Goa, India

Best Lifestyle Blog of Goa

Day: October 14, 2017

Keep Yourself Warm, Fit, And Happy This Winter

Posted on by Aditi Malhotra

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Winter is on its way, which means it’ll be getting colder and you’ll just want to hibernate away from everyone. It is also very easy to start eating a lot more – again, the hibernation stage. And then you end up wobbling through the new year wondering how you put on so much weight.

Well, here’s how you can avoid that from happening while having some fun.

Go on a treasure hunt.

Include the whole family in this one and go out on an adventure. Thanks to modern day technology, there are now things called geocaching, which is essentially a virtual treasure hunt in which you use a handheld GPS to find hidden caches of trinkets. It’s actually a lot harder than you would imagine, making it a fun activity for all the family – including you grown-ups. Going on a walk doesn’t sound that interesting, but going on an adventure does. An adventure that requires you to be in a pretty location in the outdoors, surrounded by the fresh air, the ones you love, and a whole bunch of fat burning and muscle toning fun. Just remember to wrap up warm, and look out for wonderful winter wildlife.

Put on your dancing shoes.

Who doesn’t like to dance? Even if you’re no good at it, it’s still a lot of fun to do. It’s a way of releasing all the built up stress and being totally and utterly free for a while. Let alone it being a brilliant way to keep fit. Whether you feel more comfortable doing it from the comfort of your own home with the curtains shut and the music turned up to the max, or maybe you like the idea of taking part in some Zumba fitness for weight loss – just find something you enjoy. As long as you’re having fun, it won’t even feel like a workout. So disconnect yourself from the world for a while, and work up a sweat to your favorite tunes. Your body and mind will thank you for it.

Make play your workout.

Think back to when you were a child. What kind of activities would you do before your parents spoiled the fun by calling you in for dinner? Riding your bike. Rollerblading. Jumping rope. – These are all things that we enjoyed doing so much when we were younger, so why stop doing them now we’re grown? Rediscover that joy that you used to have all those years ago.

Go and explore on your bike and pedal as fast as you can until your legs turn to jelly. You’ll feel invisible, like no one can touch you, not even the biggest sports professionals in the world. And not only that, but think about all the calories that you’ll be burning as you go!

Now you see that there are a number of different ways to get active and keep yourself warm in the winter, you have no more excuses. Don’t let the idea of ‘working out’ put you off. It doesn’t have to be a chore at all – it can be a reward.

Yoga For Common Ailments

Posted on by Aditi Malhotra

Yoga, it is a very ancient practice, but it’s something that everybody does now. It’s very trendy, of course, and it’s a great way to get you more flexible. But also, the thing about yoga is that people don’t talk about the more practical uses for it, it is very good for a lot of ailments people may have. So, here are a few common ailments, and the best yoga pose you can try for it.

Headaches

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This is a common problem, and while most of us reach for the painkillers, instead you may want to go for one of the basic yoga moves, the downward facing dog. The way you do this is to come onto the floor and put your knees above your hips, your hands a little bit further forward than your shoulders. Breathe in, and exhale, while you do this, lift your knees up from the floor and lengthen your tailbone. Exhale and push your thighs back, stretch your heels down towards the floor. Strengthen your underarms and press your index fingers to the floor and lift.

Anxiety

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Yet another thing people will suffer from a lot in the morning world, there’s been a reported rise in anxiety due to modern living, so one of the best poses is to combat this is the bridge. And not only are there benefits for anxiety in relation to this pose, but it also causes a lot of positives generally. The way to do this is to lie on the floor, and then bend your knees and put your feet straight on the floor, with your heels as close to the sitting bones as you can. Upon exhalation push your feet and arms into the floor and push your tailbone up, and lift your butt off the floor. Make sure that your thighs and your inner feet are parallel to each other. Keep your knees over the heels and lengthen the tailbone, but be sure to do this slowly, vertebrae by vertebrae, and the same applies to when you lower your body, go from the top of your vertebrae all the way down the spine.

Bad Back

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A staggering amount of people complain of a bad back and one of them is very likely to be yourself. One of the best poses for this is the extended side angle pose, and this is quite a skilled pose for beginners, so it’s important that to practice these properly, that you do your research and make sure you’re doing everything right. But the best way is to get to a yoga fitness class; many classes cater for people of various skills, from beginning to advance level yoga fitness classes, so you don’t have to feel out of your depth. This is quite a complicated pose, so if you feel you have to try it at home, look at this video to get it right.

