Demons of Diet

When I published my last blog, I got overwhelming response from all you guys. I would like to thank all of you for reading, comments and feedback. This is biggest motivation for me to write more often.

Demons of Diet

In few weeks, I had so many discussions on all three factors affecting the health and fitness of an individual, one of the most interesting topic was Diet. And no prize for guessing. 😄

On Diet, there are so many researches, books and tutorials out there and in spite of them being around we still somehow are not able to get this right. Especially the ones who are looking at weight management(Mostly weight reduction).

I think the reason behind this is we are made to believe and we have now accepted that its very complex and difficult thing. Based on all the research I have done and speaking to people, its not as difficult as it seems to be.

So lets first look at why it seems difficult. Reason is, as soon as we hear a word "Diet" suddenly we start feeling stressed and feel like we will have to punish ourselves. We will have to avoid a particular type of food, specially that you would love to eat, buy low fat\low cholesterol oil and products. They are going to be costly. They wont taste the same. You cant eat Samosa, Paratha, Cake etc. These are some of the demons occupy your mind immediately.

And if you little more exposed to fitness industry and social media then you are in even more miserable condition. 😃 
You will have questions like, should I adopt Vegan diet, Keto diet, GM diet, Paleo diet, juice detox, gluten free and what not.

And then you start getting into details of what these diets are and being in place you are in, India(which is not the origin of these diets) will you get all these ingredients here? If you are veg, how will you do Keto diet? etc.

By now as you go through these you have already fought and lost half the battle in your mind. 

And as the popular belief says, you start something being skeptical or with negative mindset you are most like to fail.

If you look at the issue of diet in weight management its very simple equation to start with.

Its calories that you consume from food every day versus calories that you burn everyday.

Limit your caloric intake and most of the people go wrong here. Instead of looking to limit their caloric intake, people try to remove a particular type of food item from their diet, and replace them with some fancy off-the-shelf products from super market. By doing this they may haven't changed their caloric intake but they would have definitely deprived their selves of some essential nutrients their body needs resulting in altered metabolism.


Second most common issue that I have seen is the speed at which they want to reduce the weight gained. They would have added 5 kg of weight in in a year but they would want to reduce that in a month. Here is where all these fad diets come into play. They provide the rosy picture of reducing kgs of weight in month but what they dont tell you is that, its not scientifically sustainable and you are not loosing body fat, but you are also loosing muscle mass, which is detrimental to your strength and well being. So you will end up feeling miserable, low on energy, and weak. And not to mention, as soon as you come back to your normal diet you will gain that weight again. This time its going to be fat gain with muscles(worse than what it was earlier).

So essentially I would recommend that the 2 simple principles of weight management that you should be looking at is to 

1. Reduce and caloric intake and not the nutritional intake.
2. Second is have a reasonable timeline for reducing the weight.

Lets look at these two principle in details for reducing body fat

1.  Deficit\Negative caloric intake

Why is this important?

reducing the caloric intake is the most important factor in reducing your body fat. and a very simple reason is that the amount of calories that you can burn daily is limited by your physiological and biological composition. Working out for more than 1 hour daily is very difficult for a common man. And when your workout for an hour the amount of calories that you can burn is as follows.

Calories Burning Chart per hour of workout.

So now you know how much time it takes to burn these many calories. what this also tells us is that there is a limit to which we can burn these calories. So only exercise without control on diet will not be too useful in reducing body weight.

So what is the ideal intake, its divided as below.

How Much:

Your weight is direct result of your calorie surplus. Means the total calories you eat - total calories you consume\burn.

70 kg male needs 2600 calories a day if he works out for 30-60 mins70 kg female woman needs 2150 calories with the same level of workout

What:

Now divide these calories by these Macro nutrients:
Protein + Carbs + Fats
And Water, Vitamins, Minerals, Fibre(These micro nutrients do not have caloric value)

When:

Divide these into 5-6 meals daily.

Eat within 30 mins of waking up and do not eat 1-2 hrs before going to sleep.

Now as you know the calories required per day and calories that you can burn everyday based on your routine, its time to look at what is your current caloric consumption.

Examples:

• 100 gms of apple is 52 calories
• 100gm of banana is 89 calories
• 1 chapati - 100 calories
• Mcveggie Burger (W/O Cheese) - 360 calories

You can always look for more details on the calories that you consume on daily basis by searching the caloric value of your staple food on google.

How many calories to reduce from your existing diet?

Its safe to reduce about 200-250 calories per day. Which will result into half a kg of weight per week. In order to reduce 500 gms of body weight, you need to cut down 500 calories per day.
If you are doing a moderate workout for about 60 mins daily then, you are burning 250-300 calories per day.

You lose one Kg when you burn 7700 calories.

Establish reasonable timeline.

Establishing the reasonable timeline is very crucial. First thing that you should do is to check how much time did it take for you to gain the extra weight. If its a sudden increase, try to look back on our recent diet and other activities to check if its a result of that. In case of a sudden increase please get your regular health check-up to eliminate any medical conditions or ailments.
If its gradual increase then most probably its safe to assume its because of excess calories intake vs the calories burnt.

