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Magazine
EAT SMART
Master healthy eating
DR. SHEELA NAMBIAR
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How food is related to health and fitness. The second part of the series on Building a Foundation of Success.
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Photos: S.S. Kumar and P.V. Sivakumar
Soups and salads: Fruits and vegetables provide all the minerals, vitamins, phytochemicals and antioxidants.
Understanding your food and not considering it the enemy is crucial if you want to enjoy innumerable options for the palate, while maintaining your weight at a healthy optimum. The word “diet” conjures up images of cabbage soup, celery sticks and near starvation. It doesn’t have to be this way! In fact starving yourself into your new dress will only lead to a lowered metabolic rate (as the body perceives famine around the corner). This sluggish metabolism does you no good when you get back to eating even near normal food at which point you find, to your disgust, that you have begun to gain all the weight you have lost and more.
Weight on the scale alone is not an indication of exactly how things stand with your body. It gives you no suggestion of what you are carrying around as weight — fat or muscle mass. To identify this we need to focus on the body fat percentage along with inches and with weight on the scale.
Older individuals, who haven’t exercised, but managed to stay at the same weight as when they were in their 20s perhaps, beware! Your fat percentage would have crept up while you lose muscle mass, thereby giving you a false sense of security. Obesity, with a significant fat percentage, is closely related to Type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome and heart disease besides appreciably decreasing the quality of life. Therefore the fight against obesity seems justified. Healthy eating is only one part of the solution. Exercise is the other.
High protein; low carb; high fat; low fat; … the variety of available diets is breathtaking not to mention confusing. Every once in a while a new diet comes along promising a miracle cure to your weight woes.
Learn your food groups
Carbohydrates are a group of foods that range from the cereal/bread group to vegetables and fruits. In India we tend to consume too much of the cereal/bread faction and too little of the fruits and vegetables (which we near kill and then try to resuscitate with our methods of cooking). This was originally for economic reasons — rice/wheat being cheaper than vegetables. A small cup (or two servings) of rice or two slices of whole wheat bread should suffice for most people. When eaten with adequate amounts of vegetables, protein in the form of lentils or meat protein (as long as it is not drowning in a soup of oil) creates a sense of satiety. A minimum of two fruits and 3-4 servings of vegetables a day on an average is required to provide us with all the minerals, vitamins, phytochemicals and antioxidants.
Soups are a great way to curtail hunger while obtaining a wide variety of micronutrients. Eat foods with a lower Glycemic Index — those that are absorbed slowly and keep the blood sugar stable. Most vegetables fibrous fruits and whole grains fall in this category. Processed foods are another special category that needs to be avoided .
Fats are present naturally in foods, half a litre of oil per adult a month is more than sufficient while cooking. The polyunsaturated oils (sunflower) have been popularised as the solution to high cholesterol.
Consuming only this form of oil can be detrimental to health. Switch between, groundnut, sesame, sunflower, olive, rice bran, almond, linseed. Vegetarians need to eat some linseed/flaxseed/walnut oil to obtain the benefits of Omega-3 fats present in oily fish. Beware of oily, creamy curries/gravies that carry a lot of hidden calories.
Simple cooking
Keep everyday cooking simple. We could learn from the rural Chinese cooking of vegetable, which are stir fried on high heat for a very short period of time to retain flavour and nutrients. Low fat cheeses are the hard cheeses and cottage cheese.
Saturated fats — butter, cream and ghee — need to be kept to the minimum. Hydrogenated fats, made specially by adding hydrogen to polyunsaturated vegetable fat, used primarily in baking, preserving and processed foods have been clearly indicated as a cause of atherosclerosis.
Protein is present in the animal meats and fish. The vegetarian sources are lentils, soy, milk (preferably skimmed) and milk products. Most animal proteins also contain a fair amount of saturated fat. Although recently high glycemic index carbohydrates seem more responsible for arterial and cardiac disease than saturated fats, keeping red meat to the minimum, eating more oily fish is a more sensible solution.
Eat smaller portions, more frequently, but slowly, chew properly, and drink water to stay hydrated (definitely not the carbonated drinks, even the diet variety). All the advice given to us as children.
Don’t starve for large parts of the day only to eat a heavy meal at the end. Eat a variety of food to enable the absorption of the various micronutrients that are so important for the proper functioning of our body.
Approach food with respect and prudence, but delight and pleasure. Recognise if you use it as a defence mechanism, stress buster or comforter. It is not supposed to be. Eat mindfully.
Food groups
Your body needs all the food groups. Singling out one to the exclusion of others could send you into a tail spin of deficiencies and cravings.
A well balanced diet with the right combination of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats is advised.
Smart diet
A small cup (or two servings) of rice or two slices of whole wheat bread should suffice when eaten with adequate amounts of vegetables, protein as lentils or meat protein.
A minimum of two fruits and 3-4 servings of vegetables a day is required to provide the required amount of minerals, vitamins, phytochemicals and antioxidants.
Protein matters
Protein is required for muscle building and repair of tissues.
0.8 gm of protein/kg body weight for an adult is sufficient
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1gm/kg if you are weight training
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Higher amounts for body builders.
Oily stuff
Consuming only one form of oil can be detrimental to health.
Switch between, groundnut, sesame, sunflower, olive, rice bran, almond, linseed.
Vegetarians need to eat some linseed/flaxseed/walnut oil to obtain the benefits of Omega-3 fats present in oily fish.
The author is an MD in OBGYN and a fitness and lifestyle consultant (NAFC). E-mail: drsheela@tflinc.net
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