If you’ve been catching up on my previous posts, after my close brush with death, I’ve been trying to making some changes. Almost all aspects of life have changed – Food, Sleep, Work and Family.

Food

As part of the low fat of the diet, I’m on a ration of 20ml of oil for an entire month – there go all the fried foods! Cheese, processed meats, mayo, butter and most of the other food items have suddenly disappeared from the table. The low sodium part means the rest of the food which I can eat tends to be slightly bland. I shall stop ranting about the food, because the side effect of this is that I’ve ended up losing close to 10kgs over the past month – with minimal exercising.

To get over the two teaspoons per day quota and still have tasty food, I went ahead and got a Philips Airfryer. The ad for the air fryer states that we’d end up using 80% less oil in our cooking. I was skeptical initially, especially reading some reviews which stated that the food cooked using the air fryer doesn’t taste very good.

To test this out, I grilled some fillets of basa fish, to serve with a meal for 4 people with just over a teaspoon of oil, and it ended up tasting quite good. Since then, we’ve been experimenting with other Indian recipes, including Kerala Fried Fish, Chicken Kofta and other kid favorites like Homemade French Fries. All our experiences turned out quite good so far, that too minus loads of oil usually required to make these dishes.

Sleep

The other major change I’ve had to make consciously is to get to bed early so as to get at least 7 hours of sleep every night. Lack of sleep is a killer – literally! The years of sleeping 6 hours or less through the week finally caught up with my health. Going to bed early took some getting used to – with me waking up at odd night hours for the first few weeks. Now it looks like my sleep cycles have finally settled.

Stress

I’ve been attempting to avoid stressful situations as far as possible since I read that stress slows down the recovery process. The folks at work have been really supportive and have allowed me to work on stuff that doesn’t put me in stressful situations. I’m also going to work only a few days of the week while I slowly ramp up.

This has permitted me to dedicate more time with something I’ve been neglecting over the past few years – my Family.

Family

While earlier my priorities have been skewed mostly towards work, after escaping death, I’ve realised that my family should be my highest priority. I’ve been spending more time at home interacting with the kids – getting involved in their free time activities and helping them during their study time (or at least trying to).

The person most affected by all this is my wife; her workload has increased since last month. She’s had to manage most of the work on her own single-handedly. As my condition slowly improves, I’m trying to ease her workload out by helping out with some of the chores like cooking and other odds and ends.

What else?

With some of my free time, I’ve been catching up with my reading and music. What I should get back to is playing the keyboard; that’s something I’ve not done in a really long time.

It’s been a challenging month trying to make these changes in my life and lifestyle consciously, and I thank all my friends, family and colleagues who are helping me in my journey.