Chasing Longevity: importance of Metabolic health and nutrition part 3

Once we had the blood markers on our hands, we had 2 choices :  either to go the pill-route, which is the progressive state ie pills keep changing/increasing, and the condition/disease keeps getting worse. It’s like we are managing going down the hill with pills. We certainly didn’t want that, so we decided to take the slightly harder route as it confirms remission of the conditions we had.

Now we knew we have to make some lifestyle changes. So, what are these LIFESTYLE changes?

Diet is the biggest part of the change we had to do to get successful remission. Others things like better sleep, better emotional stability, follow for sure. Once we took the plunge, within 3 days, my husband’s snoring stopped. My older one used to joke whenever we traveled together, that “now we have to listen to Papa’s snores”. It was such a big morale-booster for us to see the some +ve change in only 3 days.

I realised early enough that if we are in the longer haul, we cannot do meal replacements, we can’t have individual meal-plans for everybody. To make it sustainable and enjoyable, we have to make changes in our existing plate, as that is where our comfort lies.

We have to remove few items and increase the quantity of the leftovers as well as add nutrient-dense food. Our plate consists of grains/rice/dal/vegetables/yogurt, we had to remove carbs in the form of grains, up the protein-fat content, and the vitamins and minerals in the form of vegetables.
The older-version of the plate is not very helpful so we have to accept the new version to get back our health.

Our body also takes time to adjust to these changes. Lot of tweaking need to be done to get desired results. Like when we cut down carbs, blood glucose levels also go down, and with it goes some salt content, and SALT is an essential nutrient, so we had to up out salt intake.  So, to taper all these nuances, I started reading and researching more and more.

Why should Special Needs parent add another layer of discomfort?
We have no other option if we want to increase our lifespan as its totally dependent on our health-span. Moreover, these changes are quite simple to adapt once you put your heart and mind to it. I feel we also owe this much not only to our ND kids but also to our NT kids. We don’t want to leave any burden behind. We have to teach our ND kids to eat and live in their best form.

Author Shinjita Joshi Pant

Shinjita is chasing health & longevity since her daughter’s diagnosis. & found answers to all her queries in her journey of becoming metabolically healthy. Once she decided to practice being Metabolic Health Coach, she did the few courses mainly for certification purposes. She did 2 certificate courses from Udemy & Certificate Diploma from IGNOU