The word ‘dieting’ has gained
much importance in the past few years. Everyone around is following some or the
other diet which is famous or fad because dieting is in fashion. Very few of us
realise that the word “DIET” has a much deeper meaning than just weight loss.
Diet means attaining and maintaining health in order to carry out your day to
day activities without getting fatigue or famished. It means feeling energetic,
active, focused and happy. It means eating balanced nutritious meals in small
quantities and often to pump up your BMR and helping you burn you fat, and not
melt it. (There is nothing called as melting fat). It’s as simple as eating the
right thing at the right time in the right quantity.
Most of the people pick up one of
the fad diets available on the net and start believing that it is the best diet
to lose weight because some of their friends/ colleagues have told them about
it. But that is absolutely incorrect because there is no authenticity to it.
Also these diets are very extreme like rice diet, soup diet, cabbage diet etc
which are not holistic and do not help you meet your daily nutrient
requirements. For example, rice is rich in carbohydrates and some B-complex
vitamins but what about your protein, good fats, calcium, iron etc. Another
vast sector of society thinks that starving or skipping meals will help them
get trimmer. This is again wrong because when you starve your BASAL METABOLIC
RATE crashes down and your body stores whatever you eat next as fat. So you
initially lose water weight but when you go back to your routine diet, you are richer
with greater fat stores than before. This is called the YO-YO effect (losing
weight and gaining back double of it in no time).
I had a male businessman client
who came to me with 109 kgs, with the most unacceptable eating habits and
desperate to lose weight and get healthy. In 3 months, he was down to 93 kgs
with 8 inches less on his waist. All he had to say is “Neha I am very happy, but
I had to spend double my money because of you”, I asked surprisingly,” why?” He
said,” I had to redo my entire wardrobe again”, and I laughed with joy.
Similarly, another young female client had a Polycystic ovarian syndrome at the
age of 16 and weighed 78kgs because of wrong eating habits and inactive
lifestyle. In 2.5 months she lost 9 kgs and had got rid of her PCOS problem
completely just with the right food and moderate exercise.
So friends it is really not a
rocket science to maintain health and weight together. It is just slightly
tweaking your lifestyle for the better. What better than eating enough and achieving
your goals?
By Neha Chandna
Nutritionist