5 Healthy Living Tips From The House Of Bazaar’s Wellness Panel

Number One: Mental health is just as important as physical health

At House of Bazaar 2018, in partnership with Mall of the Emirates, we have a special theme every day that all of our events, panels, and shows are based around. Today’s theme is…Wellness Day! To kick off all things health and wellness at HoB, we hosted a panel conversation in the garden with Amna Al Hashemi, Yasmine Al Mulla, and Yalda Alaoui, as moderated by Aida Al Busaidy, on curating a mindful lifestyle.

Each guest is a wellness expert in their own respect: Amna is a Dubai-based professional chef and founder of Mitts & Trays. Yasmine is a fitness and fashion influencer. Yalda has been on a 10-year journey to developing a healthy and happy lifestyle during her battle with numerous autoimmune diseases.

From their biggest health inspirations to their guiltiest of pleasures, here are the 5 things they taught us about living a beautiful and healthy lifestyle.

Yasmine Al Mulla speaking at the Wellness Day panel.
Ajith Narendra

1. Mental health is just as important as physical health.

“It’s a culmination of multiple things: It’s not just cutting out specific elements in your food or diet or working out ten times a day,” our moderator Aida Al Busaidy says. “You could work out every single day and eat the healthiest food ever, but if you’re stressed, if you haven’t slept right, you’re mentally unwell, it doesn’t matter.”

2. Balance for yourself and your family is key.

Amna Al Hashemi says, “The keyword here is balance. Diets that are restrictive can be boring and you can never keep doing something like that, I’m not going to restrict my kids from eating cake and cookies. But as long as we maintain a balance with sports and activities, good fibers, and healthy elements, that’s what matters.”

Ajith Narendra

3. Start with simplification.

“During my health journey, when I would look at what doctors online were saying, like ‘If you have PMS, follow these 10 steps”. Who can follow ten steps? It was very discouraging,” says Yalda Alaoui. “What I did was look at the cuisines around me like Moroccan and Italian — eating quinoa and kale does not come natural to me — and focus on recreating all the dishes that are simple and inflammatory.”

4. Use your platform to help others live healthy lifestyles.

“I think we’re very fortunate to be living now in this time as women. Ten years ago, we weren’t really there in the working field,” says Amna. “For me, as a chef, was seen as a cook. It wasn’t prestigious or trendy, now everyone wants to make healthy and delicious food, and open a restaurant. I’m going to use every single second for my benefit. I want to keep this trend going. If I can inspire young girls to be chefs or pilots or any dream that I have, I would like to do that.”

5. Health trends are just that: *trends*.

Yasmine Al Mulla says: “I see so many things are trendy like juice detoxes and veganism. None of this makes sense to me! It’ a lifestyle, I don’t want to do it if I won’t still be doing it 10 years from now. Balancing in all aspects I think is the key. I have whatever I want, I just never have gluten. Whatever food is there, I just try to have alternatives.”

Amna Al Hashemi speaking at the Wellness Day panel.
Ajith Narendra

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