RANDOM HOUSE INDIA
Published by Random House India in 2009
Copyright © Rujuta Diwekar 2009
Foreword © Kareena Kapoor 2009
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EPUB ISBN 9788184001655
• Diet as punishment: the compensation diet
• Extreme diets just don’t work: the detox diet
• Exercise and dieting are mutually exclusive—no they aren’t
• The truth about low fat and sugar free alternatives
• Overeating and overeating threshold
• Learning to train your stomach
• The 5 basic rules to increase nutrient intake
• And the 6th rule—a calm state of mind
• All about vitamins and minerals
• Water
4. The 4 principles of eating right
• Information without awareness is useless
• Sample diet and activity recalls for specific profiles
6. Crossing the bridge: from knowing to doing
• The 6 steps towards adopting a healthier lifestyle
• ‘Now’ is the best time to start
2. It’s non-negotiable: exercise as a part of your life
For a long time, I used to think that diets were all about starving and punishing yourself. And I wasn’t alone. A lot of people thought the same way.
Then I met Rujuta.
She totally changed my perception about diets and dieting. First, she told me it wasn’t about starving but about eating well, eating right and eating regularly. I said, ‘I’m a Kapoor, I love my parathas, paneer, cheese.’ Rujuta replied, ‘You can go right ahead and eat all of that and more.’ I was like, cool, when can we start?
I started working with Rujuta around the time I started working on Tashan, and the results are there for all to see: my size zero became a subject of national interest. The media asked me if it was all diet, all exercise or both. My answer: it was seventy percent diet and thirty percent exercise (this through a combination of training and yoga).
Rujuta spent a lot of time understanding my work and my lifestyle, and gave me a diet totally customised to my needs. My diet on work days is different from my diet on shoot days, and even my shoot diets vary on days when I have a shoot or performance which requires dancing. Meals are planned according to level of activity.
When I am in Mumbai, breakfast is muesli and milk, or a chilla or paratha (no chai or coffee)—when I was shooting in Ladakh, breakfast was fresh fruit and pudina chai without milk. In Ladakh, I also ate momos and thukpa (on the last day of the shoot I was even allowed a pizza!). I had appams and idlis in Kerala, and in Italy, it was risotto and pasta with gorgonzola (half portions though, not full).
I make sure I eat every two hours, and my meal or snack ranges from a sandwich to a glass of soy milk. For Rujuta focuses on nutrition and not just calories. Amazingly, she helps you keep the nutritional value of what you eat, as compared to how many calories you consume, high. And still enjoy what you’re eating!
I have learnt what Rujuta means when she says, ‘Be smart about food’.
Now, thanks to her book, you can too. I’m certain you’ll find it good enough to eat!
Kareena Kapoor
Mumbai, 2008
I climbed the six kilometres of glacier from Gaumukh (at an elevation of 4000 metres) to Tapovan (4400 metres), with my heart beating in my ears with every step, expectations mounting. I’d heard so much about ‘Simla baba’, how he had been living in Tapovan for many years; the severe winters he had survived with snowfall more than six feet; how many penances he had done; and all starry eyed, I was hoping to learn something profound from him. On reaching Tapovan, I went to his hut immediately and asked him, ‘Baba, aapko yahan kaun laya?’
‘Jo tanne yahan laya, wohi manne yahan laya,’ he replied, with a straight face. (He who brought you here, brought me here.) ‘That’s it?’ I thought, disappointed.
It took me many more years and realisations to figure out that simplicity is profound.
Simplicity is profound
Don’t lose your mind, by complicating something as simple as feeding yourself (although these words appear in smaller font on the cover, they are really the bigger message). Losing weight, as you will realise by the end of the book (I hope), is incidental. A by-product of following a common sense approach to eating—eating right.
But there is a thin line between simplicity and oversimplification. And just like you do with generalisations, you miss the point completely when you oversimplify. Eating a balanced diet will keep you healthy: a simple statement of fact. The less we eat, the thinner we become: an oversimplification. Other examples of oversimplification: blood group, GM
(General Motors), cabbage soup and orange juice diets.
In a bizarre way, oversimplification seems to work best through mystification. Theoretically opposites, but apparently a potent combination.
The best example of this combo: miracle foods. The weirder sounding, the
better; Chia seeds, Acai berry, quinoa, etc, etc. We really want to believe that there is something miraculous in these ‘exotic’ foods, which will undo all wrong we have done to our bodies (oh we all know we have), but we have no idea how and we don’t even want to know.
When I started as a nutritionist about ten years ago, I struggled to find my place in the fitness and wellness industry (hardly an industry, but nevertheless). For starters I had to deal with the stereotype of a healthy (as in plump and preferably double chinned, not fit and lean) sari and apron wearing dietician, while I was a young postgraduate in tights and jeans. My clients were aghast that I was promoting weight training, yoga and running as a means to keeping fit. ‘Agar exercise karna hai, then why come to you?’
asked a concerned, well-meaning client. Everybody wanted to know how much weight loss I could guarantee, or ‘How much do you charge per kilo?’
(I felt I was selling onions.) It was easier to fool people into believing that starvation was the way, somehow there was a ready clientele for anything like: no banana, no workout, no food only juice, etc. Where was the thrill in
‘eating the right amount of food at the right time’ as I prescribed? Yet as I struggled to find a foothold, I was sure that eventually people would realise (obviously with the help of some fitness professionals, more access to information and some hard hitting experiences) that losing fat and getting into shape has much more to it than how many grams or kilos you have dropped in a week or six months.
About this book
Through this book I share with you my take on dieting, and how dieting or diet is the most misunderstood term in English. There is no such thing as going ‘on’ or ‘off’ your diet. Eating correctly has to be a lifelong commitment, and the diet should be a reflection of this. This automatically rules out any extreme diet or crash diets which require you to go ‘off’ them.
Diet, or what you eat, should be planned according to your activity, lifestyle, fitness levels, likes, dislikes, genetics, etc. It should be part of our daily life, just as brushing our teeth is. For diets to work they have to be personalised. Oversimplification or generalisation has never worked. We are all genetically predisposed to carry fat in different parts of our body. So
for fun, pick up the book which has the shape on its cover you identify with more, apple or pear (but do know that the basics of fat loss and healthy living remain the same, regardless of your shape, size, gender, age, nationality, etc).
My other belief (which you will find in this book) is that all food is good. All foods contain nutrients which have their own role to play in our body. We need all kinds of nutrients, like carbs, proteins, fats, vitamins and minerals, and depriving us of even one of them will create an imbalance in our system. Also, there is no bravery attached to weight loss. You can achieve it just by falling sick. What is most important is that you feel good about yourself, treat yourself well, be committed to eating properly and exercising; and weight loss, rather fat loss, will just happen. Punishing yourself by going on deprivation diets (liquid diets, low carb, high protein or any other fad diet) is never going to work. You will lose weight but at what cost? Not to mention that it will all come back, double of what you lost, in fact.
My book is about my philosophy of dieting which is a confluence of what I have learnt (and still am learning) in my studies of yoga and ayurveda, and during my Sports Science and Nutrition PG. Over the years I have come to understand that everything that we do or do not do is motivated by a strong desire to be happy. We want to lose weight because we think that it will make us happy. We want to, just have to, eat that pastry because it will make us happy. We don’t want to eat karela sabzi because that will make us unhappy. The problem is that we are looking for happiness in the wrong place. Happiness is within us (clichéd but true) and when we get in touch with ourselves, our true being, we will discover happiness. Dieting or eating correctly, is a process, a learning tool, to go within. And when we see or experience that glimpse of reality within ourselves, it will (has to) reflect in our physical body.
Wikipedia on crash diets
A crash diet is a diet which is extreme in its nutritional deprivations, typically severely restricting calorie intake. It is meant to achieve rapid weight loss and may differ from outright starvation only slightly. They are not meant to last for long periods of time, at most a few weeks. Importantly, the term specifically implies a lack of concern for proper nutrition.
It is the last sentence above that is really scary. We just seem to lack that concern, that commitment to feed ourselves right. My clients often ask me what I feel about the so called
expert dieticians, (or diet therapists, diet doctors, whatever), who are making people go on extreme diets in the name of ‘guaranteed weight loss’, spot reduction, improving metabolic rate and stuff like that? I think we are barking up the wrong tree here. It’s a simple scenario of demand and supply. When people stop punishing themselves, fad diets will beat a quick retreat. That a lot of dieticians will find themselves out of a job is another issue altogether.
How to use this book
Using common sense when it comes to eating correctly is the central theme of the book. I have tried to put my view across in a way that all of us with or without a background in fitness and nutrition will understand.
Throughout the book I have liberally used the experiences of my clients and the amazing stories they had to tell, as examples to illustrate my point better and to make it connect with you, my reader. I feel all of us will be able to relate at some level with these real life examples. Of course wherever required, I have used fictitious names.
At some places I draw parallels between food and subjects which may seem to be completely irrelevant or far removed from it such as politics or religion or our cars. But in my experience we seem to understand the politics of our country or the state of our car better than we do our body, hence the comparison. It is just my attempt to demystify diet and dieting.
Chapter 4, ‘The four principles of eating right’, is the cornerstone of my philosophy. It is the book in a nutshell.
Furthermore, for all the busy bees out there I have put a cheat sheet at the end of each chapter, summarising all the important points of the chapter.
These are your takeaways.
I have used boxes all through the book for everything from exploding myths to relating interesting anecdotes, or to talk about anything supporting the text in the chapter. The box on crash diets is a case in point. I had the best time writing these boxes and hope you enjoy them as well, as you read and reread.
This book will urge you to think differently about your body, food, and the act of eating. At least that’s what I want it to do. I sincerely hope it does.
As for how much weight will you lose? Two things. First, know that every
time you talk about weight loss, what you are actually trying to achieve is fat loss. Second, focus on the essentials: eating right and eating on time. Fat loss, remember, just happens. Once you follow the easy to understand and (surprisingly) easy to practice principles, you will notice that you feel different in as little as two weeks. You will get much more intuitive towards food, sleep better and feel much more energetic. In about three months you will see visible changes and drop a couple of sizes in clothes. You will also find that you naturally won’t overeat, will understand how and when to eat that pastry, enjoy a sense of calm and peace and most importantly, stop worrying about how much you weigh.
Happy reading.
Rujuta Diwekar
Mumbai, 2008
What diet is not
My clients often ask me, ‘You mean I can eat chutney with coconut, aloo paratha and puri bhaji? But where is the “diet” in this?’ They sound almost disappointed. The word ‘diet’ has become synonymous with drastic weight loss, health loss, energy loss, metabolic rate loss and most importantly loss of sanity! Diet has become a four letter word that it isn’t.
I strongly believe that your diet has to be a representation of what you will be eating your entire life. It has to remain true to your genes, your likes and dislikes, your work life, your level of activity, and only then does it have a good chance of working. Can you lead a life where you have papaya or dudhi juice all day long? If the answer is no, then don’t go on that diet.
Diet is not starvation.
A diet has to achieve much more than weight loss. Weight loss, or rather fat loss, is just one of the many wonderful side effects of changing your lifestyle. Dieting that has only weight loss as its primary goal is a failure even before you go on it. It’s like some boot camp you go to, kill yourself at, and come back thinner. You are glad to be back home; and within four days of being back home you become healthy (read fat) again. The challenge is to keep up with the routine you kept at the boot camp but it is impossible given your working schedule, sleeping hours, responsibilities, practical issues. Dieting is not about ‘going on’ a diet.
Let’s take a look at some of the popular diet fads and how they work against you.
Diet as punishment: the compensation diet
Real life example: ‘Compensation diet! What’s that?’ I asked. ‘What?
[shocked, very shocked] You don’t know?’ I did the Indian way of nodding my head for, ‘No, I don’t.’ Now I was at a south Mumbai gym where the
owners where promoting me as a ‘superb nutritionist from the suburbs’.
And the lady who sat across from me was already feeling cheated because she had never thought that she would need to explain ‘a compensation diet’
to a dietician. Fortunately, she was a compassionate socialite. ‘Rujuta, you should know your basics’, she warned. ‘Look, when you overeat and drink the night before, you visit a dietician the next morning and he or she can workout a compensation diet for you. Which means that the next day you eat very little or nothing and workout extra so that you can burn off everything you ate the previous night.’
‘Or,’ she went on, ‘when you know that you have a big party tonight you just don’t eat anything in the day. So you skip lunch but you can have low fat crackers, sukha bhel, tea and coffee, etc so that you can compensate for the night’.
Wow. ‘I knew people did this,’ I said, ‘but I didn’t know it was called the compensation diet’.
‘You are a typical ghat [slang for Maharashtrian with limited or zero IQ
but a big ego],’ she joked.
Now it was my turn to speak. ‘I call it crime and punishment. The crime: overeating. Punishment: deprivation of food. Our relationship with food shouldn’t be about crime and punishment. We all overeat sometimes. So what? Fill it, shut it, forget it. Just get back to your normal workout and eating pattern from the next day. The body doesn’t discriminate and store last night’s calories in some special place so that next day when you kill yourself on the treadmill the body just exclusively burns that. And give yourself more space than this. It’s ok to overeat once in a while, just don’t carry the baggage forever. Get back to your diet plan from NOW.’
‘Maybe you can say that because you can “afford” to eat,’ said the socialite.
‘So can you,’ I assured her.
‘I could die for a body like yours.’
‘Great, but make sure you don’t kill yourself by trying to compensate.
Just get on with life. Just like if you sleep with somebody other than your partner you still get on with married life the next day, right?’
‘You really are a ghat.’
