Don'T Lose Your Mind, Lose Your Weight

by Rujuta Diwekar

Including fats not just provides your facial skin with the moisture and raw material that it needs to keep from wrinkling, but also helps you to burn fat effectively there, by not allowing your body fat levels (body weight) to go up.

Nothing keeps age off your face like fat (the right amount of it of course; the amount which keeps your body weight at optimum). The appearance of wrinkles and loss of suppleness a...

Indians, especially in cities, are switching to olive oil (extra virgin mind you) because it is being hailed as the saviour (our love for everything phoren). So, you’re wondering as you’re reading this, is it bad? No. But closer to home, peanut oil (it’s always been around) and that new entrant, rice bran oil, have a strong content of MUFA. Their fatty acid content is similar to olive oil, and they have a flavour which is much better suited to Indian cooking than olive oil.

Omega 6 is found in sunflower, safflower (kardi) and soy bean oils (most vegetable oils are predominantly PUFA). Omega 3 is found in flax seed, walnuts and the oils in fish.

We should have equal amounts of omega 3 and omega 6. But in diets today, the ratio of Omega 6 to Omega 3 has grown as skewed as 20:1, which can lead to the hardening of arteries and an increase in cardiovascular diseases.

Trans fats are commonly used by restaurants, fast food chains and companies that produce food on a large scale and for commercial purposes, as it is cheaper. Most processed foods, store-bought cakes, biscuits and fast food such as pizzas, burgers and fries, etc have this kind of fat. It is rightly called bad fat as it increases the levels of low density lipo-protein or bad cholesterol in our body. This is the kind of fat that is best avoided.

When you go on a crash diet or don’t provide your body essential fatty acids through your diet, the system perceives stress and responds by storing more fat for you. And you can’t blame your body. It is only activating its survival mechanisms and protecting you from any harm that may come with stress; preventing fat burning to try to improve your chances of survival, and lowering your metabolic rate.

A lot of so called ‘low fat’ is a waste of money.

You spend ridiculously high amounts to buy low fat cheese and butter which only has about 1 or max 2 grams of fat less than the regular ‘full fat’ variety.

these low fat and baked varieties (everything that is processed) that contain the worst fat: trans fat.

Trans fats are responsible for the hardening of arteries, increasing body fat, and causing many other health problems (obesity related conditions like insulin insensitivity, heart trouble, BP, joint aches, etc).

foods with invisible fat are full of the bad fat, trans fat, which is responsible for causing heart attacks, insulin insensitivity, etc. When fat is invisible you also end up eating bigger sizes, increasing the glycemic load and therefore your chances of getting fat.

For a lean, toned body, healthy heart, supple skin and lustrous hair, make fat a part of every meal—or at least of three main meals. It’s not just enough to eat food cooked in oil.

Include nuts, cheese, or any other dairy product in your diet. Consuming healthy fats in healthy (read adequate) amounts will actually ensure proper functioning of the body and optimum fat burning.

Fats, when eaten in combination with carbs and protein, work at reducing the glycemic index (refer to the section on carbs, earlier in this chapter) of food. So they actually work at slowly releasing sugar in the blood. This leads to effective fat burning, stabl...

use oil as a cooking medium for vegetables and dal, as most Indians do; don’t try to cut it out. Preferably different kinds of oil. So if you cooked lunch in pea...

Include peanuts and cheese in your diet. They can often make up a min...

Including fats in our diet is also known to reduce mood swi...

Children who don’t get enough omega-3 can develop le...

Is your girlfriend giving you grief when she PMSes? Just buy her a flax seed supplement or gift h...

Limit deep-fried stuff but don’t avoid it completely. Eat hot, homemade pakoras, bhajiyas, puris, etc.

Deep-fried but homemade food is good for you. The oil is not reused (reusing oil oxidises the fat and makes it toxic), and the soda and excess salt is missing (both lead to bloating and gas trouble). Just make sure that you eat immediately upon frying.

don’t remove the oil on these snacks using tissue paper or n...

eat only 7 to 8 pakoras or 3 to 4 puris and this only once a mo...

Fry, but only once a month.

olive oil has amazing heart-protecting properties, let’s not be quick to jump on the bandwagon. Look at the picture in totality.

