Diet- its true meaning

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