Extreme diets just don’t work: the detox diet Most diets are impossible to keep at because they always advocate something extreme. Besides being difficult to maintain, they’re harmful for you physically and mentally. Let’s talk about one of my all time favourites: the detox, weight loss and maintenance programme.
Oh! I love this one. ‘Detox diet’, the most fashionable term in dieting. So first you accept that everything you have fed your body is toxic, then you become a saint for a week and detox. And how? Using juices of course.
And to punish yourself for being fat you use the yuckiest vegetables and make juices out of them: karela, dudhi, turiya, etc. You gulp them down with the bravery of a Kargil war soldier.
Real life example: Kareena once related a sad incident to me. A friend of hers was desperate to lose weight. She signed up for a programme with a very ‘successful’ dietician cum naturopath doctor who has the reputation of creating ‘magic’ in as little as 15 days. As Bebo and her friends sat at the dining table one day, the friend, who had already ‘successfully’ lost 7 kilos in 10 days, broke down. ‘How,’ she asked Bebo ‘can you eat paneer?’
‘I am losing because I am eating,’ replied Bebo. But by that time her friend was sobbing uncontrollably. She had lost her weight but she had lost her energy and power of reasoning too. And why not? For the last week she had been on a diet of 4 glasses of dudhi juice and 3 oranges a day. What’s worse, to deal with the headaches induced by starvation she had been advised to have 6 cups of tea or coffee. The girl’s mother was obviously upset; her daughter had blacked out twice in that week. But nothing could deter her from this detox diet. The next day the concerned mother called Bebo and asked her to give her daughter her diet secret.
This girl’s diet of course would have to be planned differently from Bebo’s, but one thing was for sure: she had to start eating.
Real life example: One of my clients (before she met me) visited a well known naturopath. The naturopath was popular because everything she recommended was from your kitchen. Of course there was no need to workout. (This is always sold as a special attraction. I think the whole plan is to keep clients dull and lazy.) The detox diet consisted of methi seeds and some kaju draksh soaked overnight and eaten first thing in the morning,
followed by 2 figs, 2 walnuts, 2 pistas and an apple. Lunch was salad and a glass of buttermilk. Dinner was soup and a glass of milk with 4 different dried fruits. (2½ of each, soaked for 2 hrs and made into a paste. Mind you, not in the mixer but hand ground.)
‘Wow!’ I exclaimed. ‘This sure is detox! So do you feel better or do you feel like the peel of a soaked almond?’
‘Exactly,’ exclaimed my client ‘I feel like a peel—wasted and drained, for the last two days.’ Now, dried fruits are great, but eating dried fruits almost exclusively is downright foolish.
So take my word for this: detox, like all other extreme diets, is a sham.
At the end of these diets (they inevitably end) people’s bodies and minds age and their metabolic rate is lower than ever before. So when they get back on the so-called ‘maintenance diet’ (usually similar to what they were eating before they went on the detox) all the fat starts creeping back, making their bodies look ugly (to them), and what it does to their confidence is indescribable. People who have put their bodies through this torture think of themselves as incapable of losing weight. Instead of understanding how much the diet has damaged their system from within they think they are not disciplined (because post crash diet the body goes in a tizzy, demanding calorie rich food), so they deserve to be fat!
Don’t go for diet plans which deprive you of food or make you eat only one type of food. The point is to never regain the weight you have lost. For this to happen you have to understand how your body works and show the commitment to eat the right food at the right time. This is going to be the major focus of this book.
Everything ‘herbal’ is good—really?
Real life example: I met a woman recently, an investment banker, who took great pride in being in one of the top notch positions at one of India’s leading banks. She had a supportive husband and 2 children, 3 years and 8
months old respectively. She had been forced to take a sabbatical after her mother-in-law had told her she could no longer look after her children while she ‘made merry’ at the bank. Though she doesn’t hold anything against her mother-in-law, the banker decided she had to find some way to put her year-
long break to good use. So she looked at her life and decided that the only area she was lacking in was a good body. She did what most sensible people in her position do: joined a gym and went on a diet, under the guidance of an ‘expert’ dietician. She lost all her weight, well most of it: 16 kilos in 6
months. Success story? Well, not quite. Her friends who met her after all this time looked at her and asked why she looked so dull. Her facial skin underwent a huge change, turned a few shades darker and pigmented in a few places, her nails chipped as she tried to open the zip of her Jimmy Choo, and her hair looked dry and coarse (in spite of a 2 week hair spa at one of the best salons in Bandra). She had also developed a little lump in her breast (thankfully non-malignant).
The banker had an analytical mind and was from one of the best business schools in India. But while she tried to understand why she needed to have various nutrient supplements in her diet and what their functions were, she never took the protein shakes and vitamins that her dietician recommended (because she thought the dietician was promoting gym business); however she happily took the herbal medicines because according to her, they are
‘SAFE’.
Everything that is herbal is not necessarily safe. Nicotine and marijuana are herbal too. Regular users can vouch for their ‘health benefits’!
While going on anything remotely herbal make sure that it matches your body constitution. Get the advise of a qualified ayurvedacharya or vaidya before popping pills or swallowing syrups. Ayurveda is a very complex science and it takes more than a lifetime to decipher it. A 3 month course in south India or Thailand doesn’t make you a qualified practitioner, nor does saying vatta, kapha, pitta, or prana (ayurvedic terms) after every sentence, so stay away from the likes of these. (Finding a genuine ayurvedic doctor or vaidya in India is challenging enough; if you live abroad it is going to be next to impossible. I was once served puri, uncooked dal and a distorted version of khichdi as an ayurvedic meal by a high-end New York city yoga centre.)
What went wrong with my banker was that she worked out too much, ate too little and took herbal pills which altered her hormonal balance and thyroid levels. She asked questions about proteins, vitamins, minerals but never once doubted the authenticity of the herbal products.
Everything made in labs is not ‘dangerous or artificial’ and everything that’s herbal is not ‘safe’. In fact a lot of herbal products are made synthetically, in factories, or are cleaned, packaged or purified in factories, making them just as ‘artificial’.
But it’s not about natural or artificial, it’s about knowing that the product you are using is safe for you. And you can know that only by going to the right professional and of course making sure that all your questions (however small or stupid) are answered in layman’s language, with compassion and patience. Tip: carry a list of your questions and a pen or pencil with you. Tick off all questions as they get answered. Do not accept
‘because I am telling you’ as an explanation.
Exercise and dieting are mutually exclusive—no
they aren’t
Real life example: One day the receptionist at the gym where I used to consult came to me with an unusual request. A man had asked to see me, but he didn’t want to go on a diet. He just wanted to talk! The receptionist wanted to check if I was ok with this. ‘How does he look?’ I asked. Was this just a ploy to line maaro me?
‘No, no.’ She assured me. ‘His son is in the 8th standard and is working out in the gym too. He lost his wife recently and just wanted to discuss some health issues with you before committing to a diet.’
‘Alright,’ I told her. ‘If you vouch for him I will see him but only for ten minutes.’ (I had all the time in the world but was zealously learning to be a professional.)
‘Hello madam,’ the old man said. ‘Thanks for seeing me. I just want you to look at me.’ He then asked me what I thought his age was.
Now I was a smart girl and had learnt within months of setting up my consultancy NEVER to answer this question. ‘Well I don’t take guesses, why don’t you tell me your age,’ I said.
‘I am 48.’ Oops! He looked like he was 60. ‘How much do I weigh?’
Another question I had learnt not to answer.
‘I weigh 68 kilos,’ he told me. He looked 88 to 90 kilos to me. Then, he took out a Bombay Times paper cutting from his pocket. He pointed to a large advertisement for a chain of weight loss clinics which had a ‘before’
and ‘after’ picture of a man. ‘Look, that’s me.’
‘Congratulations,’ I managed. He looked like a super star in the pic as compared to what he looked like in reality. He was regarded as an inspiration to all the other clients at the centre, I was made aware, and the weight loss chain was flying him to Delhi to inaugurate their new franchise and hosting him at a five star hotel!
‘That’s great.’ I said. But what did he want from me? ‘I want you to come with me to the changing room and take a look at me.’ What? This was the first time a client had asked to strip in front of me. (But it’s not the only reason why this incident is memorable.) Having been in the fitness industry for over three years I was used to people describing their bodies, sex life, toilet rendezvous, etc in detail to me, but this was a first. I accompanied him to the men’s locker room and he took his clothes off.
Flop! Out fell his stomach, towards his knees. ‘This,’ he held the jiggly wiggly mass in his hands. ‘I want to get rid of this.’ ‘Alright, lets go out and talk,’ I said. I managed to mask my emotions but I felt disgust and sympathy for him at the same time, and with alarming intensity. What had this man done and why?
‘What have you been doing?’ I asked. ‘Well I weighed 116 kilos when I lost my wife a year ago. My son is in the 8th standard and it’s very difficult for me to look after him alone. I am making very good money in my business and I want to remarry because my son needs a mother.’
‘Really?’ I said to myself. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘nobody was going to marry a 116 kilos widower with a teenage son.’ Friends and family asked him to lose weight. So he paid over a lakh at the weight loss centre and enrolled in a 6 month programme where all he had to do was lie down on a table for 20
to 30 minutes daily while painless electric currents worked on him, and go on a crash diet where he ate barely anything the whole day: channa, buttermilk and some dal. To speed up the process, he was asked to go on an hour long walk (no gym of course) every morning and evening, if he wanted faster ‘results’. Then the centre suggested another programme: using firming gels for his belly. But after spending close to half a lakh for
the gels and massage therapy, his stomach still sagged. So the centre suggested a tummy tuck, and asked him to increase the duration of his walks to 1½ hours, twice a day. ‘I have started the walks but am not sure about the tuck. It will cost me a lot, and funnily I don’t actually feel good being at 68 kilos. I always thought I would feel great even if I reached 80
kilos. I have never been so thin all my life, so why do you think I am not looking great after such successful weight loss?’ (Incidentally, he had also lost most of his hair. For which the centre had an oil and massage programme of course, and a weaving programme too: he had signed up for the oil and massage programme already.)
I gave him a lecture on how he had lost all his lean body weight. ‘Your bones must be hollow and your muscles have shrunk. You must start training with weights to rebuild lost muscle and bones. Of course you will need to go very slow. The diet plan that I put you on will be very different from what you have been following and will make you gain some weight.
Are you ok with that?’
‘Yes I am,’ he pleaded, ‘I just need to feel better.’
We ended the conversation with me warning him that he really shouldn’t be walking so much—didn’t he do any work in the day?
‘I have good staff,’ he said. ‘But why do you want me to cut down on the walking?’
‘Because,’ I replied, ‘your weight bearing joints are weak after the crash diet and not strong enough to bear the stresses that three hours of walking would place on them.’ I asked if he really planned to go to the Delhi opening. ‘This weight loss has done you no good.’
‘I have good relationships with everybody at the centre and they have helped me achieve an impossible task [I was just beginning to understand what goes on inside the mind of a fat body] of losing weight so out of gratitude I will go.’
‘But you will fool many others,’ I argued.
‘Yeah but…’
I left it at that.
A week later my receptionist told me that the man had called to cancel his appointment. ‘Rujuta, that man won’t come today. He went for a walk
yesterday morning, tripped over a speed breaker, fell down, and suffered multiple fractures on his arm.’
‘What?’ So here was a man who had just lost a lot of lean weight: lack of exercise reduces neuromuscular control, while not eating in the morning and for long hours during the day reduces blood glucose levels. The combined effect of it all was that just tripping over a speed breaker, which at worst should have bruised his arm, left him with multiple fractures. The only good thing was that he didn’t go for the Delhi opening!
Where is the bravery in losing weight? People with diarrhoea lose weight.
So do people with jaundice, malaria, TB, not to mention cancer and AIDS.
In fact the bigger the disease the faster the weight loss. Because we think that weight loss will make us happy, but we feel only frustrated and older (not wiser) at the end of yet another extreme diet, it comes with a heightened sense of victimisation and betrayal. The minute we are ‘off’ the diet all our weight is back. Please note that this time the weight gain is only in terms of fat weight. So our body composition is now worse than ever. We have lost our muscle and bone density, and our fat weight is higher than what it was when we went on the diet.
A lot of dieticians are popular because they guarantee weight loss without any exercise. So cool na? And some advertisements even top that.
No diet, no exercise, no pills, only weight loss! If you are a regular on the Mumbai local (like me), you must have entertained yourself (with someone treading on your toes, an elbow in your breast and an umbrella poking in your back) by reading one of those ads: ‘No boss, no timing, no paper work, no travel, no selling—earn up to Rs 100,000 per month.’ What do you think of these ads? I think the same about no exercise, no diet, no pills, only weight loss ads.
Any programme which discourages you from exercising is worthless.
Being on a diet might help you lose weight, but without exercise we lose our muscles and bone density. And loss of bone density and muscle is ageing. The human body is designed for continuous activity. The least we can do is give it 30 to 45 minutes of exercise for 3 days a week to keep it in good shape and condition. The body works on one basic principle: use it or lose it. Humans were born with a tail remember? We lost our tail
because we never used it. We might soon lose out on our muscles and bone density, as we just don’t seem to use either of these live tissues.
I hated maths in school. But loved one word: corollary. It’s used in algebra all the time. Ok, so here is the corollary to the above myth: as long as you exercise it’s ok to eat whatever you want. Really think so? Do you think as long as you drive your car it doesn’t matter what you put into it; kerosene, petrol, diesel? (People are always so much smarter about their cars than their bodies.) Nope. Wrong! Now just because I use my body regularly doesn’t mean I should abuse it. So, exercise is a part of adopting a better lifestyle but it is NOT an alternative to eating right. In fact the more people get committed to working out, the more they usually care about how to get the right nutrients to their body.
