Protect Her Heart

“I am joining the Saffolalife #ProtectHerHeart initiative and pledging my support to better heart health in Association with BlogAdda.

Before marriage a lady’s heart is where her parent home is,  as I saw my wife transform  herself into a new role of a wife , mother, homemaker, breadearner after marriage she became a multitasking wizard, her whole being migrated to the home hearth to maintain the family heart while missing her own heartbeats and at the cost of “me” time.

                As a result I could see irregular, unbalanced diets , lack of structured physical activity with mental  stress was taking a toll ultimately on the organ which is the fountain of life—her heart. And as we had learned that all wealth comes to a nought if your health is lost, I decided to take the matter into my hands and cajole her back to healthy life before the catastrophic changes become irreversible and life becomes a long moribund saga of survival on coronary stents, pills and bypasses. It would be an added bonus for me so that I could maximize my quality time on this earth as there is only one life and there is only one soul and so why not make it healthy. I realized that healthy living is not a knee jerk reaction but a state of mind, a habit which when imbibed always repays you back in principal and with interest.

                Obesity has attained pandemic proportion in India with its attendant morbidity. The first thing I tried to ingrain into her that we eat to live and not vice versa. Our genes inherited from our forefather are not attuned to the corpulent Western diets of plenty which are hurtling us down the vortex of metabolic syndrome.It took a  while to sit with her and plan a heart healthy diet , a diet which could be whipped up without much fuss and at the same time be palatable and enjoyable. So she got rid with anything that was ‘processed and white’ from our daily diet like –maida, sugar, salt and flour and switched over to everything that was ‘unprocessed,brown and raw’. Salt is the new cholesterol and the table salt vanished from the table. The food habits changed to green veggies, sprouts , whole grains, healthy nuts, fibrous oats  anything that had a low glycemic index. She changed the oil to zeo transfat and plenty of MUFA and PUFA so that the arteries to and from the heart remain pliable and we got our proteins from omega-3 fatty acid rich sea water fishes. The journey initially was very difficult for both of us, punctuated by binge eating on weekends but  over a period of time healthy diet became a habit , the belching the fullness all went way and in fact there was sprite in her steps back as the wardrobe size showed  a transformation from ‘XL’ to ‘L’.

Inertia of rest when it comes to physical exercise for a lady is the greatest hurdle I had to face to overcome.  Thousands of thinkable and unthinkable excuses out of thin air was there to resist the notion of exercise. For household work there was no dearth of inertia and it took lot of sermons, cajoling to convince that while health is genetic but healthy living is acquired. Initially we started with a 15 min after dinner walks and now have graduated together with 30 min of static cycling along with swimming , which has now become an enjoyable evening habit, and its now creates a void in our daily routine if its missed due to unavoidable engagements.

Health is holistic. I realize that no amount of physical activity, balanced diet is of any benefit if one does not have a peaceful, stressfree mental health.Joining her to few min of meditation, yoga or  even listening to our favorite band together would crease down the tattered nerves and tense moments of the day and the beneficial effect on the heart was compounded.

But I must admit that I was bewildered by her courage of conviction once the rewards of the holistic approach was visually palpable, the steely resolve to which she still sticks to the regimen is heart warming . But I am ready to be with her in this happy healthy journey at any cost as it’s a priceless reward that I am ready to attain  in order to spend a few more precious moment of togetherness on this earth with my better half.