Diet the healthy way

Losing weight is a much desired outcome of most fitness endeavours nowadays. So much so that many people are willing to go to almost any length. Some crash-diet, others starve or, worse, follow a single-food nutrition diet like eating only cabbage, or a soup-and-salad diet, or an egg-fast. Others focus on exercise and believe that 2 hours of rigorous cardio or 100 Surya Namaskars performed day in and day out will help them.

Crash dieting cuts out large chunks of food groups. An only vegetable soup-and-salad programme, for instance, cuts out all protein-rich foods like eggs, skimmed-milk paneer (cottage cheese) and lean poultry. Rapid weight loss happens because the diet is depleted of calories. The lack of protein and a severely reduced calorie intake lead to weaker, unshapely muscles, brittle hair and nails, compromised immunity and premature ageing. The resultant image in the mirror is thin, no doubt, but it is also sallow and sickly.

There is no sense in losing weight at the cost of your health and energy.

Healthy weight loss is a result of powerful diet and exercise combinations. These combinations focus on eating foods from every food group, including grains like bajra (pearl millet), jowar (sorghum), nachni (finger millet) and brown rice, proteins like skimmed paneer or eggs, lean poultry and seafood, and low-starch vegetables like peppers, cauliflower, broccoli, purple cabbage and mushrooms. Losing weight becomes easy because your diet becomes the energizer for exercise and activity, which in turn ensures you burn calories, lose weight and gain overall health.

Lose weight at the rate of 1% of body weight a week to bypass rebound weight gain.

A slow and steady rate of weight loss is considered healthy and helps you maintain your weight once you have achieved your desired goal. More often than not, drastic weight loss sets you up for rebound weight gain via the craving route. So, for instance, if you are male, 180cm in height, and weigh 95kg, your ideal body weight is your height in centimetres minus 100, which is 80kg. If you need to lose 15kg, your ideal rate of weight loss would be 950g in the first week, followed by 900g in the second week and 850g in the week after, and so on. If you are female, then your ideal body weight is your height in centimetres minus 105. So, if your height is 155cm, then 155 minus 105 is 55kg.

When you lose weight, you don’t just lose body fat.

Our body weight is a sum total of the amount of muscle, fat, bone and water we carry. When there is healthy weight loss with a combination of diet and exercise, you lose mostly fat and maintain or build muscle, depending on the intensity of your workouts. If, on the other hand, a low-calorie, single-nutrition diet is the cause of weight loss, you could lose more muscle and therefore gain fat, look thin and unshapely, gaunt and tired.

Losing muscle compromises health because it has an inverse relationship with fat. This means that when you lose muscle, you gain fat. Muscle is oxygen and nutrient-dense tissue—that’s why losing muscle could also lower body immunity, affect the health of skin, hair and nails, and keep you feeling tired.

The next time that you embark on a weight loss programme, remember:

uto eat every 3 hours

uinclude multigrains like brown rice, bajra and quinoa

uproteins like skimmed paneer or eggs and lean poultry

uhave 500g of low-starch vegetables every day. These include cauliflowers, broccoli, cabbage, mushroom, spinach, methi (fenugreek) and dark green leafy vegetables

udrink a glass of water every hour to stay well hydrated

u train with weights at least three times a week and do cardio training for 20 minutes every day. Do check with your physician before starting any programme of exercise.

Madhuri Ruia is a nutritionist and Pilates expert. She runs InteGym in Mumbai, which advocates workouts with healthy diets.