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We love to read health articles in magazines and get tips from various fitness coaches. However, many popular fad diets in the market (including low carb diet / keto diet / gm diet etc) make you deficient in essential nutrients and can be dangerous in the long run.
Let us see the common mistakes that people make in their diet influenced by popular media and fitness trends - without understanding the fundamentals of nutrition!
Eating very low calories
Yes this is the first mistake everyone makes! Eat less to lose weight. It is true that if you eat less you will lose weight, but how much less is the question? Each one of us has different calorie requirement and following your friend’s plan may not be beneficial at all. Going too low on your calorie intake may lead to loss of more muscle mass than fat, since the body starts preserving fat as a response to starvation, resulting in poor body composition. Such weight loss is neither healthy nor sustainable.
Not understanding the difference between weight loss and fat loss
All crash diets - with no exercise - lead to fat loss as well as muscle loss. This lowers your metabolism in the long term and you gain back weight after you leave your diet plan. So please follow a proper diet plan with weight training as well as cardio exercises to stay at an ideal body weight and keep your metabolism right. Shortcuts don’t work!
Low carb / carbs are bad
We have been inundated with messages by health experts to avoid carbohydrates to lose weight, but do we have any idea which carbs to avoid and which to eat and what should be the portion size?
We make the mistake of eating less chapatti / rice, avoid potato, banana and then when we don’t feel satiated, we binge on processed and refined snacks such as cornflakes / chips that actually lead to fat gain. Blaming the wrong foods may result in your staying hungry all the time with no benefits.
Carbohydrate is a macronutrient and is required by our body as much as all vitamins and minerals. Would it make sense if we suddenly said – vitamin A is bad for health, let us avoid all food with vitamin A? Absolutely not. The same logic holds for carbohydrates! Avoiding carbohydrates makes you anxious and low on energy. So please stop thinking that removing carbs from your diet is helping you in anyway!
Protein powder is my best friend!
Protein definitely helps you to lose weight but most whey powders are full of sugar and even the best ones have additives and preservatives which will hinder your fitness in the long run. Instead of cutting out whole foods like rajmah and paneer, let us cut out packaged foods like whey protein from our diet (especially not needed by non vegetarians). Contrary to marketing claims, benefits of nutrients from whole foods are higher than those from packaged / processed food.
Fat in food leads to increase in body fat!
Underestimating the benefits of natural dietary fat and confusing fat in foods with body fat is a blunder. Fat is a macronutrient and is needed in the body similar to proteins and carbs. We need all kinds of fats like saturated fat found in desi ghee, monounsaturated fat from almonds and Omega 3 from fish. We keep hearing about omega 3 and hopefully you know it’s a fat! By the way, cold pressed organic oils have 100% fat and have higher Omega 3 than refined oils. Fats are also required to help us absorb fat soluble vitamins - A, D, E and K. So avoiding oil completely will not benefit you in anyway, but will just make you nutrient deficient. Similarly avoiding egg yolk due to ‘cholesterol’ (which has a healing function in the body) and eating only egg whites is another common mistake in poorly designed diets. Egg yolk is very rich in vitamins A, D, E, K, B12, various minerals including calcium, folate, potassium, selenium and essential fats - and you don’t want to miss out on their benefits!
Replacing real food with processed food
We all love our favourite tasty cornflakes or muesli in breakfast. That’s because such packaged foods have a high quantity of hidden sugars that make you addicted to them. Replacing these packaged foods with homemade Indian cheela, dosa, idli and even aloo parantha is a good idea.
Digestive biscuits are healthy
Despite heavy marketing, no biscuit in any form can be considered healthy! Biscuits are made of refined flour (maida), sugar, hydrogenated oil (which cause inflammation and lead to lifestyle diseases) and preservatives. Please grab your packet and put it where it belongs – the dustbin. This so called ‘healthy’ food item should never replace a whole food – like a potato or banana (which are actually healthy!). No one makes money advertising potatoes or bananas, but companies make a lot of money by making us believe through heavy advertisements that a digestive biscuit is great for health.
Rusk is fine
If you were looking for a healthier alternative to biscuits then rusk is definitely not it! Rusk is made of maida/suji, sugar, unhealthy hydrogenated oil and preservatives. Avoid these completely to see a positive change in your health. You will start feeling better, lighter and more active.
Diet chips / Soy chips
No, diet chips will not help you achieve your fitness goals. Remember, there are no shortcuts! Your favourite chips are processed heavily - taking away all nutritive value and adding a bunch of chemicals till they are made tasty and addictive. A good nutrition plan ensures that you munch on something healthy like nuts and fruits which are full of various nutrients rather than binging on such foods which have only empty calories with no nutritive value!
Exercising as a substitute for eating unhealthy food
“I will have that burger and burn it by exercising” - No, this won’t happen! Exercise is not a substitute for binging on unhealthy food as fitness is much more than calories in vs. calories out – the quality of your food matters a lot! The preservatives and chemicals in fast food, refined or packaged food lead to not just weight gain but also a number of lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, PCOD / PCOS, thyroid malfunctions, heart diseases etc.
Further, burning off just one session of eating junk food (a minimum of 500-800 calories) would require multiple hours of high intensity exercise – which may still not be effective because the calorie burning rate of the body (your metabolism) is also slowed down by processed food intake.
Supplements / Pills for deficiencies
All deficiencies can be addressed by using 100% whole foods rather than supplements. Whole foods consist of a variety of cofactors and nutrients bundled together in a manner that is best absorbed and most useful to the body. Supplementation using pills can also lead to overdose which is not the case with whole foods!
For example excess vitamin D through supplements may lead to dangerously high calcium levels and stomach upset! Rather than using supplements and upsetting the delicate balance of various vitamins / minerals in the body, we should rely only on actual unprocessed and organic whole foods such as whole grains (properly fermented), pulses, vegetables, fruits, unprocessed non veg and milk - to keep us naturally healthy!
Artificial sweeteners / zero sugar sweeteners
Artificial sweeteners are low in calories, but sweeteners such as aspartame, saccharin and sucralose are linked to glucose intolerance (precursor to diabetes) and premature delivery in pregnant women. Instead of these, opt for jaggery powder. Jaggery powder is unprocessed and high in various minerals – iron, magnesium, calcium and phosphorus.
In summary, a good nutrition plan will nourish your body fully using only high quality whole foods (no supplements or packaged / processed food). The goal is to provide your body with the required calories, all macronutrients - protein, carbs and fat in a balanced ratio, and all micronutrients i.e. vitamins and minerals – in order to achieve your ideal weight, a high level of fitness and keep you sustainably healthy!