What are you up to: dieting or die-eating?
As time moves people's opinions,
tastes and perspectives change. For many years a pot-belly was considered to be
the sign of well-being and prosperity and so was flaunted as a status symbol by
many. With time people realized the fact that being overweight or obese is a
clear indication of unhealthiness. Now people take pride in having and
maintaining appropriate body weight and body shape. However most people's
mental attitude about dieting still is simply cutting on food and eat as less
as possible without making any distinction as to on which kinds of food they
need to apply this concept thereby opening gate ways to many unexpected health
problems. This is because of the ignorance about how and by which factors
overweight and obesity are triggered. I call this a rift between awareness and
control.
Before planning diet regimes people
seriously need to be aware as to what exactly is that they should control:
simply their appetite or a few assorted kind of food items. Consider the case
of Kiran, a 25 year old working girl one morning feels that she is gaining
weight above what should be her normal weight. So from next day she decides to
go on dieting. To Kiran dieting is eating as much less as possible. From next
day itself Kiran skips breakfast at home and instead eats 1 bourbon biscuit
(chocolate cream biscuit), goes to office where from a colleague's plate she
eats 1 paneer pakoda and buys herself 1 small packet of Lays (potato chips)
from the canteen. For lunch she preferred to eat few things whereby at least
she will feel full. Going by the lightness and not liteness of the food she
orders 1 pack of French fries and 1 small chocolate milk shake at McD. In
between her work she munched upon Indian mixture, 1 murukku (chakri) and 2
khakhra as was hungry anyways and opted to eat these things again going by
their lightness. During snacks she ordered 1 vada pav from canteen thinking one
vada pav will do no harm to her diet regime. On her way home she eats 1
chocolate pastry (again out of lightness, I call it L' factor). After reaching
home she decides to skip dinner and goes out for an evening walk. On the way
she eats 5 pani puri and 1 plate bhel (L' factor). And the lastly thinking that
she has done a commendable job of controlling her appetite the whole day and didn't
have much, she buys herself 1 Feast ice cream (Walls).
Days went on like this but to her
shock she keeps on putting weight instead of maintaining or losing it. Here's a
trap. Let’s do comparative analysis for what she is doing and what could be other
options to maintain her weight. As accepted worldwide consider the daily
calorie intake recommendations for women- 2000 kcal and men- 2500 kcal for
maintaining weight. The average recommendations may vary according to age,
gender, weight, height, amount of muscles and level of daily activity and may
be more or less accordingly.
|
Food item
|
kcal
|
|
1 paneer pakoda
|
83
|
|
Lays 1 packet 30gm
|
160
|
|
1 Bourbon biscuit
|
65
|
|
French fries
|
230
|
|
1 small chocolate milk shake
|
580
|
|
Indian mixture 100 gm
|
524
|
|
1 murukku
|
150
|
|
2 khakhra
|
193
|
|
*Vada pav
|
295
|
|
Chocolate pastry- 3.5 oz/98 gm
|
410
|
|
5 pani puri
|
125
|
|
1 plate bhel puri
|
320
|
|
1 Feast ice cream
|
280
|
|
Total calories
|
3415
|
*Mumbai vada pav- 180 kcal
Thus it is seen that what she
thought would decrease her calorie consumption actually increased it in spite
of the great war against her appetite. Kiran is piling up excess 1415 kcal
daily there by consuming 70% more calories than what she is supposed to. Also
much portion of this is empty calories- devoid of nutrients. Let us now explore
the other option available to maintain her weight. Consider the following that
she could have followed instead.
|
Food item
|
Gender
|
||
|
|
Women
|
Men
|
|
|
Breakfast
|
Milk 200 ml (Amul cow milk)
|
124
|
124
|
|
Muesli 30 gm
|
147
|
147
|
|
|
*Dry fruits 1-2 Oz (muesli toppings)
|
120
|
120
|
|
|
Mix fruits slices raw or in muesli
|
10
|
10
|
|
|
2 gobi paratha
|
-
|
300
|
|
|
2 multigrain bread slices + peanut butter 5 gm
|
-
|
200
|
|
|
Lunch
|
Salad without dressing
|
22
|
22
|
|
4 roti
|
240
|
240
|
|
|
Ghee on roti-very moderate
|
55
|
55
|
|
|
Bhindi sabji- 1 cup
|
30
|
30
|
|
|
Cauliflower, Peas and Carrots sabji
|
58
|
58
|
|
|
Dal makhni- 1 cup
|
200
|
200
|
|
|
Steamed rice 100 gm
|
115
|
115
|
|
|
Gulab jamun- 1
|
90
|
90
|
|
|
Snacks
|
2 idli
|
120
|
120
|
|
Sambar- 1 cup
|
80
|
80
|
|
|
Dinner
|
3 roti
|
180
|
180
|
|
Ghee on roti-very moderate
|
40
|
40
|
|
|
Khichdi- 1 cup
|
178
|
178
|
|
|
Milk (Amul cow milk)- 1 cup
|
60
|
60
|
|
|
2 dahi vada
|
131
|
131
|
|
|
Total calories
|
2000
|
2500
|
|
*Raisin, cashew, almond, apricot,
walnut, fig, pistachio
You may substitute few courses with egg
dishes and non-veg. as well.