When you start eating healthy and exercising regularly, you will initially see a drop in your body fat but not as much in your weight. However, when you crash diet, you lose a lot of weight because your lean body weight comes down while your fat body weight remains the same, and sometimes actually increases. Fat occupies a lot of volume on the body and weighs very little. Muscle, is denser, so it occupies much less space but will weigh a lot. (Compare fat to 1 kilo cotton and muscle to 1 kilo iron. Can you see what I am saying? Same weight but big difference in their volume or the space they occupy.) This is why people often look flabby after their ‘diets’.
So stop holding your body for ransom on the weighing scale. Why do you need to know how much you weigh? It is no indicator of health or fitness levels. Know that the higher the amount of lean body weight you carry, the greater your fat burning capacity. Do you really want to go for ‘guaranteed’
weight loss (invariably attacking the LBW) and lose your fat burning abilities?
Why your scales lie
Your body weight is made up of 2 parts: the fat weight and the lean body weight. The lean body weight is the weight of your bones and muscles. The fat weight is exactly what it says it is. Never look at the weighing scales and judge your health. The thing to look at is the fat weight (and how much fat there is in your body, ie the fat percentage) rather than your total body weight. Serena Williams, for example, might have a high body weight (because of her high lean body weight) but has a very low fat percentage. The FTV models might weigh less on the scale and appear skinny but some of them have fat percentages as high as 30%. The
ideal fat percentage should be under 20% for men and under 25% for woman. This is also why you should never judge your health by BMI (body mass index = weight (kg)/height (m)2) because BMI is just about total body weight. BMI doesn’t take into account the contribution of fat weight towards your total weight. (2 people with the same BMI can look drastically different because of the difference in their fat percentages. The person with high fat percentage will look flabby and weak while the one with low fat percentage will look lean and toned.) Measuring body composition
Dual energy X-ray absorptiometry, DXA (previously known as DEXA), is a great way to measure body composition (though this was never its original purpose). It will not just tell you how much body fat you carry, but also the density of your bones (very important to know the conditions of your bones if you want to lead a pain free life and wish to look toned and age gracefully).
The most accurate fat measurement is under water weighing, but that’s complicated and DXA is relatively inexpensive, accessible and quick.
DXA scans are available at most multi specialty hospitals or investigation clinics. All machines have an inherent error and need to be calibrated regularly. So, make sure you measure yourself on the same machine every time (or at least one made by the same manufacturer) to account for mechanical errors, if any.
Body fat table
Description
Women
Men
Essential fat
12 - 15%
2 - 5%
Athletes
16 - 20%
6 - 13%
Fitness
21 - 24%
14 - 17%
Acceptable
25 - 31%
18 - 25%
Obese
32% +
25% +
Note: this doesn’t state your body weight. If less than 25% of your weight is coming from metabolically inactive fat tissue, then whatever your total body weight may be {metabolically active tissues: bone, muscle,
organ, water, etc, (ie everything other than fat) + metabolically inactive tissue, (ie fat)}, that is fine.
One size doesn’t fit all
Real life example: I met an art promoter at a Sunday brunch. Smart, articulate, sensitive, nose pierced, long bandhani skirt with a noodle strap top, flabby arms hidden under a stole (a walking Fab India advertisement) and thick kohl around her sparkling eyes to take attention away from the chubby cheeks.
‘Listen, tell me what to do? Everybody is talking about you these days,’
she said to me, pointing towards the stretch marks which started from her chest and went all the way down her arms, and which she was trying so hard to hide with her stole. ‘I always wanted a body like yours.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. (I always thank.)
‘I do yoga regularly,’ she told me.
‘Superb,’ I remarked.
‘What’s the use?’ she asked, frustrated by my remark. ‘Look at my arms, I would love to wear this without the stole but you know I can’t. I just can’t.’
Once again, I inadvertently found myself slipping into the counsellor’s role. ‘You have got to watch your diet, exercise alone means nothing.’ Ha, now I had gone where I shouldn’t have.
‘Hey, I have tried everything. For the last three months all that I have been eating is papaya in the morning, salad and egg white for lunch, chicken breast and soup for dinner.’ She was turning papaya pink now. ‘I am constipated, frustrated, hungry all the time and I am organising an exhibition next Sunday. So I am neck deep in shit. This is my big daddy of all exhibitions and look at me. I am looking like… like… ’ she searched for words.
‘Stale pizza with all the toppings,’ I said, completing her sentence.
(Thankfully not loudly.) Then, she took her glass of wine and hid it behind her back, and continued, ‘Ok with the exception of this glass of wine I have been very clean. But my weight has not moved, not even by 200 grams.’
(How and why people track weight by grams will remain a mystery to my
mind). Ok now I was in a spot, I had to talk, give my ‘expert opinion’, and everybody at the brunch wanted to listen to it. What do you say to somebody who is so angry and frustrated with her diet and herself?
Anything that you can say is wrong and hopelessly inappropriate.
I put my hands on her shoulders. ‘Relax,’ I gestured.
‘What have I done to myself? Some of my buyers and friends recommended high protein so I went on it ya,’ she said controlling the tears now and doing a damn good job of it.
‘It’s your body, it deserves much more respect than this,’ I said. ‘And I think you are a great looker, you just need to put some zing back into your food and life. I don’t even think that you are fat.’
‘It’s just some 4 to 5 kilos and I want to lose that.’
‘They are always the hardest to lose,’ said one of the onlookers, witnessing this whole drama. (The brunch was successful, everybody had a story to go back with now.)
‘Hey, I need to get water proof kohl,’ said the art promoter, quickly gathering herself. Everybody laughed. Tension eased. Thank God.
My heart goes out to all those who try out everything that appears on the net, glossies and the grapevine. Dieting is not rocket science but it’s a science in itself. Doing random things with food and dieting will always backfire. I really think that we treat our cars with much more respect than we treat ourselves.
This is a very important piece of advice for all my readers: never, ever
‘just try’ diets that your over-enthu friends, clients, etc swear by. It may have worked for them (I doubt it though), but it’s not necessary that it will work for you. People who really care about the diet they are on will always ask you to consult their nutritionist or dietician. When it comes to diets, it’s not one size fits all. Diets needs to be personalised and customised to your needs, fitness levels, exercise frequency, profession, climate, and your tastes in food. What this book aims for is to try and take your present day eating habits and improve them: you are going to have to create your own diet plan. All I’ll do is give you the few ground rules to help you through it.
The truth about low fat and sugar free alternatives
Real life example: ‘Arre kya kar rahe ho? Accha idhar rakh do,’ said Karisma, as she hid a plastic bag behind the sofa she was sitting on.
‘What are you hiding?’ I asked.
‘Nothing ya. Shit, I was sure you would ask.’
‘Show me,’ I gestured.
Sheepishly, she pulled the bag out from behind the sofa. It was overflowing with all the fat free, low fat, sugar free things in the world.
Low fat chips of all varieties; soy, nachni, methi, you name it. Baked chaklis, sugar free drinks aerated and non aerated.
‘Who are you trying to fool?’ I demanded.
‘Nobody, ya. Why these are good of course. All my friends are having it.’
Now in the make up mode, Lolo opened a packet of her baked chaklis and offered them to me. ‘Try Rujuta, you will love them.’
‘Oh come on, you obviously know you are doing something you shouldn’t be, that’s why you were hiding it from me.’
‘Come ya, they are baked.’
So? I took a chakli and handed it to Karisma. ‘Ok, break it. Now, keep the pieces down and look at your finger. What do you see?’
As the sun set on the Arabian Sea it reflected on Lolo’s finger, and something shone on the tips of her fingers. ‘No!! Shit ya!!’
‘Come on, what do you see?’
‘Oil. Yup, fat droplets.’ That, sadly was an abrupt end to her romance with low fat, low sugar, baked products.
Low fat snacks like baked chaklis, fat free ice creams, fibre loaded biscuits, etc are nothing but junk food coated with misinformation and some sharp marketing brain trying to sell them to a gullible audience which will bite onto anything that’s fat free.
Now try a fun experiment. Just look at who is eating the low fat or sugar free variety. You will find that people who are already fat are eating this junk. They would actually be better off eating full fat ice cream, fried
chaklis and cream biscuits. Because at least then you are aware that what you are eating is junk, so you limit the quantity that you consume. And seriously if you have just 1 or 2 chaklis or 1 or 2 cream biscuits once or twice a week, this won’t get in the way of your losing weight. But eating this fat free or sugar free junk daily surely hampers your process of weight loss. No wonder then that all people buying fat free or sugar free junk are struggling to lose weight.
So should you not eat them at all? Of course you can eat them, but eat them knowing that they are just as harmful as the full fat, full sugar, fried items. Sometimes even more. Karisma confessed that she was dabaoing the chips and chaklis thinking they were healthy and could never make her fat.
Similarly, when we eat these products, we invariably don’t exercise caution because they are low fat. But low fat doesn’t mean it won’t convert to body fat. Also, most low fat foods are barely 1 or 2 grams lower in fat than full fat versions.
The worst thing is that most of these products use trans fat, which provides the right texture to food, makes it last longer and at the same time make you fatter and clog your arteries; also making you prone to heart diseases.
If you must eat chakli or chips make them at home and fry them.
You will use good oil and eat your goodies hot, so they will taste better and also be nutritious. Since this is a long process you will land up doing this may be once a fortnight or once a month. Baked products, on the other hand, can be easily bought and stored so you have access to them almost daily. The choice is yours: get rid of repackaged junk food from your house.
The bitter truth about sweeteners
Should you be replacing sugar with a sweetener? Especially if you are diabetic or trying to lose weight? The answer clearly is NO. Why? Isn’t it calorie free, a blessing for diabetics, and a great way to maintain a good figure? Yes, if you believe the marketing and advertising surrounding these sweeteners. No, if you are asking me to be straight up.
Sugar free chocolates, sugar free mithais, sugar free drinks, and almost every product that has the suffix diet attached to it has these sweeteners; as in most ‘diet’ drinks, ‘diet’ ice cream, diet yogurt, the list is endless.
While I was writing this book at Costa, I discovered yet again how most fat people asked for ‘sweetener’ over sugar and then had the sugar loaded biscotti which came free with the coffee, sometimes even asking for another helping. This is exactly what sweeteners do; they
make your drink, yogurt, tea or coffee, etc zero on calories. This confuses the body, which demands calorie dense food almost immediately. Do you see the connection: diet drinks (free refills, sometimes) with calorie dense pizza and burger; biscuit with tea or coffee? Are you trying to avoid calories or fast carbs here? Clearly you are not succeeding, because you land up eating not just high glycemic index carbs, but also trans fats, and that’s a lethal combination.
In all fairness, one time use of a sweetener will not harm you, but regular use is like a slow mo (sadistic) way of harming your body. (Another way of punishing ourselves for being fat?) Regular use of all sweeteners is associated with certain type of cancers, thyroid malfunction, memory loss, acidity, obesity, etc. And really, 1 to 2 teaspoons of sugar (even regular use) is not going to harm you as much as the sweetener.
Is it really so difficult to understand (and accept) that the only way to lose body fat is to eat right and at the right time, and to exercise regularly? No pill or powder, much less sweetener, can burn body fat or miraculously melt your fat away. Use your brains, stop living in the bubble.
So aspartame or no aspartame, get that sweetener out of your tea. All sweeteners will help you in only one way: in gaining weight.
All food is good
Glorifying or demonising any food item might be glamorous (and bread and butter) to many, but it’s just not correct to do so.
A lot of ‘experts’ think fruits are great and will recommend that you have loads daily. Many of you must have been advised that instead of a dessert post dinner you are better off eating fruits. I know families who routinely cut apples post dinner and eat them thinking that it’s the best thing they can do. Among fruits too, some are deemed evil and some angels. Almost all dieticians in India tell you that bananas, custard apples, chickoos and grapes are fattening, and orange, papaya, watermelon are low fat. Sometimes, when a myth has been around long enough it becomes the truth. Like the jhoppad pattis in Mumbai. Illegal—yes. Land grabbing—of course. But if they are around long enough, the slum dwellers own the land and politicians fight to get them legal status, water, electricity, ration card, etc.
Cut to fruits. Updating ourselves with the latest developments in nutrition science is something all of us nutritionists owe to ourselves and our clients.
A few years ago, it was discovered that fructose (the sugar we get from fruits) gets converted to triglycerides (especially when eaten on a full stomach), a type of fat which circulates in our blood stream. High levels of
triglycerides are responsible for heart disease, insulin insensitivity and of course lead to bigger fat cells. And our body is truly secular: it treats all fructose equally. It doesn’t matter which fruit you eat, it will surely give you fructose. So eat your fruit, but don’t think that it’s safer than eating a dessert. Its nutrients only work for us if we eat it at as a meal by itself: as a morning meal or after exercise, and not as a dessert after dinner.
Juices
We have teeth and gums which are meant for chewing food. Making a juice out of vegetables and fruits (no matter how fresh the fruit, or how expensive your juicer) robs you of all their vitamins and minerals. And even if you retain the fibre or add the fibre back to your juice, you have destroyed its structure. You are now drinking coloured water which has lost its nutrients; because the surface area of the fruit has increased, and exposure to the air and surroundings has already oxidised its nutrients. Fruits contain antioxidants. Ideally, they should get oxidised in your body and not outside it.
Eating a fruit is a better bet any day. It retains all the vitamins and minerals, chewing it provides a nice massage to your gums, and the fibre works at cleaning out your cavities. When it comes to fruit—eat, don’t drink.
