Demons of Diet

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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