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Fitness made to order Fitness is fashion, fitness is worship and fitness is fuel for a better self-esteem. The trend towards being fit has reached a new high where everyone around you buzzes with only one goal; being fit. From dieting and exercising to adopting holistic wellness as a routine, people are willing to go an extra mile and spend an extra buck if it keeps them in prime shape. Not just diet plans and gyms will do any more, personalisation and super-speciality is the way to go. Watching every morsel Visit a dietician at a hospital and she will give you guidelines to follow in order to maintain a healthy weight, lose weight or even gain weight. But for a growing number of people that is not enough. They need someone who will guide them through the minefield of eating out, planning what to eat on a daily basis and still get fit. Ritika Lamba, a dietician, based in Ludhiana says, “I customise the diets for my clients from their bed-tea to dinner. Last minute customisations, especially when they are eating out, can be handled effectively as well where I make allowance for specific kinds of food. The benefit of having a personalised diet is that you can tell the dietician your work schedule and lifestyle and get a calorie specific, balanced diet, keeping in mind their food habits and medical problems like blood pressure and diabetes.” But for many, following a diet is too much of an effort, specially when it comes to cooking that too for one person (who’s on diet) who may be working nine to five and be in no position to prepare special meals. Shreya, a Chandigarh-based dietician, who runs Diet Cafe in Sector 35, took up the challenge of helping her clients. She delivers personalised diet tiffins based on individual client’s body composition. “Keeping in mind problems like diabetes, anaemia, hypertension and obesity, I plan each tiffin individually.” With sumptuous meals on offer, diets are not a deterrent anymore. Customised workouts While you can buy a DVD and learn yoga or other exercise styles and follow the routine at home, you may end up doing more harm than good. Injuries due to wrong posture are not just painful, but may become chronic. A New Delhi- based personal trainer, Kiran Sawhney of Fitnesolution, feels that the surge in people seeking personal trainers marks the increase in consciousness regarding fitness. She says, “Personal trainers offer exclusivity in fitness. Though the charges are high, you get so much more for the money that you spend by way of personal attention, customised programmes according to fitness level, goals and motivation. Be it for weight loss or for injury rehabilitation, I make sure my clients get the maximum mileage from their money.”
Chandigarh-based Neeraj Kumar, a personal trainer with Movers 'n' Shapers, says “A single exercise plan is not suitable for everyone. It is, therefore, essential to have a customised fitness plan according to the body’s needs. For instance, a person suffering from osteoporosis or a chronic knee problem may not be able to do conventional gym exercises. For such persons, we give tailor-made fitness plans of weight training and cardio kick-boxing which use body weight and body resistance. A number of my clients prefer personalised weight management programmes for better results.” Gaurav Sood, a personal trainer at Fitness Lounge, Panchkula, echo similar sentiments. He advises customised exercise schedules for those with special needs that arise due to injuries and medical conditions. He feels it is always better to seek professional help when exercising so that you can modify your exercise routine according to your requirement as conventional exercises are not advisable for people with osteoporosis, back injury, sports injuries and other conditions. Shobha
Rajgopal, nutritionist and lifestyle consultant from Santa Cruz, Mumbai who works with Mickey
Mehta, says, “Motivation, injury management, maintaining correct posture, bringing an element of freshness and keeping the interest alive in the workout are the hallmarks of a good trainer. These things help get results and make the workouts fun to follow.” Holistic health at home
As the adage goes — “You are what you eat!” Most of us understand that weight is directly proportional to the calories that we eat and inversely proportional to the calories we burn in the form of exercise, but are clueless when it comes to managing it. Geetanjali
Hurria, 42, from Panchkula had a bad knee injury at the gym 14 years back and she stopped exercising. This led to a lot of weight gain. Geetanjali then decided to enlist the help of a personal yoga trainer. She says, “I coupled my exercise routine with a customised diet plan and lost 36 kg. It feels wonderful to be up and about again, to look good and feel good.” But a personal gym is the way to good health for some like 20-year-old Simran
Midha. He says, “Working out at your own gym beats everything as everybody has their own potential and you know how much you can push yourself. Also, you are not bound by time limits and can work out according to your schedule.” Proactive steps People are readying themselves for a makeover that fitness brings about in all aspects of their life from looks to health. Fitness is not a plan for someday but an immediate concern that is being addressed with assistance from specialists and no one wants to take the second best route. From having a dietician who will guide you as to what your meal at a restaurant should be and one who will send you food that's best for you to bringing the gym home and having a trainer to guide you regarding your workout, nothing is out of the ordinary.