The other example is soy. There was a time when soy was the ‘it’ food, the miracle cure for everything from mood swings, weight gain and heart disease. There was such a soy craze that one doctor slash dietician made a killing selling everything from soy chakli to soy atta, soy cake, soy biscuits, soy milk, soy curd, soy water, etc. Did people lose weight? Of course they did, drastic amounts. But then some of the people who had been on this plan for a long time started developing medical conditions. They suffered from stretch marks, high triglyceride levels, depression, even cancer. Then everybody was quick to blame soy. This was about the same time there were reports linking soy to breast cancer. The problem here is that we have lost our ability to see things in totality. The clients suffered from this condition not because of soy but because they cut all other nutrients from their diet. They received no nutrition from any other food groups because they were overdoing the very healthy soy.
There is still no concrete evidence linking soy to breast cancer, but what is beyond doubt is that cancer is more likely in people with stress, little or
no exercise, and whose diets are poor in nutrients but rich in calories.
Have you ever bought a car or bike? Or you must have at least seen ads which claim a mileage of 14 kilometres per litre for a new car. But when you buy the car and start driving, it gives you 10 kilometres per litre. You are still happy right? Because we use a lot of common sense with our car. If the ad says 14, then we know 10 is good. We all understand what the *
which says ‘under lab conditions’, means. Under lab conditions you can prove almost anything you fancy. But what happens to your research in real life is a different story altogether.
So, use your common sense before you start replacing all your regular meals with just soy or papaya, or whatever the in thing is.
Whether we are talking about fruits or soy or some other miracle food, one thing is for sure: if there are reports glorifying it today, in a couple of years there will be reports of it harming you. What is your option? Eat according to the latest flavour of the season? Nope, the only logical solution is to use the magical word: MODERATION. And, of course, common sense. If soy is great, use it but be careful not to replace everything with soy. Have it judiciously, maybe one serving a day, and talk to your body and stomach. If your body is taking to it nicely, stay with it. If not, forget it.
To summarise: there is really nothing like ‘safe food’ or ‘fattening food’. Everything that you eat judiciously, at the right time and in the right quantity, is good for you. All foods provide us with specific nutrients which play a unique role in our body or metabolism. When we demonise one food type or glorify another, we completely miss the point.
I’ll talk about this much more deeply in ‘What to eat’, where I dissect all the 5 major nutrients for you. Hopefully by the end of this book you’ll understand that all foods help us burn fat—even fat.
What’s the solution?
So the best solution is to never go on a diet. Seriously. If I am saying this as a dietician, I either have gone bonkers or I am talking about some groundbreaking gene therapy. But it’s none of the above. The reality is that for permanent changes in your body and to stay lean all your life (or even
bikini-ready), you have to make sure that you never ‘go’ on a diet. Get the diet to grow on you instead. In other words, modify your lifestyle, ie eat right, exercise and think right about yourself. Crash dieting is like a fling with a bad boy (even when you are in it, you know it’s not going to work long term); and modifying your lifestyle is like being in a loving and committed relationship (it might get boring sometimes, but it’s the key to your mental and physical wellbeing). Trust me, adopting a healthy lifestyle is not as difficult as staying loyal in a marriage or loving your partner for a lifetime. It’s much more difficult because it means unconditional love and acceptance of your own self and of your body.
I believe that people gain weight and then punish themselves with extreme diets because of an unhealthy attitude towards their bodies and towards food. In fact I interview any new client for 2 to 2½ hours before I plan their diets with them, because I believe that before they can change their eating habits they need to change their thinking—and for that I need to know how their minds work.
In Don’t lose your mind, lose your weight, I will look at the way we all fall into the wrong eating patterns and false conceptions of what food is good and bad for us. In fact, I hope that when you get to the end of this book you’ll realise that there is no such thing as right or wrong food. It all depends on how and when we eat it. You can actually eat your aloo parathas and not worry about the weight gain. All you really need to do is relearn how to eat, know how your body works and follow the four easy principles that I think are the cornerstone of correct eating.
Through the next few chapters my endeavour is to educate you about the different kind of nutrients and their functions in our body, how to manipulate their quantity to adjust to your lifestyle, and how to get a lean and toned body.
Cheat sheet
• Don’t ever go on extreme diets—they’re not sustainable and just don’t work.
• Dieting should not involve starving yourself: you must eat to lose weight.
• Don’t make angels and demons out of different foods: they’re all just as good or bad for you.
• Just as everyone is different, everyone’s diets have to be different too. Don’t try someone else’s regime.
• Make sure you know what’s in low fat or sugar free foods; they aren’t all that healthy, and shouldn’t be consumed in excess.
• Exercise is non-negotiable. Unless you exercise, you’ll never see enough of a result, despite all your good eating habits.
• Never go on a diet: modify your lifestyle.
How to eat: relearn
Know thy stomach
Ok, what do we know about our heart? We know that it’s the size of our fist, and it’s located inside our chest, slightly to the left side. It provides blood to the entire body. Also when we don’t exercise or gain weight, our heart experiences stress. Fine, good enough. Now what do we know about our lungs? That they are inside our ribs and smoking can harm them. And regular exercise can improve their health. They provide O2 to the body and throw out CO2. Great.
Now, what do we know about our stomach? Do we know the size of our stomach? Its location? What it does for us? What can harm it? Surprisingly, though our stomach is an involuntary organ just like our heart and lungs, not too many of us seem to know much about our stomachs. We can guess that it is somewhere roughly between our chest and hips, that it is separate from the intestine (made up of the large and small intestine: the large is actually small and the small is large, almost 4000 square metres in area).
Why do we pay so little attention to our stomach? Is it because it never attacks us? We have all heard of heart attacks but stomach attacks? No. Our stomach never seems to attack us. (The word heart attack also is a misnomer. The heart is working for us from the time we are in our mother’s womb. It is in fact one of the first organs that is developed, somewhere around the 6th week of pregnancy. The heart that we owe our life to cannot possibly attack us. But we definitely attack it with our habits, eating, lack of activity and exercise, etc. And then like the case of ulta chor kotwal ko daante, we call it heart attack.)
I think we care so little about our stomachs and digestive system because any amount of abuse to it doesn’t lead to our death. At the most it’s a week off from work. I know people whose stomachs are always crying out loud
for attention with acidity, bloating, constipation, burps, farts, nausea, etc.
But they are just not bothered to listen to its signals. Antacids, salts and laxatives have become a way of life for these people, almost a daily ritual.
Heard the term, ‘stomach an insult’? We actually share a very abusive relationship with our stomachs. We eat all the junk in the world and then go on a ‘detox’ holiday. We come back from the detox holiday and get back to junk eating with a vengeance. Worse still, we go on crash diets consisting only of juices with guaranteed weight loss and then gain all the weight (sorry, double) back in 2 weeks flat. Some others let their body weight yo-yo as a way of life. Wedding? Party? Get thin. Over—get fat again.
Why do we do this to ourselves? Do we really hate ourselves so much?
On the surface we do seem to care for ourselves. We wear good clothes, go for that manicure, get ourselves the best car and house that our money can buy, expect love and respect from our partners, etc. But if we love ourselves so much, why do we abuse that integral part of our system which provides us with love and nourishment; our digestive system?
If we want to get toned, muscular and popular, fit into that little black dress, have no stretch marks or be bikini ready 24/7, then we need to establish a good relationship with our stomach. One of mutual love and respect.
Loading the stomach when it has no capacity to digest is criminal. It’s a human rights violation. Our lifestyles, where we eat nothing until evening and then start loading our stomachs for dinner, are just wrong. Its like hiring people for a 9 am to 5 pm job and giving them little or no work till 5pm—
and then, just as they are about to leave from work, loading them with all the files and work in the world. You don’t need me to tell you that these kinds of bosses receive no love or respect from the staff. Not that such a boss loves or respects the staff either. Such behaviour just leads to loss of productivity, time, creativity and basically loss of health of the organisation.
Truth about antacids
Eat too much at one time or keep long gaps between 2 meals and you will want to reach out for that antacid. So what’s wrong with your antacid? Actually what’s wrong with you, especially if you need it almost daily?
Other than eating too much or having too big a gap between meals (which itself becomes a cause of overeating): stress (another cause of overeating: oh, comfort food), spicy food, harsh medication, in short hurry, worry, and curry, will cause heartburn, burping, constipation, bloating and everything in between.
The ingredients of an antacid, including magnesium and aluminium, produce a laxative effect (washing off the good bacteria from your intestines, which can further aggravate your digestion problems), lead to hormonal imbalance, frequent urination, loss of appetite, dehydration and mood disorders too.
Reaching for that salt, capsule, syrup to treat your symptom yet again? Give a thought for the cause and start eating right. It’s never too late.
Extrapolate this to our eating habits. As the sun goes down, so does our digestion and assimilation ability. And we give our stomach no work and therefore no nourishment during the day. Its ability to digest food is highest between 7 am to 10 am, and many of us give it chai, coffee, cigarettes instead. Thus we actually work at making our stomachs dull and our digestive enzymes weak. We barely grab our lunch, and generally eat light till 5 pm. After that, as the stomach starts winding down and wants to rest, we load it with bhel puri, sev puri, grilled sandwiches, some more tea, coffee and cigarettes. Later between 9.30 and 11.30 pm, when the stomach is already tired and sick after the evening’s snack attack, we give it a heavy dinner of pasta or rice with sabzi and chapati, and of course our favourite dessert. (Because dessert tastes best with dinner and we eat a lot for dinner because that’s the only time the entire family eats together. That the centre of attraction during dinner is our darling TV is another story.) And so our stomach takes this abuse and ill treatment day in and day out, for years together. Then if it calls out to us for help by bloating, farting or burping, we think it is weak and not behaving well! And to suppress its cries of help we use antacids and laxatives.
Some go one step further and eat antacids and salts with their meals thinking they are nipping the revolt at the bud. Smart advertising professionals have made some interesting ads encouraging this behaviour.
Remember the one where the son-in-law cannot eat beyond 4 or 5 laddoos, which are thrust upon him? Out comes the magic effervescent salt. Like a true hero he gulps them down and readies his stomach for more onslaughts.
‘Ab sasural jaane ka koi tension nahi.’ Wow, this son-in-law is every mom-in-law’s dream come true because he dabaos everything that she cooks for him.
There have been times when during my meetings, my clients burp and I can write the entire diet recall down myself. The burp smells of samosa, kadhi, bhaji, everything. It’s all just sitting there undigested for the world to smell. Some wise person rightly said, why fart and waste, when you can burp and taste? If you eat at a time when there are hardly any digestive juices being secreted, when the stomach has lost its power of digestion, when there is no prana (life force) in the stomach and when the mind is distracted, how can you expect food to get digested properly? And instead of the constant onslaught of antacids and laxatives, shouldn’t you just learn to eat right and at the right time?
US bombed Afghanistan and Iraq, which created much more damage than any good. After that it wants to send aid to both these countries. No wonder the Afghanis, Iraqis and the Muslim world at large hates America.
Make up your mind, America. Either stop bombing them or stop the aid.
And chances are that once the bombing stops, they won’t need the aid either. In the same way, if your overeating stops you won’t need any digestion aid.
Fasting: yoga’s take
Fasting is a powerful tool as a spiritual practice, but nowadays is used mainly as a weight loss tool by ‘experts’. It is recommended by ‘health experts’ as a form of rest for the digestive system. Have you ever thought of giving your heart a rest? No? Then why think of the digestive system as something that needs rest? The digestive system, like the heart, is an involuntary system (designed for continuous activity), and to keep it in a relaxed state what we need to do is eat a little at a time. Yoga is, in fact, counter to some people’s beliefs, against any extremes; including fasts. And of what use is a fast when all you think about is food?
According to yoga the mind and body are interlinked. So even if you think about food and eating, you will see immediate effects in the physical body. This means that even thinking of chocolate pastry can lead to weight gain!
Overeating and overeating threshold
According to ayurveda, overeating is the cause of all diseases. Overeating can be defined as eating more than the body’s ability to digest at that point of time. It doesn’t simply mean eating the wrong foods, or eating too much. If the stomach lacks the fire or the power to digest at a particular time, then even a slice of an apple will amount to overeating. So overeating doesn’t just mean eating a large quantity of food, it means eating that food at the wrong time.
Agastya Muni, one of the highly revered seers of India, once drank the entire ocean! You can actually eat all you want but you need to have the power to digest it. This means that your digestive fire should be active and efficient. You can keep the fire active through a disciplined lifestyle, regular exercise and optimistic attitude. Our basic problem today is that our digestive capacity (or fire) is diminishing and our consumption is increasing.
The overeating threshold is a very very thin line. That gap between eating the right amount and overeating is crossed by just one mouthful, bite or spoonful. It’s crucial to be very aware of this threshold because once you cross this laxman rekha, then you can go on and on and on. Your senses go numb and you can eat up to 5 to 6 times your stomach’s capacity. Obviously you know the inevitable consequence of this: you wake up dull, tired, bloated, and irritable the next morning. Sorry, forgot to mention this, but it’s also a foolproof way of gaining body fat.
Let me give you two examples of how we often cross the overeating threshold without realising.
Example 1. Last night I had a friend over for dinner and we had a simple, wholesome meal of dal, paneer sabzi and roti. My friend had finished her meal, but I wanted another half piece of roti. My maid served the remaining half to my friend so as not to waste it. Priya didn’t want to eat anymore but she ate that extra half without thinking and just like that, she crossed her overeating threshold. Often, we ask for that extra helping of our favourite dal or chicken curry although we know internally that we’ve finished our meal. And every time we do this, we’ve crossed our laxman rekha. Women often gain weight when they get married. It’s because eating with someone else leads us to exceed our usual capacity, although most brides are quite unaware of this change because they’re still eating less than their husbands.
