HeaL
HeaL is a social media based program “Healthy for Life”. Groups of people follow the Healthy Eating Plate lifestyle as recommended by the Harvard School of Public Health. Participants post pictures of their transformed plates. They analyze each other’s plates and see which areas need help – usually it is needing more vegetables or proteins! They also share their own recipes and recipes from the internet inspired by the Healthy Eating Plate.
Most of our chronic diseases are due to poor lifestyle choices, the main one being poor dietary choices. This program provides awareness, knowledge, skills and inspiration to eat healthily in a non-judgmental, supportive and encouraging environment. Often people are dazzled by quick fixes such as fad diets, shakes, teas and pills to lose weight or increase muscle and tone. Our program guides people away from such restrictive programs that promote obsessing over weight, calories, fat and carbs, and towards a sustainable program that is focused not on weight but on health.
Indian diets are often very heavy on processed carbohydrates which were fine when people were active in manual labor intensive occupations. However our current sedentary lifestyles cannot sustain such high calorie, highly processed, carbohydrate loaded diets. The group moderator encourages replacing processed carbs with whole grains and increasing healthy plant-based proteins. We also discuss portion control for both adults and children. We emphasize the importance of the entire family eating the same meal except when there is a medical need. This encourages healthy eating from a very early age.
We hope to add a physical activity component in the future.