DROP STUBBORN WEIGHT

11 habits that will help you lose kilos and keep it off this new year

- Luke Coutinho with Anushka Shetty

1 OXYGEN—’VITAMIN O’

STOP RIGHT NOW and observe how you breathe. Are you breathing to your full capacity? Are you breathing from your chest or belly? Your answer will most likely be ‘no’ and you will notice that you are breathing from the chest. The correct way is to belly-breathe: Sit with your back erect. Put your hand on your belly. Now take a deep breath. As you slowly inhale, your belly and hand should rise. As you exhale, your belly and hand should fall back down. Think of your stomach as a balloon that inflates and deflates with your breath.

The more you eat, the deeper you should breathe. When you take in enough ‘vitamin O’, fat is broken down and your intestines absorb all the nutrition from the food you eat. When you breathe correctly while you eat, your body fills up much quicker and you end up eating less than you normally would. So practise this: before you eat anything, sit with your back straight. Take three deep breaths from your belly. Inhale comfortably and make sure you exhale slow and long each time. Between every bite, take one deep breath. End your meal with three deep breaths.

2 CORRECT YOUR VITAMIN D3 LEVELS

ALMOST ALL of my patients and clients have critically low levels of vitamin D 3 when they come for the first consultation. Low D3 levels plague thousands of people across the world. Most of them still consider this vitamin to be necessary for bone strength, but it plays many critical roles in the human body, from immunity to weight loss. Besides playing a crucial role in the establishment and maintenance of calcium in the body, vitamin D also acts as an effective regulator of cell growth and cell differentiation that is specific to cancer.