered portion control and how to be wise with it here. Continuing in this 5 part series on Mindful Eating, today, I will take you through how stress eating can be harmful and should be avoided.

Have you noticed why buttered popcorn sells out quickly during a movie intermission? Or why you might empty an entire packet of Oreos or chips when you’re feeling emotional? That’s because certain foods can be emotionally comforting. In most cases, these comfort foods are high in fat and sugar and low in nutrition. They are comforting because they trigger neurons in the brain that create a false perception of well-being.

Turning to food to make you feel better is ‘Emotional eating’.

It’s not necessarily bad to eat food from time to time as a pick-me-up meal, a reward treat, or a celebration feast. However, if food becomes your primary coping mechanism for anxiety, loneliness, boredom, anger, frustration, or exhaustion, and your first impulse when upset is to dig into a tub of ice cream, it calls for your attention. Feeding your emotion with food may feel good at the moment but doesn’t resolve the underlying problem. Often, you may end up feeling worse later due to unnecessary calorie bingeing and the physical havoc it wreaks on your metabolism.

The guilt, feeling powerless over emotions, and impulse eating leads to an unhealthy cycle, causing physical and emotional turmoil. Despite the difficulty, it is possible to make a positive change. All it requires is some effort on your part.

To help you break this cycle and mindless eating habit, here are a few pointers that work best when followed in order:

Be Aware: Acknowledge your habit of emotional eating. If your near or dear ones have pointed it out or you know it by yourself, take it seriously! Awareness is the first positive step. Identify the emotions that lead to binge eating. Are they positive like exhilaration, victory, or success? Or negative like frustration, loneliness, anxiety, depression, anger, or boredom? Know your comfort foods, whether sweets, chocolates, ice creams or salty ones like chips, fries or some junk food like pizza, burger, maggi etc. that drive your emotional cravings. You may come up with multiple choices for multiple emotions and it is absolutely okay. You may also notice that your choice of comfort food is entirely different from others. So accept your unique patterns.

Tip: Maintain a food journal to help identify your emotions and associated foods, or use the food log feature in the GOQii app.

Know your Hunger cues: Identify why you wish to eat. Hunger cues can be physical or emotional. If your stomach is growling and it’s been a few hours since your last meal, eating a salad or any other meal will suffice. But if you can postpone your hunger, you are likely to stop once you feel full, without guilt. This is true physical hunger.

Contrarily, if your hunger is sudden, urgent, and you crave specific foods like cookies or chips, or specific types of foods like sweets and fried foods and you are likely to over consume, feeling guilty later, you are about to be snacking out of false hunger, then the head hunger is generated out of emotional cues.

Tip: Next time you reach out for a snack, check if it’s driven by physical or emotional hunger.

Cross check: Once you’ve identified your hunger cue, ask yourself why you are eating. Take a deep breath and get a clear answer. This helps put a check before the binge. If you’re reaching for a snack and unsure if it’s emotional, just ask yourself, “Why am I eating this?” Pause and reflect.

Tip: If it’s justified hunger, grab something healthy-roasted or steamed. If it’s emotional, respectfully place the dish aside.

Distract: Change your location once you put the dish aside. Go to another room or head outdoors. Find an alternative to food to fulfill your emotions. If lonely, talk to someone. If depressed or frustrated, watch a comic movie. For exhaustion, get a foot massage or take a warm bath. For anger, let it out or write it out. For anxiety, listen to your favorite music. If happy and wanting to reward yourself, indulge in your hobby.

Tip: You can also do some window shopping, reading, walking, exercising, meditating, or taking a nap which will give time to pass off the emotional storm and make you a stronger self- one who has more willpower to cope up with his/her feelings.

Giving In: Emotional eating is an automatic and mindless habit. Sometimes, before you know it, you’ve eaten half a tub of ice cream. If you can pause for a moment when hit with a craving, you can make a different decision next time.

Tip: When you feel the urge to give in, pause and reflect. Don’t shut out the craving. Wait and consider what’s going on in your head and how you feel. Even if you eat afterward, this reflection helps you understand why and prepares you for a better response next time.

If you approach your feelings with kindness, reining in emotions is not a difficult task.