Example 2. You are at the Marriot or Grand Hyatt or at some wedding and a huge buffet is laid out in front of you. When you look at the delicious food all around you, you can’t help wondering how anybody could ever do justice to this fabulous spread. But you start off by being good, picking up only the salads, sabzis, and a few grilled or tandoor items, at the most half a roti or some pasta. As you get done with your food, one of your friends comes by with some yummy looking dessert on his plate. You are absolutely full and not feeling like it, but the dessert looks too yummy and the expression on your friend’s face proves it. So you decide to have just a teeny weenie bite from your friend’s plate. Ummm… it’s delicious. You are experiencing a sensory overload and now you have crossed the laxman rekha. You find yourself marching towards the dessert counter. You help yourself to 3 or 4 desserts and of course a whole piece of that yummy looking pastry. Back at your table, you gobble down all of the desserts on your plate.
The sensory overload and deep sense of pleasure in the example lasts only for a while. What remains is the deep sense of guilt and shame at not stopping at that half piece of kaju katri or pastry. But when you ate that half piece, you had already crossed the overeating threshold. Everything after that happens so fast that you don’t get the chance to stop or to apply your analytical mind and reasoning. It’s like an accident. You can see the damage but you don’t know what exactly happened.
The only way to avoid these diet accidents is by learning to observe our feelings and accepting them. So in situations like this, accept that you get tempted by pastries or kaju katri but refrain from actually eating them. No half piece or small bite, because after that it’s just a downward spiral. Sadly, in spite of repeated experiences we simply refuse to learn from our past.
Tip: don’t store sweets or fried foods at home. You might be gifted mithai and the like at festival time. After completely enjoying 1 or 2 pieces, give these away to friends, family, share it at office, give it to your watchman, bai, etc.
Post tip: don’t always dump your excesses on one person. Choose different people for charity. But get those things out of your sight and reach.
Eating as a way to overcome boredom or entertainment Watching a movie? Eat popcorn. Stuck in a party with nobody interesting? Nibble on the deep-fried starters. Bored of eating the same old dal, sabzi, roti? Call for a pizza. Not happy with your sex life? Eat a pastry. Too often we use food as a crutch to overcome boredom or as a distraction from our deep rooted fears or feelings. This is also what girly magazines call
‘comfort food’. Food, or the act of eating, is the most primitive form of comfort, but we need to understand that food is about providing nourishment to the body and not about overcoming boredom or stale relationships. And have you noticed that when you eat food as entertainment or as a distraction from some niggling thought, it’s always something that is calorie dense, extremely sweet or extremely salty?
And no, your boredom or thoughts don’t go away after eating that pastry or chips, in fact they are still very much there. So what are you going to do? Reach for another one?
Real life example: Siddharth, my cousin, had gained notoriety amongst family and friends for eating till he almost choked. And he would eat everything from paneer tikkas, Schezwan rice, puri bhaji, dal, rice, noodles, you name it. He would stuff himself till he was full, his body chock-a-block from mouth to anus. After eating he would feel dull, slothful, tired, sleepy.
He suffered from regular migraine attacks, and had observed that if he went hungry migraine would set in. So he took to stuffing himself to prevent migraine and this only made it worse (of course). He wouldn’t be able to focus on work and would lose out on the entire day. Siddharth is a workaholic by the way, so anything other than losing a day’s work would have been acceptable. He had joined his father’s business and had taken it to another level altogether. But along with that he took his waist, body weight and cholesterol levels sky high too.
Last year, the news that he was about to have his second child, spurred him to seriously do something about his weight. And because I was now his favourite star’s (KK’s) dietician, he took me seriously as well. He choked with emotion when I told him he could continue having his rotis with ghee, cheese, paneer, paratha, koki and sindhi kadhi (married to a Sindhi, he loves the stuff).
I got Siddharth to start eating more slowly, and to serve himself smaller portions, the rule being that he served himself half of what he would normally eat. Then I got him to follow my 4 principles, and eat small meals every 2 hours. So Siddharth went from overeating to eating just right. (Men are blessed. They have loving wives who go all the way to support them in
their diet and workout routines. Shalu, Siddharth’s wife, packed 6 dabbas a day and instructed the driver, bai and office boy to remind sahib, every 2
hours, to eat. And she did all this through her pregnancy, that too with a two year old son to take care of).
And what a journey that was. From no workout at all to working out three times a week, 2 mammoth meals a day to 7 light meals a day, 98 kilos to 82 kilos, 38 inches to a 30 inch waist, Siddharth has come a long way and so have his eating habits. Today he is the most energetic dad for his lovely boys, much more successful in his business, and most importantly has lost all interest in overeating. Friends and family can’t believe what they are seeing when they see him stopping at 2 chapatis. ‘I just can’t eat more than this,’ he confesses, ‘my stomach’s shrunk!’
Learning to train your stomach
Is it possible to shrink your stomach? Yes, it is. But for that, just like Siddharth, you have to relearn your eating habits.
What’s the biggest thing that we have to learn? The biggest lesson that we have to learn is to stop eating before reaching the overeating threshold.
Now the question is, how do we stop before we reach the overeating threshold? And how do we recognise it?
The overeating threshold is different for different people. And even in the same person it changes with age, stress, exercise, time of the day, season, etc. But no, it’s not complicated to find your own threshold. You won’t need a blood, urine or stool test.
The secret to staying within the threshold is to have more small and frequent meals (more on that in Chapter 4, ‘The 4 principles of eating correct’) like Siddharth. But what do we mean by small? The stomach is actually the size of 2 palms. The food it can take at a time is the amount that fits in your 2 palms. Have you seen pictures of Buddhist and Jain monks, cupping their hands together for alms and food? Well, in an ideal world, that’s the amount of food our stomach should take in at a time. By constantly eating beyond our capacity, however, we stretch the stomach and take in more food than it can digest. This is why I advocate small, frequent meals. Give the stomach a dose of what it needs. When it’s finished
digesting, give it some more. You’re still giving your stomach plenty of food; you’re simply lengthening the process of feeding yourself. Siddharth was still eating a lot and not giving up any of his favourite foods, but by cutting the quantities down and eating through the day, he had cut down on the overeating.
However, most of us may not be able to stick to the ideal measure of food, at least not initially. Also, often we are at restaurants and parties and can’t always control the amount we get on our plates. And as I’ve said, your threshold will vary depending on your phase in life. So the key to staying within your threshold is to be attentive while you eat. Savour every bit of what you eat, slowly and mindfully, and you will naturally find your threshold. All you need to train yourself to do, is to be attentive to your stomach.
Look at the process of eating. It’s about you picking up food with your hands and taking it towards your mouth and chewing on it, and then taking it further inwards into your stomach, from where it travels to your intestines. There the food is churned and whatever is useful is picked up and transported to the cells of the body and what is not is taken to the rectum and pushed out of the system. We all learnt this in school.
So, eating is a process of internalisation. If eating employs one of our sensory organs, the tongue, shouldn’t the other senses support this essential process? We have five organs that decide the reactions of our five senses: the eyes, tongue, nose, ears and skin. Sight, taste, smell, hearing and touch.
These are the tools we are meant to employ to understand and gain knowledge about ourselves. Instead we employ them to distract ourselves from doing just that. We use them all the time to focus on the external world. Eyes watch TV, ears listen to voices on the phone or a speaker, skin touches the fork, spoon, keyboard or remote control, and the tongue is distracted by the salty and sweet taste in the food. We remain numb to the other tastes in the food.
We have to learn to experience mitahar. What’s that? Mitahar loosely translated means sweet food or diet. Mita: sweet and ahar: food, diet or meal. According to me, the real meaning of the word dieting is mitahar.
No, I am not saying that you should be eating desserts, pastries, chocolates and mithai. What I am saying is that eating should always lead
to a ‘sweet’ feeling. In the manner in which you exclaim, ‘Oh such a sweet boy’ or ‘Oh, that’s so sweet’; which means that my experience with this boy, girl, or thing has been pleasant. Similarly we have to learn to eat only to a point where our experience with food is sweet or pleasant, and when our body still feels light and fresh.
To experience this ‘sweetness’ or mitahar we will need to employ all our senses: tongue, nose, eyes, ears and skin. So you can’t enjoy your favourite serial or catch up with friends abroad while eating. Your eyes have to watch the colours of your meal: the green in the sabzi, the red in the fruit, the yellow in the dal, the light brown of the chapati. The nose must be tuned to the aroma of the food, the skin should feel the texture of the food (oops, can’t use your spoon then), ears should listen to the silence you observe while eating, and the tongue should open up to all the tastes in the food. Our brain takes time to tell us that we’ve eaten enough. And by the time we get the signal, we have usually eaten beyond our capacity. Experiencing food slowly—the essence of mitahar—keeps us in touch with our brain and our body. And it means we’ll automatically stop when we’ve reached the threshold.
Hey, it’s really not half as complicated as it sounds. Ok, let’s try again.
Eyes watch the colours of food, nose smells the aroma of food, skin feels the texture of food through your fingers, ears listen to the silence and the tongue opens up to the various tastes in the meal. Not convinced?
Ok, remember the time when you started to learn how to drive. A smelly, Rangeela inspired, Aamir Khan-wannabe driver sat next to you in a khatara car with extra brakes and clutch. Then he said in ‘English’: ‘Newton, press clutch, first gear mein dalo, dheere dheere accelerator dabao aur ab dheere dheere clutch chhodo’. Ah, you tried and tried but every time you let go of the clutch ‘dheere dheere’, either the engine would shut down or the car would race about five metres and come to a grinding halt. About 8 days at the most and you start driving the car like makhan. Leaving the clutch and pressing the accelerator seems like a no brainer now. But in the first week of driving class of course we all suffer self doubt and are in awe of people who change gears faster than they change their clothes. ‘Ah, will I ever be able to drive like that? Go from third to second on a speed breaker?’ But before you know you have left the so called good drivers behind. Now
driving has become second nature to you. You can listen to loud music (it’s illegal though), type an email on your Blackberry, touch up your makeup, and sip your coffee while driving. But in the early days, when you were still learning, even if the cell phone rang you felt nervous, right?
It’s pretty much the same with mitahar. Initially you have to eat in isolation and focus all your senses just on eating. You need this because you have to experience mitahar, that sweet experience with food, and learn to stop at that. Pretty much like the way you learn to stop at the sweet noise your engine makes when it’s purring, beyond which you don’t press the accelerator and let go of the clutch. Then, the car runs nice and smooth.
Guidelines
Before eating:
• Switch off your phone, TV and computer.
• Wash your hands (use a soap).
• Serve yourself half of what you usually eat, on a nice, clean plate.
• Preferably adopt the crosslegged posture or sit at your usual dining place.
While eating:
• Drink a glass of water.
• Start eating (preferably with your hands) and eat slowly.
• Chew your food slowly and deliberately.
• Use the entire mouth and don’t just chew from 1 side of your jaw.
• While you still have food in your mouth don’t pick up the food from your plate (Keeping food ready in your hands or on your spoon means you are eating fast and will ultimately overeat.)
• Eat with all your senses and think about how the food is nourishing you from within.
• Now if you want to eat some more, serve yourself a second helping from the other half that’s left. But don’t eat it all.
• Don’t be in a rush to get up and get going. Stay where you are for a few minutes.
• If you’re clearing up yourself, pick up your plate and clean it with water before leaving it in the sink. (Food that dries up on the plate will sometimes stay on the plate even after washing, and can cause stomach discomfort at a later point.)
Babies and Mitahar
Babies always instinctively know the right amount to eat and when to stop. Not just that, their feeding times are like clockwork. Ask any mother of a newborn. Babies will always wake up at their regular times, whether at 2 am or 6 am. They never seem to miss their meal timing, no matter how inconvenient it gets for their mother. And once they have had the right amount, they won’t take even a sip more. If the mother continues to hold her baby by her breast after feeding, the baby will start suckling, playing or biting, but will never drink a drop more than it requires. And a change in a baby’s feeding times only signifies that it is ill or uncomfortable.
This is how you experience mitahar. It’s a good idea to learn to do this alone for the first few days, till you get the hang of it. And once you do it over and over again, the body learns to do it like a reflex action. Like driving, this too is about practice and regular practice will take you towards perfection. So you will, in time, be able to stop at the mitahar point even while eating in places with loud music, or while putting your point across during lunch meetings, while chatting with a group of friends, while picking up your food with a fork, chopstick, spoon, etc and while staring at presentations, TV, laptop, etc. (I don’t recommend eating in such situations though as this obviously amounts to abusing the art you have developed, and should be kept to a bare minimum).
Leaving food on your plate
We have all grown up believing that leaving food on our plate is bad manners and an insult to food itself. A lot of times we ‘finish’ food on the plate even if we are no longer interested in it and even after our stomach is full (crossing the overeating threshold yet again). Leaving food behind on your plate will not be an insult to the millions who go hungry every night (when you come from a poverty stricken country like India, this is another association attached to not
eating all your food, along with that of bad manners and insulting food). Overstuffing your stomach has not helped the poor (it never will) and it definitely doesn’t help you.
A fit person is more capable of bringing about a change in society. Feel strongly about millions who go hungry every night? Get yourself in shape and start investing time (not just money) in community projects. And yes, leave food on that plate if you don’t need it. Follow the rules of mitahar, so serve yourself small quantities to start with.
The 5 basic rules to increase nutrient intake
Alright, point noted: we should be eating in silence and while enjoying our own company. Now the next question is, what should we be eating? I will answer that in the next chapter but before I do so here are 5 basic rules for increasing nutrient intake. By nutrients I mean carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins, minerals and of course water. Of these, carbs, protein and fats are called macro nutrients because our body needs them in higher amounts, and vitamins and minerals are called micro nutrients because they are needed in smaller amounts. Also, 70% of our body is water, so this is something that our body needs all the time.
