Myth busting: Eat to lose that extra flab

NEW DELHI - Please eat or you are not going to lose weight, says Bollywood actress Kareena Kapoor, the size zero protagonist, standing a popular notion on its head.

“As an actress, who works 18-20 hours a day under gruelling circumstances, shooting all nights; playing and feeling a range of emotions, (sometimes, I have to dance in the rain trying to look beautiful and, above all, trying to stay slim) my stomach makes a call of hunger. And like a good girl, every 2-3 hours I attend to it,” writes Kareena Kapoor in a new book, “Women and The Weight Loss Tamasha” (Westland Ltd) authored by her fitness trainer Rujuta Diwekar, the driving force behind Kareena’s “size zero” look.

Kareena advises women “to slip in a slice of cheese, some peanuts and an apple in their handbag” to take care of the intermittent pangs of hunger.

According to Diwekar, the best-selling author of “Don’t Lose Your Mind, Lose Your Weight”, the “four cardinal principles of eating right are to eat something within the first 10-15 minutes of waking up, eating every two hours, eating more when you are active and less when you are not; and finishing your last meal at least two hours prior to sleeping”.

Diwekar, who works out of Mumbai, is the winner of the Nutrition Award 2010 from the Asian Institute of gastroenterology. One of the most sought after fitness trainers in the country, she advises Kareena Kapoor, Anil Ambani, Preity Zinta, Saif Ali Khan and Konkona Sen Sharma on their fitness and weight programmes.

Diwekar, who busts several myths about weight in her new book, says “if you are enjoying something, it will burn the fat for you”.

“Get off it. Bananas, mangoes, chole puri, gulab jamun, the ‘chutney’ with the ‘idli’, the coconut in your curry and the ghee on your ‘khichdi’, are not fattening,” Diwekar says.

Post-marriage, everybody gains weight; both men and women, but somehow it is much more apparent in women, Diwekar says. “After marriage, women are conditioned to not just give up their name, home and hearth but also other things that are intrinsic to our core food, meal size and meal timings. All these changes manifest themselves as weight gain,” Diwekar says.

Changes in meal and sleep timings tinker with the levels of Vitamin B stores. The deficiency in Vitamin B levels makes sleepy heads out of us every morning even if one has slept for eight hours, Diwekar says.

“It causes constipation, bloating and mood swings,” Diwekar says.

Not eating at the right time compels married women to binge at strange hours - disrupting the balance of nutrients in diets and triggering an abrupt aging in the process. The fitness expert says even the way the “bhindi (ladyfinger) is cut at the in-laws’ home makes a change, along with the way food is cooked and the spices used”.

Switch to child birth. The “mommy body” tends to weigh a little more than usual in the first three to four months of child-birth, the fitness expert says.

“There are two things one should know. If you are nursing, you will end up weighing a little more because of the extra tissues and fluids in the body. The body wants to store energy reserves for the daily tasks of waking up early, feeding the baby. The second thing is that there is an evolutionary reason for the bulge around the navel - it safeguards the mother’s body against diseases and food scarcity,” Diwekar says.

The exercise and diet programme one must adopt to lose weight for this period should be one to “gain in lean body weight - which could sometimes lead to an increase in actual body weight - to become yummy mummies,” she says.

The best way to leash the menopausal fat is to adopt a combination activity-based leisure regimen, curbing the irritation, nutrient rich diet; and love and affection towards the body.

“Menopause is a stage that should be considered a normal part of the life cycle - only then will your body feel normal and stress-free. Just as menarche marks the beginning of the menstrual cycle, menopause marks the end - so just treat it as an ending. It is also the beginning to a new phase in a woman’s life,” Diwekar says.

The moral: It is always possible to look and feel 25 at 50.

(Madhusree Chatterjee can be contacted at madhu.c@ians.in)