Listen to your emotions, accept them even if they are negative and when you do so, your body will understand that it doesn’t need to overeat to comfort itself and/or protect itself from powerful feelings.

Learning to mind your mood this way enables you to repair your emotional responses and physical fitness. Seeking help from experts or a personal coach can bring a turning point. Reach out if you need help to enjoy a better physical and mental health.

In the last blog of the 5 part series, I will discuss connecting with your meals and share tips on transforming your relationship with food for the better.

To be continued……………

#BeTheForce

June 15, 2024 By Geetika Patni 7 Comments

Mindful eating: Control portions and be wise! – Part 3

In my previous two blogs, I discussed the concept of Mindful Eating and the harmful effects of Mindless Eating. In my second blog, I explained why eating slowly is crucial to enjoy your meal fully (check it out here). Today, continuing this 5-part series on Mindful Eating, I will take you through portion control and why it is a must.

Appetite is complex and dieting is a challenge.

With every passing year, it gets more harrowing. We end up blaming the food industry, which has, over the years, increased portions per package and per serving size by whopping 2-7 times than the recommended value. Most of these take-away food products and dishes don’t fit in a healthy eating plan.

Mindful eating is the key to fix this chaos. When we can’t change anyone else (i.e. food industry), we can still change ourselves.

The art of being in present when you are eating your food is termed as Mindful Eating. Eating mindfully has tremendous benefits – you really learn to taste food and realize your real favourites and dislike, thus knowing what foods best fuel your exercise, work and leisure. If you enjoy eating or your food experience, you tend to enjoy life better. The by-product of this mindfulness is also a healthy weight loss and maintenance, and even the reversal of lifestyle disorders.

Among the many advantages of this healthy practice, my favourite one is learning to eat when hungry and stop when full, avoiding overeating at any given time. I have maintained my weight for years by effectively practicing portion control.

This is difficult, yet the easiest way to lose weight, keep it off, and moreover, it’s a lifestyle change – something that can change this whole obesity epidemic. We all struggle with food. This may be the solution to eating our favourite food, yet controlling the portions and being fair to our bodies.

Portion control is easily achieved when you slow down your pace of eating. When you eat slowly, you become aware of when your stomach gets full and you also know how much to serve yourself and when to stop. Portion size and eating speed can be well explained through the famous ‘French Paradox’ which says that despite high intake of calorie-rich and fatty foods in France as compared to the US, the incidence of heart disease and overweight is relatively low in France.

It is well-documented fact that the French eat much slower than the Americans, thus ending up taking smaller portions. Sensible eating, therefore, works miraculously for the weight-watchers.

In this blog, I am sharing some good tricks and hacks that will help you prevent overeating and eliminate the need to diet ever.

When you first go through the list, pick up only 2 tasks which you can practice as your healthy habits. As you succeed, take up new ones gradually and implement them consistently to build in mindful eating approach for life.

Here’s how to practice portion control-

A) At home or for your regular eating

Replace your food plates with smaller plates or use a side plate as your main plate. The food portion has grown bigger, and by choosing a small plate (law of size-metrics), you will reduce your consumption.

Serve backwards – visualize your plate has 2 compartments. First fill up one half of it with veggies, both raw and cooked, and then serve other half of your plate with a portion of proteins (dal/curd) and carbs (rice/roti) combined. Eating veggies make you feel full, so serving it first on your plate and eating in larger portion quickly drives up the fullness quotient.

Sit Down to eat- even if it is a snack. You are making your meal more organized by sitting down when dining, and this habit will prevent on-the-go munching that you may be unknowingly overdoing.