1. Eat food that is prepared fresh. And consume it within 3 hours of cooking. That means you shouldn’t be freezing any food for the next day. Don’t deep freeze cooked food. I know for most of us who work regular hours, it is almost impossible to have fresh food for lunch. But you can stick to this rule for breakfast and dinner. And let’s face it, most of us in India have maids who come home in the morning. We might as well use this luxury.
2. The smaller the number of people the food is prepared for, the better its nutrient level. More the people, the earlier you start to prepare the food, and the greater the quantity of food cooked, the more oil and heat you use. That’s why restaurant food can never be compared to home food. And that’s why, instead of picking up a salad from your favourite salad bar, you should take a tomato and cucumber with you and eat it as your own on the go salad.
3. Eat your vegetables and fruits whole instead of cutting them into pieces, because you lose vitamins from their surface. The larger the
exposed area, the more the loss of nutrients. So eat a full apple, pear or plum, etc, and don’t chop it into pieces. If it’s a big fruit like melon or papaya which you simply have to cut, carve it into big pieces instead of pieces that you eat with your fork. So, hold the big piece in your hand and chew on it and literally let the juices flow. Messy but oh so satisfying. In the case of vegetables, don’t store them cut. Never ever buy the pre-packed cut vegetables and fruits in the supermarkets. It’s like buying food that’s gone to rot. What’s more, you’re wasting all the packaging which comes along. (And please don’t kill fruits in a juicer or mixer and pulp them into a juice. Not even if you retain the fibre.
See box on fruit juices.)
4. Remain loyal to your genes and eat what you have been eating since childhood. If you are a Punjabi eat your paratha, as a Tamilian eat your idli, etc. Right from the time you’re in your mother’s womb, your body is used to eating, digesting and assimilating certain foods.
Almost everyone except a Punjabi will complain of a bad stomach after chole. There are two reasons for this: a) non Punjabis don’t cook chole as well and b) they lack enzymes required for breaking down chole. Most of us now eat food of all kinds, it’s being part of our global village. But try and eat at least one meal daily that reflects your own genes. My editor is Bengali and has grown up on her maacher jhol and bhaat. Yet now she lives in Delhi and eats north Indian khana.
I’ve told her she has to try and have more fish and rice because that’s what her genes know and love.
5. As much as possible, eat local produce and seasonal food. Climate, altitude, humidity, wind, soil quality, etc influence our digestive system and foods that grow locally. Ayurveda recommends tweaking your diet, habits and lifestyle according to the ritu, or season. Kareena ate momos in Ladakh and they helped her lose weight because Ladakh is dry, windy, cold and at an altitude of 3500 metres. If she ate the same momos in aamchi Mumbai which is humid, hot, and at sea level, she would have become fat. Mangoes are great in the summer. Eat them just once a day as a mini meal in themselves, and they will give you a season’s supply of antioxidants. Store them in your fundu fridge
for rains and you won’t enjoy them as much; they won’t taste half as good and would have lost most of their nutrients.
And the 6th rule—a calm state of mind
Real life example: My yoga mate, Prema (Stephanie is her ‘mundane’
name, she’s an investment banker from Paris) and I decided to make a pilgrimage to Gangotri in the Himalaya, after our 2 week long Sadhana intensive course at the Sivananda Ashram in Netala, near Uttarkashi. For 2
weeks, we had spent almost 9 hours daily in intense yoga practices, and had led a very disciplined life at the ashram.
As both of us drove towards Gangotri, about 100 kilometres away from the ashram, we stopped at Harsil, 30 kilometres before Gangotri. Now Harsil is considered to be the most beautiful valley in the Indian Himalaya and is one of my all time favourite places. As we made arrangements for a night’s stay, breaking journey, we chanced upon one of the thousands of apple trees that grew in Harsil. It was the end of September, so the trees were in full bloom. The apple tree was full of ripe and red fruit, and covered with deep green leaves. It stood by a refreshing, bubbly stream, against the clear blue skies and snow-capped peaks of the Himalaya. I saw women sitting under the trees cutting apples and drying them to make chutney. ‘Do you sell apples?’ I asked one of them. She nodded yes. ‘How much?’
‘Twenty rupees for one kilo,’ she demanded. We were so happy that they were selling apples that we bought a kilo each. One of the women washed 2
apples in the stream and gave them to us to eat (complimentary, as we had bought 2 kilos).
I dug my teeth into the apple… ooh, ahh… It was so crisp and so juicy, and it melted in my mouth. I felt something run down my elbow, and as I opened my eyes to see what it was (I had never eaten an apple so lush that its juice trickles down till the elbow) I saw Prema’s face. Her face wore the same expression of bliss that mine was probably wearing. If there is God then we had experienced God in that apple.
After some time, Prema managed to break the silence. We promised each other that if we experience anything like this, we would let each other know, no matter where we were. I know in my heart that this was an
experience of a lifetime. Chances of experiencing something even remotely similar are, well, remote!
I bet both of us absorbed every nutrient that the apple had to offer. We had followed all the basic rules to improve nutrient absorption. Also we had eaten with all our senses. The apple we held in our hand; we smelled its delicious, apply fragrance; heard the crisp sound it made as our teeth dug into it; saw the ripe, red colour of it; and of course our tongues tasted its sweetness. It was bliss.
Other than following the 5 basic rules of improving nutrient intake and eating with all 5 senses there was another major factor which led to our blissful experience: our state of mind. For 2 weeks we had been cut off from the rest of the world. We had stayed at an ashram by the Bhagirathi (that’s what Ganga is called before she meets Alaknanda at Devprayag), led an exceptionally disciplined life, woken up early, slept early, practiced yoga daily, read spiritual books as a part of the course, did karma yoga (selfless work) and ate very fresh locally grown food with little or no spices. So, just fresh out of the ashram our state of mind was at its calmest.
A calm state of mind actually helps us to absorb all nutrients from the food we eat. Boring? Ok how’s this: a calm state of mind actually prevents conversion of food to fat. Now that’s interesting, right? When your state of mind is calm and composed, you secrete the right amount of digestive juices. Which means that you are now ready to take in your food, break it down, digest and assimilate it. This is when your food reaches deep inside you, to all the tissues and cells which need energy.
When the mind is stressed, agitated, worked up, sad, angry and distracted you don’t secrete any digestive juices. You sure eat, but nothing gets digested or absorbed. Because you are feeling disturbed or stressed in your mind (which the body perceives as a threat to its survival), most of the food gets converted to fat (the natural reaction of the body when it thinks it’s under threat). Stress (caused by work, finance, relationships, traffic, lack of sleep, etc) leads to the secretion of cortisol in our body. The function of cortisol is to lower our metabolic rate, prevent fat burning and help convert food to fat. The body has learnt this response as a means of fighting drought, famine, floods, etc. It also led to the evolution and survival of the human species from the caveman or cavewoman mode to what we are
today. The body can’t fathom why we get stressed over petty things like deadlines, break ups, home loans, debts, what to wear, etc, but decides nevertheless that if we are stressed it’s a risk to our survival—and goes all out to protect itself. The means of protection is making us fatter. So the cells which need energy remain deprived, and the already big fat cell gets bigger. Now you are not eating your food, your food is eating you!
But we can reduce our cortisol production by leading disciplined lives.
Waking up close to sunrise, exercising daily, finding means of self expression, and by keeping all our senses focussed on one thing at a time.
(This, of course, is the ideal. In my last chapter, I write how we can incorporate these ideals into our daily lives). This is especially true of eating. So while eating, if you want a calm state of mind you can’t afford to dissipate your energies. All your senses should be focussed on one thing: food. That way you will eat your food (and food won’t eat you); and you will secrete your digestive juices, nutrients will be delivered to cells which need energy and won’t get converted to fat.
Agni and digestion
Your agni or digestive fire needs to burn nice and bright. When this fire is active and strong you can digest and assimilate all the nutrients from the food you eat and not just that—the fire also helps you get rid of the toxins from the food.
How bright our agni burns depends on our state of mind. When you are trekking in the Indian Himalaya, you could be carrying all the cash in the world, but all that you can buy as you go from one camp to another is a hot cup of chai (only if you are lucky). But of course on your long trek you share biscuits, chocolates, etc with your trekking mates. Then, on reaching the camp you eat everything in sight: pakoras, parathas and the works.
Compare this to your NY holiday. You walked all day and shopped (on 5th Avenue, of course). Shopped till you dropped and then ate, carefully but ate nevertheless. (Come on, shopping is tiring plus you were on a holiday and it’s NY. You just have to walk so much!) So when you come back home from NY, you discover you have gained weight (not again) and the clothes that you bought no longer fit you. When you come back from the trek in Himalaya, the clothes don’t fit you either but that’s because your size has dropped.
You walk in NY and you walked in the Himalaya. You ate a lot in NY and in the Himalaya.
The difference of course was in the state of mind. While cities and shopping pulls our senses in all directions, mountains, rivers, trees, skies, pull the senses inwards and make us feel more centred. So, when the senses are calmed the fire burns brighter and yes, it also burns more fat this way.
Nutrient to calorie ratio: why a paneer paratha is always better than a pizza
We need calories to lead a healthy and fulfilling life. The most important thing that eating does is provide us with calories or energy. When a baby is delivered and the umbilical chord is cut, the first thing she does (after crying) is consume calories by drinking her mother’s milk. Consuming calories is one of our first acts upon our birth. So let’s quit counting calories. What we need to worry about (if at all) is whether we are maintaining a good nutrient to calorie ratio. Simply put, it means that every calorie we consume should be loaded with nutrients.
‘Kitna calories?’ is the most irrelevant question for somebody who is trying to achieve a lean body and better fitness levels. (The second most irrelevant question is ‘How many calories am I spending?’ Third: ‘What’s my weight?’ Fourth: ‘What’s the serving size?’). Calories ko maro goli.
Really.
Unfortunately our perverted minds have come up with a way of consuming way too many calories without getting our nutrients. So we process our foods to the extent that it kills all the potent nutrients in them, robs them off all the fibre (which adds bulk to food: ever noticed how you can barely eat a few mouthfuls of brown rice while white rice you can stuff like no tomorrow?), reduces the vitamin and mineral content and literally leaves them empty. This emptiness is then filled with trans fats, emulsifiers, preservatives, salts, sugars, the works. (Nowadays even instant noodles come fortified with ‘calcium, iron, protein’. Please give us a break. It’s the equivalent of raping a woman and then marrying her to justify the rape.) Preparing your body for fats
If you have a wedding, party, Christmas or Diwali feast or anything else coming up where you simply must eat that pudding, modak, laddoo, jalebi or special mithai, what do you do?
Declare that you are on a diet and deprive yourself of the yummy mithai and desserts? Or fake a tummy upset? Worse still just not turn up for the party? No, too boring. Instead all you have to do is tell your best friend, your body, that you will be eating more than usual for Diwali, Christmas, Eid, your anniversary or party, etc. Your body likes being taken into confidence (who doesn’t), and it responds to this communication by increasing your metabolic rate, secreting more digestive juices, enzymes, and sending more blood flow to your stomach. So now your mind and body are both prepared for the onslaught of food and the calories that
come with it. Because you have not fooled your body into believing that you will not be eating, and then loaded or stuffed your mouth last minute (completely catching the body unaware and disrupting its normal metabolism), your body will reward you by not storing the excess calories as fat. Remember the section on food and stress? You will convert maximum food to fat when you’re disturbed in any way. So dig your teeth into that luscious pastry or gulab jamun. Enjoy it and eat it guilt free. A relaxed state of mind is the best preparation for any indulgence.
Make sure that the food you eat is not ‘empty’ and processed; that it’s natural and full of goodness like paneer, cheese, peanuts, nuts, milk, yogurt and whole grains. Let me elaborate a bit. Let’s say that you have a choice between ‘fattening’ peanuts and low fat protein enriched or fibre added biscuits. What do you choose? If you believe that marriage justifies the rape, then the biscuit by all means. Otherwise pick the peanuts. Your peanuts with ‘good fatty acids’ will not just increase your HDL or good cholesterol and protect your heart, but also the protein, vitamin B3, folic acid, fibre, amino acids like arginine and high levels of antioxidants in them will leave your skin looking fresh, aid digestion, and provide you with longlasting energy. So for all the calories you have consumed, you have also collected nutrients: the experience is enriching and not emptying.
While the fibre and protein enriched biscuits give you nothing.
Here’s another example. Happy to eat pizza with low fat cheese or normal fat cheese but avoid paneer parathas? Paneer paratha is way richer in nutrients, fibre, antioxidants, essential amino acids, essential fatty acids, minerals like calcium, etc. So maybe eating a paneer paratha is equal to eating 2 to 3 slices of pizza, in terms of calories. But compare the nutrients.
A pizza is ‘empty’, darling.
Another of my favourite examples is that peculiar practice where people avoid coconut chutney with their idli or dosa, or avoid kela chips fried in coconut oil and go for the low fat or no trans fat chips. Now why are you avoiding the chutney while eating south Indian food? The coconut in the chutney adds fat to the carbohydrate rich idli or dosa, thereby actually lowering its glycemic index and the rate at which it gets converted to fat.
Additionally, coconut is rich in MCT or medium chain triglycerides, which help effect digestion and improve metabolism. MCT are used as fat loss and endurance building supplements because they are readily burned as energy
and not stored as fat. So eat your idli with the chutney. And deep fry the banana chips in coconut oil. Choose these chips over the loaded-with-preservatives and MSG chips available in the market. Ideally, of course, I would never recommend anyone eating deep-fried food regularly, but at least with the kela chips your fat comes with other goods. Bottom line: when it comes to food think nutrients, not calories.