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Gadgets that help you get, set, go... A fit body increases your potential to live healthy and is a tonic for a stress-free life. It is an energy booster and scares away a host of diseases. It is the best anti-aging antidote and the secret of feeling happy all the time. New-age gizmos Helping you keep fit and active are a host of revolutionary new-age fitness gadgets that promise to tone up every part of your body without regular visits to a gym or punishing exercising regimens. Thanks to companies like Reebok, Nike, Adidas, Withings and others, the fitness market is seeing a flood of new devices which promise to build your abs, biceps, triceps and tone up every muscle of the body. Keeping pace with the all-round boom in fitness appliances are a multitude of activity-tracking devices that keep tabs on your body vitals so that you remain in top shape. These are being worn on wrists, arms, collars, belts or mounted on sports glasses or headgear to record your activity levels and make on-course corrections or send out motivational messages egging you to get up and move more. All of these wearable devices work with an online programme or a smartphone app. While some track your sleep pattern, eating habits and amount of exercises you do, others come with coaching plans that deliver daily progress reports and set regular goals. These measure an enormous number of body activities, including blood pressure, carbon dioxide levels, movement, steps taken, miles ridden and body fat levels and help you get fitter by making smarter choices in terms of food and workouts. Body toning Leading companies dealing in fitness devices say these tools have been developed after extensive research and have been tested for their valuable contribution to general fitness. These are not just beneficial for body toning and strength building but have a positive cardiovascular impact. Used extensively in the West, these are now clocking brisk sales in India as well. Take, for example, the exercise ball. This giant ball can tone up any part of the body. You can work your abs, do push-ups, squats and a number of other exercises to keep you in top form. Then there is the lightweight tubing which is a simple elastic band that helps you develop muscles, firm up legs and flatten the stomach. Most of these devices allow you to perform hundreds of exercises for all muscle groups with the same piece of equipment to tone up practically every part of the body. There are other low-cost devices like balance trainers that help you strengthen and coordinate several major muscle groups, including those you don't see. Devices like the foam roller massage your lats, quads, lower back and other large muscle groups to achieve that killer body look. Other gadgets like the rowing machine makes you simulate the action of rowing and measures time, strokes, speed of strokes and distance covered per session, energy consumption as also pulse and heart rate. If these exercising gadgets are vital for keeping fit, monitoring devices are as important for measuring body parameters. Says Delhi-based gym trainer Gagan Sehgal, “When you exercise, it is important to keep track of your body vitals. For example, those who want to lose weight must know the compositions of his or her body's fat percentage. Studies reveal that for men, the ideal fat percentage should be between 15 and 18 per cent, whereas for women it should be between 18 and 25 per cent." Calorie counters Then there are the calorie-counting metres that come with built in watches and chest wraps. These are very handy as these help monitor data concerning calories burnt during the workout. The Hapifork, for example, is an ingenious device that monitors and slows down your eating by alerting you with flashing lights if you are gobbling down the food too fast. The idea is to encourage you to chew more and eat less, thereby reducing your calorie intake. Interestingly, music too forms an integral part of the fitness industry. Sweat and weather-resistant headphones and earplugs form a part of the gear of people who are serious about their workouts. There are special straps that can be tied to the arm to secure the smartphone or iPod or any other device from which the music emanates. Fitness equipment and wearable fitness devices are igniting an explosion of creativity that is engaging both start-ups and big conglomerates like Samsung, Sony, LG and others into making more and more gadgets that not just produce amazing results but also infuse both a sense of achievement and fun for the fitness aficionados.