Deep breathe before you start your meal. This works as ‘ringing the bell’ –bringing your attention to your next to-do task, which is feeding yourself. Gently inhale through your nose, filling your chest with air, drawing your shoulder upwards, and exhale through your mouth for a little longer. Now take your first bite or sip.
Dine! Don’t multitask- Eating while watching TV or while fiddling with your cell phone will distract you from your meal. And distraction will lead to over consumption. Put away all gadgets while eating and you’ll be surprised that going back to your smart phone after 20 minutes is so refreshing. Plus, the added bonus of having a satisfying meal.
Have liquid first – A glass of water or a bowl of healthy soup. Starting your meal with fluids will fill up your belly to prevent over eating. It will irrigate the lining of your digestive tract, making your meals easier to flow down, and, probably quench your thirst, which may be the real reason behind your rumbling belly.
Eat slowly – to finish a meal in no less than 20 minutes. You may realize you don’t need the second helping if you eat your meals slowly.
Get Smart with leftovers – Because no one is judging how clean your plate is. If you are done with dinner, don’t stuff yourself just so that you don’t have to pack up the remaining food. Wrapping up remaining food is a smart way (as leftovers taste better too!) or downsizing your cooking is another idea to prevent over consumption.
Snack from a bowl– and not from a bag or box. You may end up eating 50% more if the snack you are having is hidden from your view. Pour a serving in a bowl and then munch.

If you buy a bag of trail mix that reads 10 servings, divide the contents of the bag into 10 smaller bags or label it bold – ‘to be finished in 10 attempts’.

Out of sight-out of mouth – Keep tempting treats like chips, cookies, candies, and ice creams out of sight – high up in the kitchen cabinet or in the back line of the pantry shelf. Putting a fruit bowl, dark chocolate, dates, and nuts in the front row and within reach easily gets you to practice snacking.

Follow IN/OUT rule – When at home, the rule is to eat nutritious, balanced, and wholesome meals, avoiding all treats (White Sugar/breads/pasta/creamy desserts, and fried foods). When outside treat yourself to your favourite delicacies (but in moderation, lest you slip down the slope). This way you will be able to eat super healthy most of the time, and the occasional indulgences will soothe your soul.

Here are few suggestions to practice portion control outside home

When dining out –

Plan Ahead – Right when you start from home, put up a portion in head- “I’ll have only 2 glass of wine today”, “I’ll eat only 1 plate of pasta tonight”. When a plan is there, you only need to work on your determination during the action, so it makes sense to make a quick portion note prior to stepping out.
Survey the spread first (or read menu carefully) – By getting a sense of what are the foods available, you avoid heaping on excess of usual offerings because you didn’t realize earlier that the ‘can’t miss items’ were at the end of the line. So make your plate with intention and eat only what you really want to eat.
Order to serve your salad or soup first and entrée only after the appetizers are done with. A lot of food on the table and in sight will promote over eating.
Split and Share –the entrée with your dining partner. If eating alone, try doubling up your appetizer and skipping the main course altogether.
Indulge wisely – If you intend to end your meal with drinks or dessert, eat only half of your capability. Yes, it’s your treat meal! But a firm moderation now will prevent you from guilt trip later.
Split and share desserts too – or skip them totally and order yourself an unsweetened coffee/hot beverage to end the meal. Some metabolic push there! Plus you can always have a cube of dark chocolate when you reach home.
If Ice cream melts you away – Choose inedible dishes- say a cup over a cone, as your ice cream serving dish. Or if a cone gets you carried away, choose a kiddie, regular or sugar cone, as a waffle cone will increase your portion considerably. Avoid toppings or go for fruit based ones.
Tall and slim – Research says drinking from tall and slim glasses will cut down the portion of your drink by 20%, and so does avoiding exotic mixed liquor drinks. It’s that easy!
If you are travelling – Avoid heading to a restaurant directly. Instead take a pit stop at a fruit vendor first. A healthy snack before a meal will not spoil it, but help you portion mindfully.

Eating in moderation and compensating with a good round (or extra round) of exercising keeps one in balance. Avoid overeating and practice mindfulness – your ideal weight is just this one healthy habit away!

In my fourth blog, I shall talk about emotional eating. Very often, we find ourselves overeating or better to say indulge in mindless eating such as stress eating. Too happy indulge in over eating, too sad again indulge in over eating to feel good. The blog will take you through some pointers on how to avoid stress eating and satisfy your needs with mindfulness.

To be continued…

#BeTheForce

June 9, 2024 By Geetika Patni 1 Comment

Excercises: Pre-Pregnancy: A good start is half done!

Planning to start a family is a crucial decision, in fact, a life changing one, and preparing yourself well for the most important time of your life, will ensure a healthier you and a healthier baby. If you have made up your mind for the next big move, this blog will give you an insight into the exercise part of this beginning.