Once our fundas are in the right place, that is ‘the 5 basic rules of nutrient absorption’, all 5 senses are employed for eating and state of mind is calm, we can talk about carbs, proteins and fat (in the next chapter).
Cheat sheet
• The key to eating right is to focus while you eat: switch off the TV
and mobile phone.
• You can digest the most amount of food between 7 am and 10 am.
• Stress can make you fat.
• Last night’s sabzi and dal retain very little nutrition the day after.
• Think global eat local; eat dosas in Chennai, momos in Ladakh and pasta in Italy.
• Stay close to your genes: as much as possible eat the food you and your family have grown up eating.
• Tell your body when you’re about to indulge and it will help you deal with the extra fat you’re going to be eating.
• It’s better for you to have a paneer paratha than a pizza. How many nutrients a food has is much more important than how many calories.
What to eat: rethink
We now know how to eat. Now the next question is what we should be eating. Everybody seems to know what we should not eat (sweets, fried food, etc) but there is confusion about what we should eat. Let me try and answer them here.
All about carbs
Carbohydrates are responsible for providing our body with the energy it needs for normal day to day functioning. Additionally, they play many other important roles:
Carbs
1. Synthesise and form our DNA and RNA
2. Synthesise hormones and fatty acids such as cholesterol 3. Generate powerful antioxidants and protect our cells from damage and ageing
4. Cleanse the body
5. Help hormone and immune functions
6. Regularise bowel movement because of their fibre content Most importantly, carbohydrates help in the functioning of our brain cells and neurons. The body is able to carry out its functioning without carbohydrates but it cannot think without carbs. We have all experienced this. If we are hungry or haven’t eaten for a long time, we get edgy and irritable, and generally lose our sense of reasoning and judgement.
Carbohydrates are found in all plant foods like fruits, vegetables, grains, legumes, etc and in milk and milk products. (They are absent in meat and meat products). Carbohydrates are classified as simple and complex, we all
know that. Now what we also need to understand is that carbohydrates are also classified by their glycemic index (GI) and glycemic load (GL).
The glycemic index ranks carbohydrates depending on how quickly they lead to an increase in our blood glucose and insulin levels. High GI or ‘fast’
carbs lead to a quick sharp rise in the blood glucose levels and low GI or
‘slow’ carbs lead to a slow, steady rise in blood glucose levels. High GI foods (fast carbs) get converted to fat quickly and low GI foods (slow carbs) have a much better chance of getting utilised for energy instead of getting stored as fat.
Glycemic load is based on glycemic index and portion size. It is achieved by multiplying glycemic index by the carb content of a particular food and dividing that number by 100. So the glycemic load of a particular meal is the sum of all glycemic loads of all foods consumed during the meal. What this means is that even if you fill up on a lot of low GI food, its effect on your body will be similar to eating a small portion of high GI food.
There is a lot of talk about no carb and low carbs, but is it really advisable to cut down on carbs? Well, no, not if you are Indian. Indian diets have always been high in carbohydrates. If you search the web you will find wealth of information on glycemic index and load. But does all this information help us achieve our goal of adopting a healthier lifestyle and staying fit? Instead I have often seen people getting, what I call, ‘diet diarrhoea’. They get so much of conflicting and confusing information that they can digest and assimilate nothing. In the end everything that they have read is lost or wasted. What stays is a drained out state of mind. And they are still not able to decide if they should eat carbs or cut carbs.
That’s exactly why this book is going to focus on using common sense (according to Anil Ambani, the most uncommon thing in this world).
Carbohydrate provides our body with many essential nutrients and fibre.
Fibre slows down the release of sugar in the blood stream and reduces the glycemic index of food. Fibre also leads to a feeling of fullness, and helps in digestion and bowel movement.
Choosing the right carbs
Ok, so what point am I trying to make? If you care about your health eat your carbs. Carbohydrates, other than performing all the functions listed above and the ones that you studied in biology class, help you burn fat. In fact, in the absence of carbs, fat cannot be utilised for energy. Now we all want to burn fat, right? So put that roti, rice, dosa, idli, poha, upma or paratha back on your plate.
Just be careful to choose slow carbs. Carbs that retain their fibre are low on GI; so if you look at brown rice and white rice the main difference is in their fibre content. Brown rice contains all the fibre and that’s why it has higher nutrient content and better fat loss properties. White rice on the other hand has lost all its fibre and nutrients thanks to the processing. So it’s high on GI and low on fat burning properties. Other low GI foods are; jowar, barley, bajra, nachni, legumes, dals, wholewheat. All sweets, biscuits, pizzas, processed juices, sherbets, jams and jellies are high on GI because they have no fibre. It takes no time for our body to convert the sugar that comes from these foods to fat. Stick to low GI food as a general rule. Your body can take high GI food only after exercise, when your body needs instant sugar.
Now how do you use the information you have on glycemic load? If you eat a lot of brown rice, even if it is low on GI, the GL of your meal will go up because you will end up consuming lots of carbohydrates at one time.
This will again convert food to fat because there will be too much sugar load at one particular time. So use your common sense. Just because it’s good for you don’t eat all you want; always keep in touch with your stomach and make sure you don’t cross the overeating threshold.
Carbs and the freedom struggle
During the British rule where direct propaganda against the administration was not allowed, freedom fighters would go around spreading their message as spiritual leaders, dancers, drama troupe, singers, etc. My grandfather often sang me an old anti-Raj Marathi song every time I dipped my Marie biscuit in his tea (He had a song for everything: for waking up in the morning, bedtime, dealing with tantrums, dressing up, going for a function, doing homework.)
—pav, biscuit, khanuni banala, banala daru baaz, parkiyaan chya latha katha nahi tumha laaj, naka naka naka ho sodo parvasta. Loosely translated in English (without Mr Raj Thackeray’s permission) it means: You eat bread, biscuit and drink like the invaders [the British], they kick you but you have no shame, don’t let go of your legacy and culture. The song is about how the British influenced the food that Indians ate and the grand style in which they introduced the
biscuit to the Indian diet. Bread, biscuit and alcohol are all bad carbs or fast carbs and provided no nourishment to the Indian mind which then easily accepted slavery. (Processed food leads to dullness and lethargy). You really know that you have won over somebody when they start eating (and not yawning) like you. Today of course we all would like to move towards a ‘sarhade he kyun?’ state and like to think the way Farhan Akhtar (in ‘Rock on’) wants us to. But back then it was relevant and in Konkan this song touched many a heart.
The Atkins attitude and the South bitch
In the west, carbs are often eaten stripped of fibre: processed flour is used in their bread, cakes, pasta, pizza, etc. The western diet usually lacks that great Indian concept of dal-sabzi (both of which add fibre), as part of our every meal. Vegetables come, if at all, mostly in the form of salads camouflaged with croutons and fattening dressings. So the slow or good carb content in their diet as well as fibre is negligible. Even cereals are mostly processed with added sugar. Atkins and South Beach diets, which promoted low carb, were such a huge hit because following them meant going off bagels, pizzas, pastas, muffins, etc—foods which don’t provide the body with any nutrients. The sad part is that people lost weight but also their health. These diets so severely restricted carbs that it interfered with dieters’ day to day functioning and thinking. In fact the ‘Atkins attitude’ is a well documented phenomenon. Low carb diets lead to depletion of serotonin, a neurotransmitter in the brain responsible for feeling of well being, happiness, and satisfaction. Atkins attitude makes your moods go south (as in bad). South Beach diet also rhymes with south ‘bitch’ (which is what happens to women who are on it). So irritability, restlessness, depression, anxiety are common especially if you are a woman, because you have hormones which can wreak havoc when set off balance by a low carb diet.
Worst of all, you go through the whole circus but the weight comes right back and that too, double of what you lost. All that you lose at the end of this big diet drama is your confidence and self worth.
To overcome the Atkins attitude, nutritionists recommend complex or slow carbs, very much prevalent in the Indian diet. (Mind you, Indians abroad totally eat the Indian way. Food and its wonderful associations help create the Pind in Calgary, Surat in New Jersey, Ahmedabad in Queens, and
Cochin in Oman). But all the google ranis and rajas of mera bharat mahan (women or men who depend on google for all information and entertainment they need in life, one google window always open, searching desperately for something they must know) blindly copied the low carb diet fad of the west, but instead of looking like a Hollywood star (that’s what low carbs promised, you see) they ended up looking like deflated pizzas.
Use your common sense, don’t get off carbs. Especially with the meals you eat at home, where you use chakki atta and eat hot breakfast daily. Carbs help you burn fat, keep your bowels clean, reduce bloating and aids metabolism (because they also provide the all important vitamin B
responsible for converting food to energy.)
In India, or for Indians anywhere, avoiding carbs need not be high on the agenda. Look at Indian foods: poha, upma, parathas, idlis, dosas, dhokla, rice, dal, roti, sabzi, rajma, chole, etc. Most of our carbohydrates aren’t processed, and they retain their fibre, vitamin B and minerals. Also, if you look at our cooking style, everything gets a tadka or seasoning of 1 to 2
teaspoons of oil with some seeds like mustard, jeera (which add fibre, vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids), etc. The addition of a fat like oil or ghee in the tadka lowers the GI. The primary foods that we use in India, our cooking methods and our food combinations all work at reducing glycemic index and increasing fibre content of food.
Now if we are also eating the Indian way, that is sitting on a mat, on the floor, using the crosslegged or sukhasan posture, saying our prayers (India is multicultural and religious, and all religions recommend prayer before eating) where we offer our food to God and consume the rest as prasad or God’s blessing, then we will remain super duper lean and fit.
So eat high fibre carbohydrates as much as possible and cut the biscuits, cakes, pastries, pizzas and anything that’s low fibre. At the end of this section I have a list of carbs that you shouldn’t worry about, and a list of carbs that you should ideally eliminate or reduce from your diet.
I can’t emphasise enough on the importance of ‘Eat local, think global’.
Punjabis in the great land of Punjab only have aloo parathas for breakfast and not dinner unlike the people of Mumbai, Delhi, or Bengaluru (where parathas are blamed for putting on weight). Also, south Indians who eat rice eat the unpolished variety which retains most of the bran or fibre and B
vitamins. Once in the cities, its white polished rice, so white it can put your rock to shame.
Type 2 diabetes
Indians are prone to diabetes. This is a consequence of insulin resistance. Insulin resistance is caused by consuming too many unhealthy or fast carbs, in addition to stress, obesity and inactivity. This condition can be managed very easily by reducing the glycemic load at one time; ie eating small portions many times a day and consuming slow or low GI carbs.
The pancreas plays an important role in food digestion, secreting enzymes that break down fat, starch and proteins in the small intestine. The beta cells of the pancreas produce insulin and alpha produce glucagon. When there is a rise in blood sugar level the beta cells secrete insulin, which stimulates cells in the body to grab glucose, leading to a fall in glucose levels. It also instructs the liver to store glucose as glycogen (glucose reserve). When glucose levels fall below a set point or optimal level, the alpha cells secrete glucagons, which instruct the liver to convert glycogen back to glucose. These two pancreatic hormones are responsible for maintaining healthy blood glucose levels. Consumption of high GI or processed carbs leads to a sharp increase in blood glucose levels in a short time period, followed by a huge dip in its levels; which overburdens these two sensitive hormones and leads to obesity, especially around the stomach. Over a period of time, these hormones lose their sensitivity to blood glucose levels; this is called insulin insensitivity, or stress induced or type 2 diabetes.
Damage control: have your gulab jamun and eat it
too
Sweets and desserts are high on the glycemic index because they are high in everything that is processed; sugar and flour. So should you avoid them completely? A lot of clients ask me this question before embarking on their diet plans: ‘So does this mean that we will never be able to have our brownies, gulab jamuns, pizzas, burgers?’ Here is the answer: you can safely eat your brownie, gulab jamun, etc without getting fat. Two things: eat them not more than once a week (and that’s the most you’re allowed!) and don’t eat them with a meal. A brownie or dessert after a lavish dinner means pucca conversion to fat because glycemic index and load are both high. But if you want to have the gulab jamun with all the sweet juice and have developed the discipline to eat just one, then eat it by itself as an in between meal. This way, the high glycemic index will be set off by low
glycemic load (less food at one time) and this will improve the chances of your body not converting the sweet treat to fat. (There is a good chance there is no conversion to fat, in fact.) So eat your pizza, but stop at one piece. Where the glycemic index is very high, reduce the load. As I have mentioned, the best time to eat high GI food is post exercise.
When to eat fruits
We should eat fruits when we are in a fasting state or when our liver store is empty: so, first thing in the morning on an empty stomach, or immediately after physical exercise. Any time aside from this, the body converts the fructose from the fruits into triglycerides (as explained earlier in chapter 1). This is why I am not a fan of fruit juices. Not only does fruit juice give you four to five times the amount of fructose you get in one serving of a fruit, it also lacks the goodness of the fruit’s fibre. So eat your fruit first thing in the morning—but before your breakfast, not with it.
Alcohol
Alcohol is treated as foreign substance by the body. This is the first thing to remember, rather than how many calories it has (which by the way is double than that of carbohydrates at 7
calories per gram). So when we drink any kind of alcohol, the body immediately puts its fat burning on hold, and starts to metabolise the alcohol; to get rid of this foreign substance. Thus, the body isn’t just ingesting a higher calorie substance, it’s also giving up its fat burning, at the same time. The other thing to remember is that alcohol leads to an increase in estrogen in the body. So you will see drunk men do typically ‘girly’ things like getting emotional, crying, giggling and talking loudly. This is also what leads to a ‘beer belly’. Women naturally have more fat on their stomachs because this is where the foetus grows, as nature intended; and estrogen replicates this in men. Interestingly, estrogen is also one of the reasons why women can’t usually drink as much alcohol as men. Now are you still going to have that drink tonight?
