With people hardly walking these days, mostly sitting at work for long hours, recreation limited to mainly television and computer, water consumption being a bare minimum of 3-5 glasses, fizzy drinks, packed juices and restaurant and fast foods loaded with fat as their staple diet the wealthy, who were well nourished and healthy 2-3 decades ago are very unhealthy today. Obesity from age 5 upwards is a common occurrence. At least one child and one parent in most homes are obese. Nowadays diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, etc. are common among people in their late 20s and early 30s.

There is hope however. More people are becoming health and fitness conscious. But no matter how much you workout, it will not have a good effect unless you are eating healthy, nutritious food. The first reason for being strict with diet is because I believe in a 40 %, 40% and 20% food distribution system through the day. When you wake up in the morning you do so after having fasted for atleast 10 hours and your energy levels are zero. You have a whole days work ahead of you so you need to eat a properly balanced meal so that the body and brain are well fuelled and work at their full potential. So skipping breakfast or eating only fruits is not advisable. Breakfast and 11 am fruit should be 40% of your days calories.

At lunch again, one has the whole afternoon and evening ahead, and the gap between lunch and dinner is large. So lunch too must be a good balanced meal. Lunch and tea should give you another 40% of your calories. The American system of just a sandwich and juice for lunch is not a healthy one. Here many just want to eat 2 idlis and sambar or a roti and sabji for lunch. This is very unhealthy as you start getting hungry by 5-6 pm and then you opt for chaats, snacks, sweets, etc. Here is an interesting chemistry going on in your body. If you eat a samaosa at 6pm, the potato and maida (starch) get digested in one or two hours. But the oil used to fry the samosa is digested only after 6-8 hours and therefore, will enter your blood as energy only after 12 midnight. You are then fast asleep and the body says that there is no work going on and no need for this energy so let it be stored in the fat cells. If you are working out for two hours at 7 pm, even that will not burn it off, simply because it is not available yet. Whatever fat is consumed after 6 pm is 100 percent stored away as fat. The major cause for today’s obesity could be this. People hardly eat during the day and start snacking at 6pm, again drinking and snacking, then eating their one good meal, dinner, and topping it up with a dessert. While they sleep all the fatty food just gets stored and they grow fat by the minute.

Again, the morning workout without eating much does not burn this fat. When the body pulls out stored fat it pulls out only a bare minimum to get you through the day. When it stores it stores every bit of what you have put in. So if you want to be healthy, be wise and eat well in the day. You need food to work and play from morning through the day and less at night as you go to sleep. So dinner should be a light balanced meal of 20% of your days calories.

Try to treat yourself to your favorite cuisines at weekend lunch rather than at dinner. And taste your chocolates and sweets during mid morning or after lunch, but not after 6pm. When you travel don’t overeat at breakfast, skip lunch and again overeat at dinner. Eat a good breakfast, a good lunch and a light dinner. Try to taste the delicacies and specialties of the place before or at lunch not at dinner.