Phone on your arm Price: Rs 2,000
Price: Rs 12,000
Bicycle computer
Price: Rs 26,300
Price: Rs 6,600
Price: Rs 24,000
Price: Rs 31,600
Tracking bracelet
Price: Rs 5,400
Grid foam roller
Price: Rs 2,400
Price: Rs 2,600
Price: Rs 6,000
Gear Fit
Price: Yet to be announced
Price: Rs 9,700
Price: Rs 6,000
body analyser
Price: Rs 7,800
Jawbone-up
Price: Rs 9,000
wear this Activity Tracker
Price: Rs 9,000
Price: Rs1,200
Music in water
Sportiiiis 4iiii
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She packs in a spa in a bottle From a garage with a small investment, to an enviable client list of more than 100 five-star hotels, Neeta Adappa's herbal range of cosmetics has become a rage Vibha Sharma
When one thinks of an entrepreneur, one imagines an individual who is dynamic, smart and enterprising. However, Neeta Adapaa confesses that her personality is far removed from the traditional definition of that of an entrepreneur's. As a student, she was very reserved but academically very bright. Neeta worked hard towards securing a good job in a multinational and that is exactly what she achieved post her BPharm and MPharm degrees. She began her career as a research and development and Quality Control Officer at German Remedies, Mumbai. Within six months, she had her fill of the monotonous routine analysis work. She recognised the longing to create something new and challenging, deep inside her. It is rightly said that when one desires something with the earnest, the nature conspires and organises everything to give shape to that desire. Neeta found a business partner in Anisha Desai, her junior at pharmacy college. After having undergone a harrowing experience with cosmetics which caused severe skin allergies, Neeta realised that genuine herbal cosmetics were the need of the hour then. They both put their minds and passion towards the goal of formulating natural herbal products. This led to the inception of Prakriti Herbals in 1995, from a small garage attached to her home, with an investment of Rs 10,000. They initially decided to manufacture herbal cosmetics for beauty parlours only and spent almost a year, painstakingly searching about herbs, formulating natural products for skincare and hair care and testing the products for efficacy. Neeta says, "Initially we faced tough times as we found out that there was not enough potential in parlours to generate enough sales which made it hard to recover our investment. We never gave up and just persevered." And one fine morning, they got an enquiry for support of small shampoo bottles to a hotel. They took this assignment as a challenge and never looked back since then. Today, Prakriti Herbals is a one-stop shop for the hospitality and corporate industry providing a customised range of products all under one roof with a clientele list of more than 100 hotels included some trusted five-star hotels like Marriott, Royal Orchid Group of Hotels and Orange Country. Motivated by the customer response and outstanding results seen in combating hairfall, dandruff, frizziness, acne, pigmentation, eczema and wrinkles — these products were launched in the retail space in the year 2011. Prakriti products are free from harmful chemicals and have been widely appreciated in India and abroad. Natural skincare and hair care products are formulated with natural, cold- pressed oils and butters, vegetable saponins, naturally derived amino acids and essential oils derived from fruits and vegetables grown organically, wherever possible. Neeta regularly posts Natural DIY (Do It Yourself) skincare and hair care tips, natural remedies and dietary changes for hairfall, dandruff, acne etc., on her Facebook page and her blog. She provides personal consultations and suggests customised products based on specific problems which has helped generate a lot of credibility, trust and loyal fan following. Prakriti Herbals has a workforce of around 20 people. With a turnover of more than Rs 70 lakh, Neeta wants to see Prakriti herbals becoming a much sought after brand for natural effective skincare and haircare solutions nationally as well as globally. Though based in Bangalore, the products are present online on leading portals like Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeals, Indiamums and Florista. Neeta says, "This has generated sales pan India from new customers who then become our repeat customers." She has earned numerous accolades and awards and is raring to do more.