Yoga is not just a great way to get fit, it’s a wonderful cleansing practice if you do this in conjunction with the right diet, and it is an excellent way to add fitness into your life, but also gives you a sense of meaning. Yoga is one of those great low impact exercises, but it really builds up strength and balance, two things essential for life.

 

 

TV or Exercise? Why Not Do Both?

Posted on by Aditi Malhotra

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You’re sat on the sofa after a hard day’s work and you know you should be out there jogging or using up your gym membership. But what about all those TV shows you need to catch up on? Many of us will often choose the box over exercise. But why can’t we do both? There are many forms of exercise that can be done in a living room in front of the TV. Here are just a few ways that we could all be getting our fix of physical activity whilst getting up to speed on the latest series.

Buy exercise equipment for your living room

Many types of exercise equipment can be used in a living room. Dumbbells, resistance bands and medicine balls take up hardly any space at all both to store and to use. There are then those more bulky exercise machines such as treadmills and exercise bikes. Exercise bikes in particular allow you to sit down as if you were watching TV and take up very little space (some can even be folded away). Read exercise bike reviews online to find the best one for your living space. You could aim to keep on a certain speed for the entirety of a show or vary it up with each ad break.

Use the couch as an exercise tool

Your sofa can be used to perform many exercises. Tricep dips can allow you to still watch the screen. You could also try elevated press ups with your feet on the sofa and your hands on the floor whilst facing towards the screen.

Do squats and lunges 

Squats and lunges are great for toning up your legs and butt and require only a small space of floor. You can easily do these exercises whilst watching the TV. You could also do squats and lungs with equipment such as dumbbells or a medicine ball, allowing you to work on your upper body strength simultaneously.

Consider static exercises

Some static exercises can be done whilst watching TV. The plank is a great core workout for improving your abs that requires you to lift up onto your feet and elbows – you can do this whilst staring ahead at your favourite show. You can also switch this up and do the superman exercise which involves laying on your stomach and lifting your lower body and chest off the floor.

Use commercial breaks for HIIT training

If you find exercise too distracting whilst you watch TV, why not make use of those annoying ad breaks? These can be the perfect time to squeeze in some high intensity interval training. Exercises could include press ups, sit-ups, weight exercises, squats, lunges – whatever you can think of. Make sure that it’s hard to get the most benefit out of this form of exercise. You can then use the time in which the show is on to recuperate with a slower form of exercise that doesn’t take away your concentration.

 

Work A High-Stress Career? Look After Yourself First

Posted on by Aditi Malhotra

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Working a high-stress career is simply a must for many people trying to achieve their goals and pursue the life they want. There are almost more high-stress careers than there are low-stress, and so it’s important to tailor yourself to the job market so you can work the roles you truly want. For example, a great chef will only become great if they’re willing to suffer the long hours and hardships of the kitchen. A construction worker will need to become adapted to the rugged physicality of the job, as well as mitigating the overstimulation of the nearby machinery.

High-stress jobs are simply a factor of the working world, as they always have been dating back to antiquity. For these reasons, it’s important to take care of yourself to keep resilient and active in the direction you most want to pursue. We’d like to offer you some health tips for achieving this.

Medical

You must make sure you are well protected during your workplace activities. It shouldn’t take a H+S officer to give you the motivation to read through the safety policy at your firm. Knowing this could potentially give you life-saving information. At the very least, making sure you are well protected regarding the role you play can help.

If you’re on your feet for multiple hours a day, wearing soft crocs or supportive shoes can help your feet health and your alertness over the course of the day. Making sure you mitigate the effects of workplace trauma can help too, for example, tinnitus treatment can help you mitigate the effects of noisy environments, or become active to work again after an injury. Making sure your skin is protected in toxic environments and constantly assessing your breathing environment will give you and even more complete view of safety in the workplace.

Unwind

Giving yourself time to unwind from a stressful day will help you loosen some of the tightness you feel after a hard working period. It’s important that you give yourself this time, where you allow yourself to think about nothing in particular. For some people, this involves resting in front of the television, or consuming video games as a hobby. While these can be beneficial, and it’s more than your right to achieve this, there are better hobbies to help you.

Meditating can help you become more focused in your daily life, and actually de-emphasises the part of your brain responsible for stress. A simply crafting hobby can help you meditate physically, and creative expression is often the best way to de-stress. Reading a great book can help distract you in a completely different world, coming back to your life with added rejuvenation. These tips can help you overcome the difficulty of your daily schedule, and approach it with added caution and ability.

With these tips, your high-stress career will come second to your health, just the way it should be.