A workout routine developed before getting pregnant will help you stay in the healthier BMI range, will help you beat stress through release of the feel-good hormone – endorphins, and will help you sleep better through the night, thus will create an optimal environment for natural conception. Additionally, it will help you sustain a healthy pregnancy and develop your stamina for the rigors of childbirth and recovery, and finally, it will assist you in getting back in shape and to your pre-pregnancy fitness levels!

A good deal eh? So let’s learn how you can plan your exercise regime:

A) If you are a beginner: take it easy and gradually. 20 -30 minutes at a minimum three times a week will be good to go.

Start with a low impact aerobic exercise – walking, dancing, cycling. These will race up your heart and exercise your lungs.
Another good one is Swimming – it will make you feel lighter and work out your whole body without straining your joints.
Relaxing workouts include yoga, which with the right postures will help in toning your reproductive organs too.
A Pilates workout under guidance will help strengthen your core and pelvic muscles.
Weight training under supervision will work out your muscles to prepare them for infant care. Use lighter weights and learn the correct training technique, but remember weight training is to be avoided during pregnancy.
Practice exercises for pregnancy and active labor – these will include squatting, lunges, pelvic floor exercises, and breathing exercises. Starting to do them now will make it easier to continue after the big news.

B) If you are a pro: you are doing one of the best jobs for yourself and your fertility. But like with every other good thing, too much of it can still do more harm than good when you are trying to conceive. This is so because exercises are considered as a stress to the system and the body shuts down its reproductive functions in stressful events. Moreover, workouts are linked to changes in a woman’s hormonal system that may interfere with implantation of a fertilized egg. Then, is it fine for a man to exercise intensely during pre-conception phase? No actually not. The male partner must also re-evaluate his workouts and dial down the intensity of his routine so as to avoid the risk of decreasing his sperm counts (which happens due to excessive heat generation during exercises).

Now the question is when do you draw the line?

Well, it will depend on your BMI

#If you fall in overweight BMI range (>27), there is no reason to tone down your exercises, since obesity impairs fertility more than excessive exercising.

#If you fall in normal weight BMI range, bring down your workout intensity from vigorous to moderate. Like if you are running, start jogging and avoid vigorous gymnastics, aerobics, cycling and even swimming. Make them more leisurely so that you are not devoting more than 5 hours a week to these workouts.

#If you fall in underweight BMI range (<18), check your workout intensity and lighten it again so that along with good nutrition, you can soon move up to healthy weight range for early conception.

Now a word of caution for Female Athletes- if your form of exercise (including power yoga) is above moderate and leaves you extremely weak, winded, and gasping for breath or alters your menstrual cycles, then it’s time to tone down the frequency, pace, and duration of your workouts. This surely doesn’t mean you can’t run/cycle or must leave your weight lifting career for making a baby, but then, of course, this won’t be the ideal time to prepare for a marathon/triathlon or for buffing up for an upcoming championship.

Furthermore, certain contact Sports like Judo, Karate, Football etc., which may cause sudden jolts/falls and abdominal punching, may become unsuitable when you eventually fall pregnant. So trying now to hone your skills in them or, for that matter, in activities like downhill skiing, horseback riding, scuba diving, mountain biking etc., may not be useful. Save them for your post pregnancy to do list!

Lastly, a well-rounded preparation consists of other factors too. So a wholesome diet, folate supplements, sound sleep, no alcohol/smoking, avoiding caffeine and reducing stress will form a crucial foundation of your prenatal preparation along with, as I mentioned above, EXERCISING regularly.

Hope you find this article useful and that it answers all your questions regarding exercises before your Big Fat Positive. Take care and I’ll see you in the next chapter of Pregnancy! For further information or guidance, reach out to our certified experts by subscribing to GOQii’s Personalised Health Coaching here.

#BeTheForce

Mindful Eating: Connect Back with your food – Part 5

To help you get connected, I am sharing some simple tips here with you today

So to know yourself and your eating habits better, be a food critic.

Mindful Eating: Mind your Mood – part 4

Mindful eating: Control portions and be wise! – Part 3

Excercises: Pre-Pregnancy: A good start is half done!

Now the question is when do you draw the line?

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