In any case reasonable time line will be minimum of 12 weeks to anything about 1 year. This is purely based on the amount of weight you need to reduce and your physical activity levels.

As mentioned about 1-2 kg per month is acceptable and reasonable weight reduction. Going at a greater speed of reduction has its own disadvantages. That includes gaining back the lost weight, sometimes gaining more than what is lost, also feeling very week and low on energy, loss of concentration, constant carving for food, insomnia etc.


To sum up, remember below points.

• Control your caloric intake

• Workout regularly

• Do not remove any particular food item from your diet or maintain your nutritional balance.

• Slow and steady wins the race

Hope this helps you control your diet and weight.

Dhaval Bhadeshiya

Certified Fitness and Lifestyle coach

Take control of your fitness

Its been sometime since I wrote a blog post. With this post I bring to you three major components that impacts your fitness and how can you really control your fitness.

So now lets look at what they are!

1) Exercise\Workout

2) Diet\Food\Nutrition

3) Sleep

Now as we look at the these 3 aspects, they form the base of your true fitness. You must wonder whats new about these, most of you might know this. What I want to draw your attention towards is how you can control these to your benefit.

Lets start with,

1) Physical Exercise or Workout. 

Control percentage 80%, means you have very high control over exercise routine, only thing you dont have voluntary control over is the reaction of your body to the exercise routine.

This aspect of fitness is tangible. You can choose Frequency, Intensity , Time and Type of workout you want or you enjoy doing.

How many times you workout per week. 

Its recommended that you workout at least 3 times a week to maximum 6 times a week.

Intensity with which you perform the workout.

For aerobic workout its suggested that you hit 60-90% of your maximum heart rate and for strength training, its recommended to have 8 to 12 reps at 70-80% of 1 rep max.

Duration of the workout per session.

Session needs to be minimum of 20 mins to optimum 60 mins.

Type of workout, Aerobic , Strength or Flexibility training. 

Its highly recommended to include all three i.e. aerobic, strength and flexibility training in your overall workout schedule.

Based on the workout that you follow, you will have your Aerobic capacity, Muscular strength, Bone density, and Range of Motion(Flexibility) enhanced. This will also determine the calories that you are going to burn. (Very important for weight management)

So this is a voluntary task, and the performing this task is in your control. 

Higher the frequency, intensity and duration of the training, more calories you burn.

Moving on to the second aspect, 

2) Diet\Food and Nutrition. 

Control percentage 70%, you have control over what, when and how much you eat. But you dont have control over how the food was produced(grown\processed) and how your body reacts to certain types of food(it could be allergy or certain aliments or hormonal levels).

This is one of the critical parts of the individual fitness. And this has different impact on each individual. With respect to diet and nutrition there are general guidelines laid for daily nutrition requirement. These requirements define the amount of carbohydrates, protein, fat, vitamins and minerals requited for daily consumption. 

As for choosing workout we also have a choice to decide what, when and how much do we eat. Most of the people who failed to manage their weight have gone wrong here. we often hear from them that in-spite of working out they are not able to loose weight or gain weight.

One of the things that we dont have voluntary control here is what our body does with the food that we eat. By choosing the right type, time and amount of food we can more or less control its effect on our body. 

Items you should include in your diet.

Fresh fruits and vegetables, Milk, Eggs, Whole grains. Replace sugar with honey and Jaggery(Brown sugar) where possible. And limit your total sugar consumption to less that 6 spoons a day.

Things you should limit in your diet.

Refined carbohydrates, desserts, table sugar, deep fired food, any food which is highly process and refined. 

And looking at last and most important and somehow widely ignored aspect of the health is,

3) Sleep

Control percentage 40%, we dont have too much of direct control over the quality of sleep. There are physiological as well as psychological factor that play a very important role.

However we may not have direct control on the quality and quantity of sleep, doing the first two(Exercise and Nutrition) right will help you improve the quality and quantity of sleep. One of the other things that can help you enhance your sleep\rest\recovery is bringing in a fixed schedule in your daily routine. 

Additionally there are multiple relaxation techniques that can help you better your sleep quality. Use dim lights in you bed room and reduce the over all light intensity in your house before bed time. Read some fiction book. Take a warm water bath. Slow down your breathing pace and inhale and exhale deep. Meditate if you can. Listen to some calm non lyrical music.

Avoid coffee\tea 4-6 hours before bed, stop use of any gadgets like mobile, TV etc 1-2 hours before going to bed. Avoid puzzles and brain teasers.

With understanding of the above factors you can gain more control over your health. As I conclude I would want to make a point that all three Exercise, Nutrition and Sleep are very profound scientific topics. This blog contains very generic guidelines and observations which I have drawn from my personal learning and experience.

Hope this helps your take control of your fitness

Dhaval Bhadeshiya

Certified Fitness and Lifestyle coach