A Balanced Diet: An elusive dream of sacrificing cake and cream

A balanced diet is a thought which comes to mind every day especially in the morning hours. However, as the day passes and your hunger pangs get active all those thoughts of having a balanced diet evaporate. The Indian palate is used to stuffed paranthas, pooris, pohas for breakfast, chapati, rice, dal, and veggies for lunch and dinner. And if you have a sweet tooth then there are a variety of mithai to satiate your soul. This staple diet throughout the week gets interspersed with an exotic lunch and dinner on weekends either in a social gathering or at home with guests. The balanced diet thus gets a little bit unbalanced.

Balanced diet goes for a toss during festivities

India is a country where festivities starts from October and carries on till Feb of the following year. Festivities is a combination of festivals – Diwali, Bhai dooj, Chatth, Christmas, New Year along with Wedding functions. There is a lot to celebrate and a lot to eat. It is also time to get clicked on so many different occasions. The real problem starts when the next day your friend posts the pictures on social media. It is then you realize that going on a balanced diet is a must otherwise you may soon get out of frame.

The Theory of Relativity

The theory of relativity sets in when a diet conscious person decides to have lunch with you. The occasion can be a wedding party dinner or a buffet lunch at a restaurant. You take a round of the food stalls and shortlist the items you will have. Finally, you pick up your plate stacked in neat layers, next to the salad bar.

The salad bar, of course, is not so much of interest to you. You just grab some onion, green chilly, tomatoes and proceed to the main course. Every item looks so exotic that you decide to overload your plate with dal, butter chicken, mutton korma, jeera aloo, and paneer ki sabzi. As there is hardly any space left, you keep the tandoori roti or nan over the little hillock on your plate. While leaving the counter you get to see the papad. And how can you have your lunch without papad? So, you decide to adjust the papad over the roti.

Enjoying lunch with your friends

As you pull your chair on the round table to sit amongst the friends, you see a plate full of only green salads just next to you. The owner of the plate, your friend, smiles at you and tells you that she is off carbohydrates. That means no chapati and no rice or bread. You begin to wonder if it’s time for you also to go on a balanced diet.

The next morning you meet the same friend over the breakfast table. The situation is the same again this time. Your friend has picked up the choicest of fruits on her plate. There is watermelon, papaya, pineapple and a bowl of muesli. You get conscious as you were just rushing for the bedami poori with aloo ka rasa. You retract your footsteps and decide to settle for some toast and butter with a bowl of cornflakes.

This is the time you decide that you will change your diet plan and start working on it

The Balanced Diet plan sets in motion

Help is at hand and there is no dearth of it. There are friends in your circle who can give you free advice on how to lose weight. The gym freaks will ask you to join one to be back in shape. The salad-loving friends will tell you to cut down on carbohydrates. Then there are apps which you just need to download which will keep a track of your calorie intake. One close friend who is consulting a dietitian regularly volunteers to share the weekly diet plan with you.

The GM diet

You start observing people on what can kind of diet they are following. You notice that one of the friends in the office is changing his diet every day. One day it is only fruits, the next day only vegetables and the third day it is a mix of fruits and vegetables. You check with him and for the first time come to know that it is called the GM diet. A diet where you have a different food plan every day, a mix of fruits, vegetables, milk and chicken on each day of a week. The diet plan if strictly followed helps you in losing 5-7 kg in a week (as claimed)

On your way back home you start thinking that maybe people are losing weight as they stick to Genetically Modified (GM) plants. But later you discover that GM stands for General Motors as it was created for their employees in 1985. But the problem is in implementing the diet plan. How can you survive without any chapatis and rice for a week? Off goes the plan out of your window.

The Keto diet

As you have decided that you will go for a balanced diet, you do some soul searching on Facebook and come across something called the Keto diet. The ketogenic diet is a low-carb, high-fat and protein diet that involves drastically reducing carbohydrate intake and replacing it with fat. Keto diets are based on low-carb, high protein intake. It means including fish, red meat, chicken, cheese and nuts in your diet.

You decide that this diet suits you the most as you love chicken and red meat and gulping it down with cheese will not be a problem at all. But the problem is your family. Never in your home, you have stocked so much non-vegetarian items. Being a North Indian, non-vegetarian dishes are limited to once or maximum twice a week at your home. Now having it day after day, week after week will throw the monthly budget out of gear so your wife decides to throw it out of the window.

The Intermittent fasting – a great way to a balanced diet

This is one of the most popular health and fitness diet-plan in the world. It involves a cycle between voluntary fasting and non-fasting over a given period. Intermittent fasting doesn’t specify which foods you should eat but rather when you should eat them. It is described as an eating pattern and not as a diet plan. The common cycle is 16 hours of fasting and 8 hours non-fasting. During non-fasting hour you can consume your regular diet but avoid binging.

This is a diet plan which is compatible with your daily household eating patterns. It doesn’t disturb the eating pattern of your family who can have their normal breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Since you can eat normal meals during the non-fasting hours, the family also collaborates with you. You can learn more about this by clicking on the link below:

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/intermittent-fasting-guide

You can also follow Luke Coutinho who is a holistic nutritionist and keeps sharing tips, problems with the Indian diet. Click on the link below:

https://www.lukecoutinho.com/

So the next time when you are sitting next to your friend with salads on her plate, you can carry on with your normal lunch. But remember to skip your breakfast and also don’t overindulge.

I can already see one more item (diet plan) getting added to your resolution plan of 2020. Till then happy dieting!

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