Eating in the World of Dieting by Ketki Kabir

Picture this- you’re out on a family trip, all your cousins, their parents. Everyone is enjoying themselves without a care in the world. But when you sit at the dining table to eat, that one uncle of yours orders nothing but a small salad because he wants to ‘maintain his diet.’ You’ll probably see everyone look at his dedication with admiration in their eyes, but is going so hardcore really necessary?

We keep a track of what we eat and obsessively count our calories but what we don’t really keep a check on is whether our dietary plans are really methods to keep ourselves healthy or just a weight obsession masked as fitness.

With the bloom of modern-day actors, models and influencers, you are either thin or fat—there’s no in-between. We see all these beautiful, young, zero-figure women living the life we want to live and think that having a body as ‘perfect’ as theirs, might make us more like them. And so the cycle begins: keto diets, 5:2 diets, vegan diets and whatnot.

Before we talk about diets, however, we need to reinstate the fact that everybody is diverse and the same diet or exercise doesn’t work for all. Then, is there any efficient diet plan that does? Yes, there definitely is! And it involves going back to our roots.

CULTURE IS THE BEST NURTURE

Try recollecting a word in your native language for ‘broccoli’ or ‘avocados’. Google it. Found any? You won’t and that’s because these foods aren’t native to us. A huge component of the diversity in our cultures include our food variations. Our ancestors cooked food according to what our lands provided them, and that food is a part of our genes! Your ancestry isn’t just DNA, it’s also the climate your lineage has been flourishing in. The cuisine that has passed onto you for generations is what suits you the best according to the environment you live in. Your cultural food is the best diet plan for you.

You must’ve heard about how eating rice causes you to gain weight so then you cut your rice; but if that were really true, what about the east Asians whose everyday meals include a substantial amount of rice?

Eating adequately is the way to stay healthy. You don’t have to eat one chapati with only 5 spoons of rice—unless that diet fulfils you for at least the next four to six hours. Sugar cravings begin when you haven’t eaten sufficiently, to make up for the less nutrition than what your body requires. Therefore, the best way to end your post-lunch or midnight sweet cravings is by eating enough while having lunch and dinner.

Also, remember, our bodies aren’t machines manufactured in Heaven’s Industries to work exactly the same as another. Everybody has different nutrition requirements as well as different ways in which it processes food. You and I could eat the same amount of food (which is enough for us), but our bodies would vastly differ. And this variation in our sizes is okay, it’s how our bodies are meant to be. When you eat enough, you can perform your daily functions without suffering from any metabolic illnesses. You’re healthy and it doesn’t matter what size of clothes you fit into. We eat food to be fit, not look fit.

FAD DIETS AND THEIR CRAZE

Fad diets are cool. Lose one kilogram in a week? Sign me up!

But using simple mathematics to lower your calorie intake in order to ‘reduce 0.4 pounds per day’ isn’t the ideal way, or even practical, for that matter. Keto or many other such diets ask you to cut down on your fats, carbs or proteins to achieve the desired effect but in the process of doing so, we miss out on important nutrients that our body needs. Right from Vitamin K (something you never paid attention to in biology class) to fats, every single component of food has major roles to play in your body, and yes, cutting down on one of them might help you lose a few pounds, but that’s not a healthy way. It’s a fact that many of the “fad diets” are endorsed by celebrities and influencers, however, they are instructed by professionals on how to go through the diet based on their own body requirements.

What’s more important to note is that you cannot undertake these diets for more than a month. Even extreme dieting for a snap of three to four months might take you two sizes down, but when you have to resume back to your regular food, you are bound to put on weight. And you cannot continue these diets forever because your body will start acting up.

30-MINUTE EXERCISE A DAY, KEEPS FAD DIETS AWAY

Rather than experimenting with your body by using fad diets, exercise for at least three hours a week. Walking, jogging, cycling, you can do whatever you want, but devote 30 minutes of your day, disconnect from everything and perform your exercise. It will not

only give your body more stamina and physical strength but also provide your mind with the peace it needs.