Book Excerpt: Diets And Weight Loss ≠ Healthy Living

Excerpted from ‘The 12-Week Fitness Project’, By Rujuta Diwekar, with permission from Juggernaut.

Diet trends don’t come and go, they go and come back. As the 2.0 versions of their earlier selves. It’s the same old wine, but in a new bottle, amplified via social media, influencers and even apps. So, Atkins or paleo is now keto or LCHF (low carb, high fat) diet. Low-calorie trends like 5:2 diet from earlier this decade are now intermittent fasting or time-restricted eating, etc. While one urges you to eat like a hunter, the other wants you to fast like your ancestors. Of course, you don’t need to hunt while living in a cave and fasting delicacies like sabudana khichdi, sweet potato, samo kheer, singhare ki roti, arbi ki sabzi etc., are not even in the picture. But the noise around the diets drowns these minor details.

It’s not that the weight loss and food industry lacks imagination when it comes to introducing revolutionary diet trends. It’s just that they are limited by the parameters on the basis of which new diet trends can be developed. Most, if not all, diet trends in the modern era work by either restricting calories (through fewer meals or timings or portions) or reducing/eliminating food groups (counting macros, removing carbs, etc.)

Here is a quick summary.

So, as an individual who is looking to lead a healthy life, a life free from diseases and disabilities, what can we learn from the story of diet trends? That they are unsustainable. They don’t lead to long term good health, and in fact can cause more harm than good. And that good health doesn’t come from following the food industry and influencers, but lies at the heart of our homes – our kitchens. And the people you must listen to are our grandmothers at home and the farmers outside. They are deeply integrated with the food systems, are the bearers of time-tested wisdom and, in the case of your elders, are genuinely invested in your well-being.

There is still a lot you can do at an individual level to ensure sustainable health for yourself and for your family, and that’s where this book comes in. But how does one go about deciding if a diet pattern, a workout regime or a lifestyle will lead to good health? Fortunately for us, the latest in nutrition science is on the same page with our traditional food wisdom and common sense on this front. And drawing on this coming together of traditional wisdom with science, I have made three easy rules which can help you decide if you are on the sustainable path to health and fitness.

The Three Rules Of Sustainable Health

1. Metabolic health parameters vs weight loss

The thing is that even when diet trends come back with a new name and a new game, the basic premise stays the same – weight loss. Sometimes outright, sometimes garnished with words and concepts like detoxify, rejuvenation, anti-diabetes, anti-cancer, etc. But for any diet trend to thrive, weight loss is the central pillar. Ever heard of a viral diet trend whose only promise is ‘food security for all’ or even a modest one like ‘better digestion and no acidity’?

But what we notice in our daily lives, if we pay attention, is that the things that really matter when it comes to our well-being are usually the ones we can’t measure on a weighing scale or on a scale of any kind. Do we sleep well at night, do we wake up feeling fresh, do our energy levels stay good through the day, do we suffer from acidity, bloating and indigestion, do we get sweet cravings after meals, are we able to stay active and comply with exercise plans and do we have painful PMS and periods, etc.?

In scientific terminology, the above parameters are surrogate measures of metabolic health. They give an indication of how well your hormones are behaving, how your heart health is, how diverse your gut bacteria are, whether your blood sugar is well regulated, and so much more. In other words, they are markers of your susceptibility to NCDs like diabetes, cancer, PCOD, thyroid conditions, heart ailments, mental health issues, etc. And remember, NCDs account for almost 75% of early deaths worldwide.

And one of the biggest reasons for deteriorating public health, even as diet trends proliferate, is the single-minded focus on losing weight at the cost of metabolic health.

2. All-round vs one-dimensional approach to fitness

Once we move beyond weight loss, we discover that there are many aspects of a fit body – hormones, organs, bones, muscles, ligaments, tendons, joints, skin, hair and so much more. And that they don’t work in isolation but are dependent on each other. It then becomes obvious that for the whole of us to stay healthy, a wholesome approach is necessary. One that accounts for all of the above and doesn’t work in isolation on any one aspect. So no diets which come with a tag line – no exercise necessary, just walk; no exercise regime which says eat anything, just burn it all; no lifestyle which doesn’t account for the need to sleep and recover. Food, activity, exercise and sleep together make for an all-round approach to sustainable health. And an all-round approach is necessary towards each of these aspects too – food not to be broken into carbs, proteins and fats; activity and exercise not to be restricted to walking or cardio; sleep and recovery on a daily basis and not weekend lie-ins.

Also, the daily constraints that life brings in, that is, your work, travel, family responsibilities, etc., have to become part of the solution and any diet or exercise pattern that doesn’t account for them is bound not to succeed.

3. Long-term vs short-term solutions

The other aspect of sustainable health, one which is built into the meaning of the word sustainable, is the concept of long-term health. Every time you make a food choice or a decision to follow a certain diet trend or lifestyle, the first question you should ask yourself is – can I continue to do this for the rest of my life and am I happy even for my children to eat like this? If that sounds too much to comprehend, what about the next 15 years or even five years? If not, you should really rethink why you want to do this. Quick weight loss is not worth the long-term trouble it will bring along.

Rujuta Diwekar is a leading nutritionist and a health advocate.

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of BloombergQuint or its editorial team.