The problem here is not with the
control part but with the awareness. Kiran tried to control her appetite
without the knowledge as to from which kinds of food her abstinence should be.
Initially
it’s a question of one’s body image. If one loves himself being overweight or
obese than nothing like it but if it’s not the case one really need to eat
smart. Also you need to take care that you don’t develop deficit of any
nutrients. It’s a known fact,
net calories consumed = total calories
consumed - calories burned during exercise. So the more you
exercise, the more you can eat! Moreover with this you leave a window open for
you to enjoy food served in restaurants and other delicacies at times.
Understand this, to lose 1 kg of body weight; you need to under-eat by 7777
kcal. Obviously this cannot be achieved in a day but over months this is
possible.
Energy is burned in three ways: 1.)
Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR), 2.) Thermic energy of food and 3.) Thermic effect
of exercise. The most important of these is your RMR, which accounts for
between 65 to 75 per cent of all the energy you burn. RMR is the amount of
energy your body expends while at rest, on processes like heartbeat, circulation,
breathing, the release of hormones and maintaining body temperature. RMR thus
varies from person to person, partly because muscles burn more energy than fat,
even when you're not moving. A kilogram of muscle can burn more than 120 kcal a
day at rest, while a kilogram of fat burns 20 kcal or less. So the more muscle
you have, the higher your RMR is likely to be, and the energy you will burn
without trying. Second way, thermic effect of food, represents the amount of
energy required to digest food. It's generally around 10 per cent of the
calories eaten, so digesting 500 kcal lunch could burn off 50 kcal. The third
way to burn energy is the thermic effect of exercise. Amount of calories burnt
with this may not be as high as one would expect, e.g.: a 60 kg woman jogging
for half an hour would only burn 245 kcal and a 75 kg man cycling for half an
hour would burn 240 kcal. However, exercising has its own benefits among which
one is muscle building which further aids to increase RMR. Thus the most effective
way to burn calories is to raise one's RMR by developing a more active
lifestyle and forming more muscle while shrinking one's fat deposits.
To most people the normal course
that follows increased weight (fat) is dieting with subsequent restriction on
food intake greatly without a forethought on which foods they need to be abstemious.
This often leads to adverse health conditions. Hence the concept of dieting
should be understood once and for all. It is imperative for people to change
their mindset towards food. Amount of food, volume or its weight does not speak
for the amount of calories or fat it carries. Blindly following ones whims
about food may lead to eating disorders like bulimia nervosa and anorexia
nervosa whose ramifications are grave.
However, once understood it is not at all
difficult. After all it’s just another brain game!
PS:
-
Calorie requirement may vary from person to person according to age, gender,
weight, height, amount of muscle and level of daily activity and accordingly
need more or less than recommended calories. Same is true for the amount of
calories burned while exercising.
- Why very low calorie diet doesn't work for
long term weight loss or weight maintenance?
Maintaining muscle mass while losing fat is a
key factor to reach both the ideal weight and body composition. More muscles
means more RMR and less muscles means less RMR.
Muscles burn a lot of calories. Very low
calorie diet affects metabolism and initiates muscle loss. With very low
calorie diets the body goes into starvation mode and it slows down metabolism
(hence amount of calories burned) to make most of the calories available.
Hence, the body will attempt to reserve fat (which utilizes much lesser energy)
and start losing muscle tissue (as it utilizes high proportion of energy) to
make efficient use of available calories.
With muscle decrease the RMR will decrease making it even harder to burn
more calories. Your body will end up losing muscle and gaining fat.
# Data of calories adopted from varied sources on google.
