This fortnightly feature was published on October 18


Eat when you are hungry, but...

By Anup Dev Nath

THERE is no sure way of losing weight. What works for one person might not work for another and vice versa. Of course, there are myths about food and dieting that exist and are taken as facts by many people. While discussing some myths, we will give you a few pointers on how to make your diet successful.

While dieting, we seem to concentrate so much on what we should eat, that we forget to look at any other aspect. What we eat, though it is certainly important, is not the only thing that matters. When we eat and how much we eat are the two factors that are just as important for all those who want to go on a diet.

Each one of us has an individual body pattern of hunger. Some of us rarely eat between meals while others live on frequent meals throughout the day. While on a diet, try not to change your body’s normal hunger pattern too much. Eat when you feel hungry, but try to ensure that you don’t eat too much or the wrong food either. Often a small, light snack between meals can keep the hunger pangs away very easily. How much one should eat differs from person to person and body to body.

One way of losing weight and burning fat is by burning off more calories than are taken in. While doing this you have to remember that the body needs a certain number of calories in order to survive, called the basic energy requirement. These are the bare minimum calories required by a body to sustain life while resting, and doing nothing.

When you diet, you have to ensure that you give the body the calories it needs to maintain the weight you would ideally like to be, the one that is right for your height and frame. The way to calculate this is to find out what your body’s ideal weight should be in kilograms and multiply it by 24. Multiply the answer you get by 0.9 for women and 1.0 for men. The answer you get will give your body’s minimum calorie requirement to survive.

Multiply your basic energy requirement by 1.3 if you lead a sedentary life, 1.5 if you lead a moderately active life, and 1.75 if you lead an active life. The answer that you get will give you the number of calories you need daily to maintain your ideal weight. Even if you try to stay within this calorie level there should be some weight loss, particularly if it is coupled with moderate to heavy exercise.

Be careful in not falling into the trap of taking advice given out ever so often by "knowledgeable" persons. Some common myths are:

*It is all right to eat as much and any fruit as it is not fattening. It is true that most fruits have little or no fat and so are perfect as fillers, but even among the fruits there are those that are less fattening than the others. Bananas contain double the amount of calories that are present in apples and cherries and almost four times contained in grapefruit. So if you are really sincere about losing weight, certainly eat fruit, but try to eat the varieties of fruit with fewer calories.

*You should simply count the calories of whatever you eat and try to eat the minimum. The foodstuff doesn’t matter. Undoubtedly, calories are to be counted, but not all food with the same number of calories will be equally nourishing. Try to choose the option that is more nourishing as it will, ultimately, help you more.

*Honey and sugar are equally fattening. This is not true. Honey contains fructose. It is sweeter than sugar which has sucrose. Honey is used in smaller quantities. Therefore honey is a better bet than using sugar.

*A diet consisting of carrots is the quickest and healthiest way to keep weight off. Eating any single vegetable or fruit for an extended period of time is not at all a smart way to lose weight. A diet of only carrots will certainly not help you attain your goal, it could lead to health problems, including turning your skin orange. It is better to eat a sensible and nutritiously balanced diet, whereby you lose weight but do not deplete the body of what it needs to function well.

*Eating less is the best way to diet. It is not only the quantity that counts, but the quality of foods as well. Even on a strict diet, you really don’t have to starve yourself. You can fill up on food that is low in calories but high in nutrition and filling as well to keep the hunger pangs away. In fact, not only those on a diet but even the others have to mind what they eat. Food habits nowadays tend to overfeed a person but undernourish him/her at the same time. In other words you put on weight and, at the same time, lose out on energy and the feeling of well-being as well.

When you are following the difficult path of losing weight, any help seems a lifesaver. Undoubtedly, you will have to reach the goal you have set for yourself on your own. Here are some tips that will make the path easier and the goal more attainable.

*Don’t try to get overambitious when you are setting yourself a diet programme. Keep your limitations as well as your lifestyle in mind when you plan what you will eat and when. Try to find a diet programme that will comfortably fit in with both of these for it to be really successful.

*Try to analyse any previous attempts at dieting and why they weren’t successful. You will, then, find the reason as to why it did not work as well. This will give you the key to what to avoid in a diet in the future so as to make it successful. If you are unable to last out with extended diet plans then choose short ones instead. Maybe you cannot bear too much regulation on your daily intake of food, in which case a long-term diet programme that is easy and well-paced is the answer.

*All of us have one or more particular time when we feel very hungry and simply have to eat. Try to identify your hunger point of the day. Plan your meals, if possible, in such a way that these hunger points are covered. If this is not possible then make sure you have a low-calorie nutritious snack on hand so that you can eat that. This is better than giving in and eating something you should not.

*Try to fill up your stomach at a meal with a lower calorie option. When you sit down to dinner, help yourself to a big bowl of vegetable soup, preferably unstrained and fat-free. This will be filling to quite an extent, with the result that you will eat substantially less at a meal. Repeat this at lunch. The soup can be substituted with a large helping of cucumber, cabbage, tomatoes etc. as salad for a change.

What you eat, when you eat and how much you eat — if done sensibly you will find that diets that never worked for you earlier are suddenly knocking the kgs off. Dieting the correct way should not result in a tired, lethargic you. You will be full of pep and vigour, instead.