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.


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