If you are, then make sure that you eat something before you do. Food will act as a buffer and limit the damage. Also for every glass/peg/serving of alcohol have at least 2 glasses of water.
One more reason why alcohol is so dangerous is that it is extremely dehydrating. (seen well dressed men, unzip and have a go at the wall of your fav night club? Or women making their way in the loo with their bladders threatening to burst?) Drinking water will take fun out of drinking, complain most of my clients. Well, but at least it will safeguard you against damage.
So if you must drink, drink no more than once a week, and always after food (or with it but never on an empty stomach) and with at least a glass of water. Hello, beer and wine are alcohol too, so treat them with the same gravity that you treat whisky, rum, vodka, etc.
And how to cheat on them
should never eat
(these are high
GI and zero on
nutrient)
1. Biscuit
Eat them when you’ve done a very long physical activity like trekking, 2 or more hours of walking or shopping. In day to day life, restrict to one a week! I think biscuits are more harmful than cakes and pastries because no one worries about scarfing them down.
2. Cakes and
If you can’t bear to give up your favourite chocolate pastry, you’re in for good pastries
news. Have it first thing in the morning. Don’t replace your nutritious meal with this but have it in addition to it. Croissant lovers go ahead as well. But don’t indulge yourself more than once or twice a month.
3. Pizza
One slice (we’re talking fast food pizza) and as a meal by itself. Perfect for after a long boring meeting.
4. Drink syrups, After being out in the sun for a long while; the sugar will have less of an effect.
cold drinks (all
Also after a long day or if you’re on holiday, have one every 2 to 3 days.
drinks made from
these, including
sherbets, etc)
5. Mithais and all Eat as a meal by itself. Have your mithai either an hour and a half after your desserts
lunch, or first thing in the morning. Again not more than once a month, if you (chocolates, etc
have to have it!
included)
6. Deep-fried
Eat first thing in the morning. Halve your first meal and have your deep-fried food like
goody along with it, or as a meal by itself later in the afternoon. But restrict samosas, pakoras, yourself to only one of these. And do not eat a mithai with it. You can have one vada, bhujiya and of these treats once a week, but again only if you’re eating correctly all seven kachori
days and working out at least three hours a week.
7. Sugar
2 teaspoons a day max. Most of you have this in your tea or coffee, so bear this in mind…
8. Alcohol
With a meal or after a meal. Never on an empty stomach and never have anything deep-fried with it.
Carbs to eat through the day that ensure optimum
Carbs to be consumed after exercise or
fat burning and sustained release of blood sugar
any stressful activity (high GI foods):
(these are low GI foods):
Phulkas or rotis made from gehu or wholewheat atta, Boiled potato jowar, bajra and nachni/ragi. Also idli, dosa, uttapam, All fruits appam, neer dosa, upma, brown rice, wholewheat White rice and dal bread, oats, barley, semolina/rawa/suji, vegetable White bread sandwiches or toast parathas, koki, homemade khakra, dhokla, iddada,
besan or mung dal dosa, chillas, sweet potatoes, unripe Fruit juices banana, all lentils.
Homemade ladoos
How to eat them
How to eat them
With vegetables and in small quantities. They can be Within ten minutes of your workout. I don’t part of your breakfast, lunch and an evening meal by usually recommend fruit juices but this is a 5:30-6 pm.
safe time to have it. As for rice and dal, for
anyone who works out at home, this could
be an option depending on when you
workout. You can also eat fruits first thing in
the morning.
All about proteins
The word protein comes from the Greek word ‘proteios’ which means primary. It has many roles to play in our body without which normal functioning can be impaired. Some of these functions are: 1. Making antibodies, which are our primary defence system against infections.
2. Movement and muscle contraction, which we get from contractile proteins (without which we could do little).
3. Catalysing metabolic and biochemical reactions through enzymes.
Enzymes take part in all chemical reactions in the body. Example: enzymes helps the digestive system in breaking down food.
4. Picking up signals from the body and sending them to a cell that needs it; hormonal proteins work as messenger proteins (like insulin).
5. Making up cells and tissues; structural proteins such as keratin, collagen and elastin do this important job for us, creating connective tissue, tendons, ligaments (responsible for keeping hair, skin, nails healthy).
6. Help transport nutrients from one part of the body to another; the haemoglobin does this.
The primary function of protein is to build and repair your body. In fact amino acids, which are the building blocks of protein, are what make up all the different parts of our body. There are about 20 odd amino acids, which can be compared to alphabets. Different amino acids come together and
make specific proteins that go into creating hair, nerves, or the matrix of the bone, cartilage, hormones, enzymes, etc. Much like the combination of different alphabets make words. They are also responsible for all types of physiological processes such as generating energy, recovering from illnesses, maintaining our bodies and their growth, fat loss and even mood and brain function. Amino acids are divided into two major categories: indispensible amino acids (IAA) and dispensable amino acids (DAA). As their name suggests, indispensible amino acids need to be provided by the body through your diet and can’t be made by the body. DAA, on the other hand, can be manufactured by the body, so it’s not so necessary to provide them through diet or food.
Protein, like carbohydrates, is your ally when it comes to getting a lean, toned body.
First it helps you burn fat. To lose fat the body must be able to increase the circulation and mobilisation of stored fat. Then these fats need to be converted to energy (commonly called fat burning). To improve circulation of stored fats and to break it down into energy, the body needs several nutrients. One of the most important nutrients it needs is methionine, an IAA. Methionine can be supplied to the body in adequate amounts by eating a well balanced diet and by consuming good quality protein like fish, eggs, milk products, whey. A diet which restricts protein will lack methionine and will not facilitate fat burning.
Amino acids and sleep
Loss of sleep or disturbed sleep is a common problem. Correcting your diet and improving the amino acid content of your meals is a great way of ensuring sound sleep. Sleeping pills only drug you into sleeping and make you wake up tired in the morning. Tryptophan, an amino acid, can naturally induce sleep by increasing serotonin and melatonin. These are neurotransmitters which help the brain calm down and induce sleep. Tryptophan is found in almost all dairy products. A glass of milk (with no sugar or sweetener) as a late night snack, or adding a milk product like paneer to your dinner can help you get your dose of tryptophan.
When consumed with a whole grain like wheat, jowar, bajra or nachni, it will lead to a restful sleep.
Second, it’s absolutely vital for anyone doing physical activity. During any form of exercise, the body and specifically our muscles go through
microscopic wear and tear. Loss of muscle tissue or its breakdown is associated with ageing and the one thing that will turn exercise into an anti ageing activity is protein. Why? Because amino acids help us repair our tissues and recover from the stress that exercise places on our body.
Post exercise the body is in need of some fast carbs (the only time that the body needs high glycemic index carbohydrate is post exercise) and a quick supply of amino acids. The fast carbohydrates lead to a spike in the insulin levels of the body. The cells in the body then pick up the glucose and amino acids that they need for quick recovery from strenuous workouts. Without protein, working out is fruitless. No wonder people who exercise but don’t watch their diets ultimately deduce that exercise doesn’t work for them.
Because without the amino acids reaching sites of action, exercise really doesn’t work. Fat and carbohydrate can both provide us with energy but cannot do the repair and recovery work that protein does for us. I would go to the extent of saying that if you can’t arrange for your post workout meal to have protein and high GI carb, you are better off not working out. Just like if you don’t have money for petrol you are better off not driving.
What doesn’t work—high protein diets
In recent years, there has been a protein craze in the dieting world. People who want to lose weight swear by high protein diets. Good old chapati and rice has practically been shown the door, and egg white and chicken are ruling the roost. But at what cost?
Real life example:
‘Hi, listen it’s just been 4 days and I have lost 1 kilo. Can this be true?
Are you a magician or what? I am eating so much, my god! How could I have lost weight? I don’t even have any pressure on my head ya. I am just not feeling like I am on a diet. I am not feeling helpless, angry, and irritable. Rujuta, is this going the way we want it to be? I am feeling very happy. Should I feel happy? Because happy is not what I feel when I am on a diet.’
Email at 7am from one of my ‘I hope I am not wasting my money with you and I hope you know what you are doing’ client.
I spent 2½ hrs with Ami, instead of the usual 1½, for the first consultation. (Prachi, my assistant, was very upset with me for running over by a whole hour. She could bring herself to forgive me only because it was the last appointment for the day). Now throughout our consultation, Ami only expressed displeasure over the food I wanted her to eat. Her basic problem was that this plan just didn’t seem like a diet. Ami had recently shifted from London to Ghatkopar (central suburb of Mumbai, packed with rich Gujjus).
‘Please understand, I want to lose weight’, she pleaded with me. ‘And I am spending a lot of money on you.’ (Gujju. Very Gujju!) ‘I will look like my daughter’s stuffed toy after this, I want to look like Barbie.’ ‘Then eat’, I reasoned with her. ‘If not eating would make you look like Barbie, you would look like her by this time. But clearly its not going to.’ Ami had a super will power, she had done it all (in terms of diet). The one that had showed her maximum ‘results’ was where she went on a ‘shake diet’. She had subsisted on some expensive protein shake for breakfast, lunch and dinner. And that was it. Other than that she had eaten nothing. She lost weight, yes. And did she gain it all back, sorry double of all that weight, and that too in half time? Yes, of course, because that’s the only pattern that these so called diets follow.
Ami had a problem that her breakfast had dhokla and lunch had phulka, sabzi, kadhi, etc. ‘I just need a high protein diet. Actually, I know so much about diets that I can put myself on one anytime. I have put so many of my friends on diet and they have lost weight also’, she said. Ami, for her part, was 30 kilos more than what she had been just 10 years ago. In her thirties now, an early marriage, settling in a foreign country and child birth had all contributed to her weight gain. ‘Look I know Kareena Kapoor keeps saying that she eats paratha for breakfast, normal sabzi, dal, roti, pasta, etc, but I am not stupid to believe that. Size zero aisa kaise hoga? I wanted to meet you to understand that what is this diet all about. Reality mein kya hai?’
‘Ami, seriously, you are going to lose weight only if you eat. Eating nothing se kya hota hai tumne experience kiya hai. Why don’t you give your body a chance to eat healthy and to eat what it enjoys eating?’ Finally
and reluctantly she decided to ‘try this also’. Needless to say, she was overjoyed to find that she had lost 1 kilo in 4 days, and that too ‘by eating’.
Nothing short of a miracle for Ami, nothing more than a natural consequence of eating correctly for me.
Ami and my art promoter (from the first chapter) both did their versions of high protein diets. But why does it not work?
Now for protein to work as it is supposed to (growth, repair, maintenance, gene expression, etc), the body should get its supply of carbohydrate and fat. Without these nutrients, protein is wasted. So called high protein diets only replace your carbohydrate and fat sources with protein rich foods. This in no way ensures that you are reaching your daily requirement of protein. And in case you are reaching your daily requirement of protein, then in the absence of carbs and fat it will be rendered useless. When too much of protein is consumed at one time, it doesn’t get stacked away for future use, instead it is converted to fat by a process called deamination. It will just load the liver where it will get broken down to glucose. So your expensive and difficult to digest protein (yeah, chicken, fish, egg white are tough on your system) is getting used for energy. Something that a banana could have easily done. (Cheap on your pocket and easy on your digestive system.)
Learn to be shanaa with your protein. Whatever source you choose, veg, non-veg or a supplement, know that without a balanced base line diet, protein by itself will only lead to irritability, sleeplessness, constipation, mood swings, and muscle catabolism or wasting. Will it lead to weight loss? Yes, it will. When the body is given only protein and very little or no carbohydrate, the body first gets rid of its glycogen stores (glucose or sugar stored in liver and muscle) and loses water. After that, it actually attacks the muscle tissue itself, burning the amino acids for energy. The result is muscle catabolism and lean mass loss. Accordingly, regular exercise and a smart use of carbohydrates in the diet lead to protein sparing. What this means is that protein is not burned for energy instead it is used for its intended purpose.
What doesn’t work either—low protein diets
At the other end are people so paranoid about protein that they feel it should be avoided at all costs.
Real life example:
My clients never disappoint me with their diet histories. So at one such meeting, Kedar sat down with me and related to me his diet tales. He didn’t look overweight and had a passion for eating healthy. ‘Madam, please remember, pure vegetarian. Any fruit, any vegetable, any soup, no problem, I will eat whatever you tell me.’ His cholesterol levels were up and he had come to me because one of his friends who had had high uric acid levels had recommended me. ‘Accha, tell me why you gave him protein? And how come his levels came down after eating protein? Raaz kya hai madam?
Kuch goli dete ho ke mantar phukte ho?’
‘Tell me your story Kedar,’ I demanded.
‘Accha, see I eat 1 kilo of fruits in the morning. Only 1 cereal, jowar for lunch with green sabzi and then soup, salad, fruit for dinner. And to cleanse my system I take lime shots.’ ‘What’s that?’ I asked. ‘Arre, 15 to 16 nimbu squeeze karne ka aur peene ka. Kya cleanse hota hai total system. Arre aisa pata chalta hai ke sab saaf ho raha hai andar se.’ After this, from upbeat he started slipping into the sad mode. ‘Abhi kya hai, weight lose to kar diya (20 kilos) but my cholesterol levels have gone up. I hear so many stories, heart attack ka. Abhi kya hai you see, I am approaching forty, my business is very good, so no tension, family ka tension to chalta rehta hai par kuch serious nahi, but yeh weight lose karne ke baad cholesterol kaise badha kya pata?’
‘Kedar, pehle tum apna raaz batao. Mantar padhke nikalte ho saara din?
How can you survive only on fruits?’ I asked.
