BackSmall healthy steps to weight loss
Keep a 4-hour gap between each meal, keep walking, and more tips in a new book that may help staunch vegetarians work out a diet plan
PremiumBy Suman Agarwal,
Selfcare,
214 pages, ₹ 799
OTHERS :
My favourite section in Suman Agarwal’s book, which has more than 80 vegetarian recipes and weight-loss tips, is Calorie Swap. It tells me that I can compensate for a packet of McDonald’s fries by playing 45 minutes of Wii tennis, 30 minutes of yoga makes up for a scoop of ice cream but nothing can compensate for a brownie sundae! She has my attention and I am drawn to her thesis, based on the Japanese principle of Hara hachi bu: less is more. So “eat until you are 80% full".
Nutritionist and fitness expert Agarwal follows up her earlier book, The Don’t Diet Diet Cookbook, with Unjunked: Healthy Eating for Weight Loss. This guide plus recipe book offers guidelines for a “holistic way of losing weight"—include sufficient protein to maintain good health, the right amount of fat and enough carbohydrates to burn the fat. Balance and control are the buzzwords—eating three-four balanced meals a day and losing weight by controlling quantities.
Before introducing the recipes, divided into breakfast, lunch and dinner, snacks and desserts, Unjunked provides a “7-Day Cyclical Menu" assuring you of 0.7-2kg weight loss per week, provided it’s
accompanied with exercise and the Five Golden Rules. One of the rules is spacing the four major meals, keeping a gap of 4 hours between each, with a maximum gap of 12 hours between the first and last meal of the day. The fifth rule is to shake off your sedentary lifestyle and walk somewhere between 10,000 and 17,000 steps a day (for weight loss). Normally, we walk around 8,000 steps daily (10,000 steps are approximately around 8km).
The interesting recipes include Oats Upma (breakfast), Chhole Palak with Onion and Palak Paratha (lunch/dinner), wraps and rolls, convenient for school tiffins and office lunches, Lebanese Pizza (snacks) and desserts like Mango Paneer Roll (only 74 kcal) and Banoffee Pie (160 kcal). When questioned on the inclusion of the usually taboo meal favourite, Agarwal said: “I too love dessert. Most desserts outside are around 250-500 calories. Our recipes bring the count down to between 75-160 per serving."
The limitation of Unjunked is its focus on Marwaris, Jains and Gujaratis. Besides a few recipes that include eggs, Unjunked is not aimed at the non-vegetarian; Agarwal assures that the next book will cater to this demographic. Further, the Holiday Survival Guide and Eating Out Guide, which address the natural inclination to cheat, are too perfunctory. But these are minor anomalies in an otherwise well-produced, conveniently structured book that allows you to cook—and, more importantly, eat—guilt-free.
Sev-Puri Detoxed (a ‘chaat’-inspired salad)
Makes 25 pieces
Serves 5
Ingredients
2 cups fresh curd; made from toned milk (3.5% fat)
25 slices of cucumber, approximately 0.5cm in thickness (should be cut just before serving)
1 cup moong (green gram) sprouts or L cup uncooked green moong (soak for 6-8 hours, drain and keep covered for another 12 hours)
1 small onion, chopped finely
1 green chilli, chopped finely
2 tbsp fresh coriander, chopped finely
K tsp chaat masala
K tsp red chilli powder
1 tsp powdered sugar
K tsp jeera (cumin) powder
N tsp black pepper powder
Salt to taste
Method
Hang the curd in a muslin cloth for half an hour to drain excess water. Meanwhile, boil 300ml of water with K tsp of salt. Add moong sprouts, remove from heat and cover. Drain after 20 minutes and let it cool. Remove the thick curd from the cloth and transfer to a bowl. Add sprouts, onion (tomatoes, optional), fresh coriander, green chilli, sugar, pepper and salt. Spread the cucumber slices on a serving dish. Ladle spoonfuls of the mixture on the slices. Garnish with green chutney (optional), chaat masala, jeera powder, red chilli powder and fresh coriander. Serve immediately.
Value per serving (5 pieces): Calories 115 kcal; protein 6.5g; fat 3.5g; carbs 14g; calcium 156mg; fibre 1g; iron 1.2mg.
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