 

 

 

The Leela Ambience Convention Hotel, Delhi commenced the ‘Dining with the Maharaja’ series with a taste of the royal cuisine from the city of Mahmoodabad

Posted on by Aditi Malhotra

The Leela Ambience Convention Hotel, Delhi never fails to impress its patrons as it continuously keeps bringing new innovations in terms of food experiences. Recently the Dilli 32 restaurant within the hotel celebrated the gloriously grand and royal cuisine of Mahmoodabad as its inaugural city.

The 16 day (30th September – 15th October) food festival is a part of the signature ‘Dining with the Maharajas’ series at the hotel. This series of culinary festivals has been especially created to celebrate and revive the love for the fabulously diverse range of dishes served in the royal households across India. The journey to the Quila of Mahmoodabad served as the perfect beginning to the festival. The melodious live performances by in-house Ghazal musicians at the hotel created an ambience that was similar to the one in the Mahmoodabad palace and facilitated an authentic experience for the guests. The ambience really was a big turn on for me, from upholstery, to the table decor, candle chandeliers to the crockery and utensils, each and every element reflected the era and theme.

The first pit stop on the ‘Dining with the Maharajas’ journey, Mahmoodabad, also known as the kingdom of ‘Oudh’ is situated in the heart of the holy city of Sitapur. To bring out the true flavours of each dish Chef De Cuisine Ashwani Kumar Singh himself travelled to the city to learn the art of recreating the royal dishes.

The refreshing imperial menu of Mahmoodabad offered its guests a lavish spread of signature dishes such as Kababs, Shorbas and Salans including specialties such as Murgh Mussallam, Gosht Makhana Kurma, Matter Latpata, Paneer Hazrat Mahal, Laab- i- Mashooq and much more. Each and every item was carefully chosen and spoke volumes about sheer dedication of Chef Ashwani Kumar to bring the cuisine alive on our tables. I personally loved Gole Kebab and Boti Kebab from the starters and Murg Mussallam, Paneer Hazrat and Noor Mahili Pulao the most from the mains menu. The spread was an elaborate one and still left me asking for more.

The dessert menu too was exceptionally good and I loved everything from the menu, but Shahi Tukda and Laab-I-Mashooq need special mentions and should not be missed at any cost.

With the tastes of this food festival still lingering on, I am already looking forward to the next attraction that Leela would bring in.

When Friendships End

Posted on by Aditi Malhotra

Friendships are an integral part of the human experience. We need our friends to support us, help us out of bad situations, and just to be there to have someone to enjoy life with.

A lot is said about the pain and heartbreak that people experience when a romantic relationship ends, but what about a friendship? While the feelings might not run as deep as they do compared to a romance, you’re still losing someone significant from your life. You will still feel their absence; still miss them; still struggle without them.

The end of a friendship can be a difficult time, full of upset, misunderstandings, and difficulties. To try and understand how to get through this period in your life, read through the below, and try to put your experience into perspective.

Friendships End Naturally and Without Acrimony

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In most cases, friendships rarely end because of a horrible argument. You won’t lose friends to fights and acrimony, leaving you with a feeling of having been wronged, very often. The most common loss of friendship is simply drifting apart from one another, as your lives and experiences go in different directions.

When life changes, our friendships tend to change too. While TV shows and movies tend to depict friendships as existing from cradle to grave, this simply isn’t the case for the majority of us. We might have a few old friends, but we’re more likely to change friends as we go through life, drawing closer to those we share more experiences with. So if you and your former best friend don’t really hang out anymore, that’s not necessarily a terrible thing– it’s a natural part of going through life.

Coping With Bad Reactions When You Lose A Friendship

If you have lost an important friendship — either through an argument or just drifting apart from one another — then accepting this can be difficult. If you felt that person was deeply important to you, losing them can be jarring and upsetting.

If you spiral into destructive behavior, then it’s important to acknowledge it has happened and seek treatment, be it through seeing a therapist or looking for addiction counseling. There’s nothing wrong with grieving the end of a friendship, but you can’t let it drag you under forever. Feel the sadness of the loss, deal with it in an emotionally healthy way, and then allow yourself to put it into the past. 

Look For New Friends Who Suit How Your Life Is Now

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There’s no doubt that it’s tough to make friends as an adult, but the internet makes it easier than it ever has been before. Look at online forums and local Facebook pages and see if you connect with someone who is more on your level. Developing new friendships to replace those you have lost is important, so while it may feel odd to “put yourself out there”, you’ll benefit from it in the end.

Overall, no matter what the reason for a friendship ending, try and accept that it’s a part of life. Move on, with the help of a counselor if necessary, but keep all the good memories. You can then look back fondly, while moving on into the future with new friends, who fit into your life, and with whom you can make new memories.

 

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