Dear Sister: Fitness, Dealing With Change & Our Sweet Escapes

This one is just me and my sisters, catching up after a busy stretch. We talk about what we have been up to, our recent pull toward fitness, and how yoga can help us be more mindful and sane. But the conversation quickly goes deeper: how we each handle change, the sweet escapes we lean on, and the messy, honest reality of emotional eating after having a baby. It is the kind of chat that feels like a voice note from a friend, full of small truths and no pressure to have it all figured out.

The pull toward fitness and what yoga taught me

I started yoga at the beginning of June, and I knew it was good for mental and physical health, but after actually doing it, I feel like it is still so underrated. I have done other kinds of meditation before, but doing it with a professional made the outcome very different. I actually felt it so much more. At the end of every shavasana, I was in tears. It was working because, as my instructor explained, if you are not releasing your feelings, you are storing them in different parts of your body. Yoga helps bring all of that to the surface.

One of the most fascinating things I learned was about breathing. In daily life we do shallow breathing, and yoga really taught me how to use my lungs at their full capacity. It also teaches you balance, and I noticed that on days when my anxiety was high, I found it difficult to balance because my body was not calm on the inside. The calmer you are, the better you balance. It is a cycle. And it made me realize that emotions we think we have moved past are not gone. They are somewhere in your body. That is why it is important to feel and release both together.

Yoga actually started as a healing practice, not a physical one. It is around five thousand years old, a healing and meditation practice for the mind and body. I am no expert, I just started, but I have been reading up on it. And I can say that after missing sessions because I had two people to take care of at home, when I finally got back to it, I started crying again, but this time during the gratitude practice at the end. I was feeling more grateful, not anxious. Lying flat on the ground like a dead body in corpse pose, the idea is to completely let go of everything: your anxiety, your control, and put it all on God’s plan. That is why I used to cry when I grounded myself. Now I do not cry, but it is such a good way to deal with everything. Yoga combines feeling, releasing, being grateful, and grounding yourself all at once. And your body starts to crave it. When I am not doing it, I crave that breathing, that movement.

Change is inevitable, but how do we handle it?

We all have different relationships with change. One of my sisters resists it, especially when it is out of her control. She will have major anxiety in the moment, but as soon as it happens, she is composed and gets along with whatever happens very easily. She thinks that comes from her childhood, moving every few years, always adapting. I am the opposite: I am more resistant to change within myself, but around me, I am totally okay with it. During my graduation year, I was excited for what was about to come while everyone else was sad. I wanted things to end on a good note, not a bad one, so the memory stays sweet.

Another sister craves change. She grew up moving every two or three years, and if she stays in the same situation for too long, she gets unhappy. She knows when she is ready for things to change, and she embraces it. “Change is inevitable, it is going to happen because that’s how the world works,” she says. “So it’s best to be comfortable with changing and the idea of changing.” We talk about how some people get stuck in the victim zone, asking “why me” forever, while others move to “what can I do now.” Resilience is not about never feeling the pain, but about eventually coming to terms with it. If the change was your fault, there is guilt and forgiving yourself, which is a whole other thing. But if it is not your fault, you can let go and figure out what to do with your life. It is not easy, but with every breath, you can let it go. That is what yoga teaches, too.

Our sweet escapes and the ones we lost

We all have those little things we turn to when we need to escape. For one sister, it used to be swimming. She loved it, it was so soothing, and she would just forget everything else in the world and swim. Then she got a back issue and the doctor banned her from even going into the water. “I was robbed of that time,” she says. Now her sweet escape is simply lying down and watching YouTube videos. For another, it is reading fiction, going into someone else’s life and mind, zoning out completely. I recently realized that having a sweet escape is a luxury when you have a child. When you do not have help, you do not even have the time to process something properly, like grief, because you are constantly managing this other person. But even two to five minutes can help. When my son goes to sleep, I watch TV. I also really enjoy skincare, which is a recent thing. It makes me feel good. And I write, but writing is less of an escape and more of a dealing mechanism. If I am feeling something, I deal with it through writing.

Organizing and decluttering is another escape. When things feel cluttered, my mind feels decluttered. I cannot work in a messy environment. I need a divide between professional and personal life, dedicated time and space. That affects my productivity in a good way. And then there are movies. We talk about our all-time favorites: Singh is King, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, Tamasha, About Time, Miracle in Cell No. 7. Animated movies like Frozen and Shrek never get old. It is nice to revisit those memories.

The messy reality of emotional eating and postpartum weight

I want to talk about something I wish somebody had talked about with me before. During my postpartum year, my sweet escape was eating. It is a very common thing. In my pregnancy I gained only eight to nine kgs, and I dropped most of it instantly. But when I was looking after the baby, my meals were all over the place. Emotionally, I was binge eating. After a whole day of being worked up, the one thing you want is food that satisfies you here, and most of the time it is McDonald’s or Coke or something sweet, a lot of calories. When you are breastfeeding, your appetite increases, but breastfeeding helps you lose weight. Then you stop breastfeeding, but your appetite is still increased, you are emotionally eating, binge eating, and that is when you gain all the weight.

I realized this recently when something annoyed me and suddenly the diet that was completely fine all day went out the window. My food consumption is very related to my mood. It is emotional eating. And there is also revenge eating: “I’ve had such a shitty day, now to counter that I have to eat something good.” It is a real thing, and you end up feeling tired, bloated, low energy. It made me sad because I am not that person. I have been energetic, someone who used to work out and fit in small sizes. I felt shitty all the time because I was so unhealthy. Drawing the line is hard, but it is will power. You have to tell yourself no. And the older you grow, the more difficult it is to be fit. I am turning 30, I have given birth, that affects my body. The best time is now, because I am not getting any younger. I look at myself two years back and doing the exact same thing was so much easier. Mindful living and healthy living is a task, but after a few months of eating well, when you eat crap you realize what the difference in energy is. There is no point doing things all day if you feel drained. It is time to work on ourselves, and food should not be the escape.

Small things that matter: check-ins, decluttering, and dedicated time

One small idea that came up: a morning check-in. When we all come into the office, everyone arrives with a mood. Maybe you woke up feeling irritable or you are PMSing. I thought, why not ask everyone, “How are you feeling today?” So that all our interactions during the day are according to that, more sensitive. One day I was feeling super irritable and I sent a message that probably sounded like I was irritated at them, but I was not. If we had checked in, they would know I was just in an irritable mood, not upset with them. It is such a simple thing, but it can change the whole energy.

Decluttering physically declutters my mind. I need my environment to be organized, with a clear divide between work and personal life. That dedicated time and space helps me focus. And when life feels like too much, sometimes just sorting a drawer or organizing a shelf brings a little calm. These are the small things that matter, the ones that do not fix everything but make the day a little softer.

This conversation is a reminder that we are all figuring it out: fitness, change, escapes, the weight of emotions we carry in our bodies. There is no perfect way through, but talking about it honestly, with the people who know you, makes it lighter. If any of this resonated, I hope you take one small thing from it, maybe a breath, a check-in, or permission to let go of a sweet escape that no longer serves you.