Using aluminium cookware is dangerous as the Al leaches from the pot or pan, makes its way into your food, and finally into your body.

aluminium will neutralise digestive enzymes, increase risk of ulcers and if present in excessive amounts, even lead to Alzheimer’s disease.

get that iron pot, pan or tava back on your kitchen rack. (Using oil or ghee while making dosa, paratha, roti, sabzi or dal, etc improves the nutritional value of your food and also leads to a favourable G...

A high intake of processed food, stress and other lifestyle factors like smoking, late nights and inactivity are increasing our need for vitamins and minerals, and reducing our ability to absorb them well. None of these nutrients can work in isolation.

For calcium to do its work in the body it needs 24 other nutrients to be present, in the right amount and at the right time; while iron requires adequate amounts of protein as well as vitamins B and C to be at hand, to form haemoglobin.

You will need a well-rounded diet, regular exercise and to be in a relaxed state, to improve the effici...

Vitamins, minerals, protein, carbs and fat all need to get adequate representation in our diet so that each one of them can carry out their specific functions to the best of their abilities; only then can we enjoy optimum health

Zinc and chromium are of paramount importance for good skin and hair growth, and to prevent acne and wrinkles.

Crash dieting takes the biggest toll on the water reserves in our body. Loss of water is one of the biggest issues that I have against crash dieting and its associated ‘guaranteed weight loss’.

Nimbu can actually work against you. For certain body compositions it can increase headaches, acidity and can create digestion problems.

The physical body, what we can see in the mirror is called annamaya kosha according to yoga or yogic philosophy (roughly translated as food body).

When you sleep, your blood sugar levels drop in the night. (Babies always wake up in the night, crying, asking to be fed, right? They wake up when their blood sugar drops.)

In the morning our liver stores are almost empty. So our blood sugar is low and it’s our responsibility to bring this up to an optimum level.

Low blood sugar is also a reason why we feel ‘low’ in the morning. The body sometime takes to wasting or breaking our muscle down to keep our sugar from dropping to abnormally low levels...

To be able to burn fat effectively, you have to train your body to preserve lean tissue (muscle); not waste it by breaking it down int...

to keep our body’s fat burning tissue (muscle) alive—we must eat. Eat real food. Something that will lead to a slow, steady increase in our blood sugar levels. This kicks in the action of insulin, which is secreted by the body as a response to an increase in blood sugar levels, which facilitates our hungry cells to get the nutrients that it is craving for.

Any stimulant like tea or coffee, which has caffeine (in all varieties; with milk or without, with sugar or without, oolong, white, green, purple, blue) and cigarettes jolt the system out of slumber. It increases the blood pressure, heart rate, breathing rate and makes the body feel stressed or ‘kicked’. Sadly we mistake this for feeling awake. In reality, the body experiences stress because of the increase in its heart and breathing rate and will respond by hampering fat burning.

It’s important to remember at all times (while fighting with your spouse, getting frustrated by traffic, overworking, etc) that stress is the biggest enemy of an efficient digestive sy...

morning, the heart and breathing rates are at its lowest as this is the reflection of a relaxed state of mind and body. To keep the system relaxed, we need to give it real food, w...

Going hungry in the morning is a disaster for anybody who dreams of a sexy body. All it does is create a huge calorie deficit in the morning and then the body has no other option but to overeat later to make up for the deficit.

All of us who just ‘don’t feel like eating anything in the morning’ are victims of a slow metabolic rate and of a digestive system which is not functioning effectively.

a hearty, healthy breakfast can increase our metabolic rate. Some of the herbal infusions won’t give you the caffeine kick but it will prolong the time between waking up and eating, which is why I prefer you s...

With sunrise, the metabolism peaks and the cells demand nutrition. This is the time to eat and to eat big. If you are not used to eating anything in the morning, start with a fruit. After that, within an hour, have your paratha, muesli, dosa, idli, upma, poha, roti and sabzi. Anything that is healthy and fibre rich. Once your cells receive nutrition through food and the blood sugar comes to an optimum level, feel free to have your tea or coffee.

the foundation to a great body is laid by what you eat and drink (or not) within the first 10 to 15 minutes of waking up.