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BLING IT ON
Price: Spinner 55 Rs 51,000 ($850); Spinner 66 Rs 57,000 ($950)
& Spinner 76 Rs 63,000 ($1,050)
SPECTACULAR SHADES Price: Rs 42,000 ($700)
Price: Rs 42,000 for SoundTouch 30 & Rs 24,000 for SoundTouch20 & Portable System ($700 & $400)
ROMANCING THE ARMANI CHOCOLATE Price: Rs 9,600 per box ($162)
GET GLOWING LIKE MADONNA Price: Clay Mask Rs 7,200 ($120) Rejuvenator Rs 33,900 ($565) & Serum
Rs 14,400 ($240)
RIDE OF A LIFETIME Price: Rs 2.10 crores ($350,000)
PERFECT PAIRING FOR A GENTLEMAN Price: Classic Gentleman Pairing
Rs 14,100 ($235), Discerning Adventurer for Rs 16,200 ($270) and Ultimate Perfectionist for
Rs 34,800 ($580)
STILETTOS FIT FOR CINDERELLA Price: Rs 78.25 lakhs ($130,420)
TATTERED STYLE STATEMENT Price: Rs 2.04 lakhs ($3,400)
FOUR SEASONS COLLECTION Price: Upon request
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Fitness is fashion, fitness is worship and fitness is fuel for a better self-esteem. The trend towards being fit has reached a new high where everyone around you buzzes with only one goal; being fit. From dieting and exercising to adopting holistic wellness as a routine, people are willing to go an extra mile and spend an extra buck if it keeps them in prime shape.
How long do you have to walk every week to keep a stroke away? Thirty minutes of brisk walk four times a week. How many minutes do you have to swim a week to lose two kilos? Again, 30 minutes of swimming four times a week for 20 weeks. What is the best way to improve glucose control in diabetes? Doing 20 minutes of weight-training each day.
Smart Socks
The Garmin Edge 800 wireless bike computer is a GPS-enabled cycling device that provides valuable data for any type of cycling, training, touring, commuting, and even mountain biking, thanks to its rugged waterproof design. Its touch-screen provides easy navigation and access even with gloves on.
Get your balance 
Rowing Machine
Training Watch
The new entrant in the family of fitness trackers, the Amiigo Bracelet is for people who are obsessively serious about their exercising and healthy lifestyle. The bracelet recognises all physical activities like running, swimming, cycling, weight training and tracks your heart rate, temperature and calories burned.
Whether you’re looking to massage your lats, quads, lower back or any other large muscle group or trying to achieve a killer core body workout, the grid foam roller is certain to suit your needs. It is also designed give intensive and targeted trigger point massage experience for any sort of sore muscles.
Gym Ball
Armband to keep track
Most smartwatch devices either focus on fitness or productivity. But the Samsung gear fit being introduced soon is both. It offers a pedometer, movement tracking, heart rate and sleep monitoring. It connects to the smartphone via bluetooth, giving you text, call, Email, and app notifications.
Sporty headphones 
Fork it
The Withings smart body analyser measures, tracks and helps you master your body’s weight by giving you the data needed to monitor and adapt lifestyle changes. It takes your pulse (through your feet) while you weigh yourself and it breaks down your goals into achievable targets while keeping you focused.
One of the most popular fitness tracking armbands in the world, the Jawbone-Up is an integrated system built around you. It tracks your sleep pattern, activity level, eating habits and helps you make smarter choices. It delivers motivational messages, celebrates milestones and challenges you to make each day better.
A trusted activity tracker, the Nike Fuelband is a wearable wristband that tracks the wearer’s physical activity, steps taken and calories burned. It calculates if your activity level is on the right track and gives you points for it. The device also connects you to the Nike community for motivation and exchanging notes
resistance Tube 
Neptune is a waterproof MP3 player that provides high-quality sound to aquatic athletes underwater without the use of ear buds. It uses bone conduction audio to transmit music directly into the ears. It attaches to goggle straps and rests on the cheekbones so as to not interfere with the swimming technique.
The Sportiiiis 4iiii is a heads-up display and audio system that gives feedback on performance data. It enables runners and walkers to maintain form and keep eyes firmly on the road. Colour LEDs and voice-prompts guide you to personal targets. It attaches to any pair of glasses and also includes a heart rate monitor.
TRAVELLING WITH A PYTHON
Sunglasses are the newest and trendiest way to make a personal statement. The new buzzword is to look cool, stylish and hot in eye-coolers. And if you want to stand out in a crowd it's best to go for the new limited edition Dolce & Gabbana Mosaico Collection. The gold metal frame and temples of these sunglasses are literally covered by precious mosaic decors. The tiny tiles made from the spinning of Murano glass-- an ancient Roman artisanal technique of Italian craftsmanship--are delicately arranged in floral pattern making the shades a standout accessory in a lady's
wardrobe.
FOR YOUR LISTENING PLEASURE
Decadent, pleasurable, exquisite,- what would you associate with these words? The one-word answer is Chocolate. But if it happens to be chocolates by Armani you can also add the words sensual and lascivious. The limited-edition Armani Fondente Special Edition chocolates come in a box with a bronze sheen. The box is also lined with silk and features a metal plate with the name of the chocolates. In fact these chocolates make a perfect present for your loved one as they exude everything that is Armani---from quality, taste and a lavish
lifestyle.
For years admirers have wondered how Madonna manages to look so stunning despite being on the wrong side of fifty. Finally, the material girl is ready to share her secret of eternal youth. She has launched MDMA Skin which she says she’s created and has been using for years for that radiant glow on her skin. The state-of-the-art treatment consists of three components. The first is the clay mask made with a base of special Italian clay which enriches the skin. Then there is the rejuvenator which removes impurities and revitalizes the skin and finally a serum for that ultimate glow. So, go ahead and grab the beauty kit to get that Material Girl
radiance.
It's the ride of a lifetime. The 3.47 metres Gunbus 410 motorbike is the world's biggest running motorbike that out-races all others and is a connoisseur's ultimate ecstasy. Made by a German company called Leonheart, it has the perfect combination of great performance and a well-balanced design. While the brute force and road grip of the bike will set the adrenalin racing, the multi-adjustable riding position and gel seat ensures a great riding experience in any condition. This one's exclusively for biker dudes who are ultra passionate about rugged two-wheelers---and can afford never to look at the
Price tag! 
Time was when gentlemen preferred blondes. Today the stylish ones prefer Single Malt and classically tailored shirts. Highland Distillery Glenmorangie has collaborated with luxury shirt brand Thomas Pink to create three "perfect pairings". The first is the 'Classic Gentleman' that matches Glenmorangie Original with a classic white shirt.
The second is the 'Discerning Adventurer' that features a 12-year-old extra matured Single Malt with a Bengal-stripe shirt and the third is the 'Ultimate Perfectionist' that
teams up Glenmorangie Signet with Thomas Pink's Imperial Collection. All the pairings make a perfect gift
for the special man in a woman's life. 
Had Cinderella worn these stilettos to the ball, the Prince would have been gazing at them and completely ignored her. The newly launched Contessa Wafer Stilettos by the Birmingham-based House of Borgezie are real objects d' art. Made from precious materials like platinum, gold and silver and studded with diamonds they come with a guarantee of (believe it or not) 1,000 years making them not just incredibly long lasting but also a very precious family heirloom to be passed from one generation to another. Talk about being well
heeled!
The one accessory that has made fashionistas sit up in the recently concluded Chanel's 2014 Spring-Summer Ready-to-Wear collection is the Bricolage Canvas Backpack. Created by the renowned Karl Lagerfeld, it looks used, worn-out and virtually in tatters. It has been customised with graffiti, tags, splashes of paint and colours with extra details like snap hooks and luggage for that youthful feel.
A change from the chic silhouette the brand is known for, the backpack is bound to be a fun addition to the summer look. Little wonder then that more and more youngsters are seen slinging it over the shoulder.
It's a collection inspired by centuries of Mughal tradition. Italian jewellery house Bvlgari's new line honours the four seasons representing the changing times of the year. The first necklace, titled Spring, is a symbol of awakening and combines pink gold with mint tourmalines and amethysts. The second necklace, called Summer, radiates energetic heat of the hot months and features carved emeralds, mandarin garnets, amethysts and yellow gold. The third, Autumn, symbolises brilliant hues of the changing leaves and features pink gold with tourmalines. Finally, Winter is made from platinum with brilliant cut diamonds. Each season is delicately brought to life in these exquisite
necklaces.