10 diet myths wearing a CGM device bust for me

1. Avoid carbs for dinner
2. Pure carb dishes are fine as long as they are had only for breakfast
3. Protein shake with any fruit is fine
4. Protein shake should only be had on days you work out
5. Ensuring some nonveg in a meal is good enough to meet our daily protein requirements
6. The only thing that matters in a meal is ensuring it has a balance mix of macronutrients
7. White rice is the enemy
8. A little packaged snack or juice can hardly do much harm
9. Coffee to break the fast in the morning is bad for the gut
10. Intermittent fasting is the best

 

1.       Avoid carbs for dinner

“Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like prince and dinner like a pauper” – Adelle Davis. And then some of us stretched that ‘dinner like a pauper’ bit to completely weed out those waist-aggravating carbs.

Turns out, that zero carb dinners causes nocturnal glycemia, where your glucose levels drops below the recommended band of 70 mg/dL (3.9 mmol/L) and 100 mg/dL (5.6 mmol/L).

So, I started experimenting with carb additions to my dinner, and if I have just a little carb, paired with sufficient proteins and/or veggies, and eaten before 7pm, my nocturnal glucose levels are a lot more stable and within the recommended bandwidth throughout the night.

However, any excesses, like experiments with biryani one night and ice cream on another, shoots up glucose levels, and this spike at the end of the day is worse than daytime spikes, because the latter is unavoidable as I will explain further in below points, and the only chance at having a straight-line glucose trend at night is lost with that carb over-dose.

Newfound truth: Eat some, but not nothing, and certainly not too much of carb for dinner.

 

2.     Pure carb dishes are fine as long as they are had only for breakfast

Most Indian breakfast dishes are guilty of being pure carb. It’s dosa and potato, upma with veggies you can literally count, or puttu and banana where I come from in Kerala. I used to think it’s fine to have these pure carb breakfast dishes as a way to compensate for those zero carb dinners.

Turns out, pure carb breakfasts causes the highest glucose spikes in a day, because by breakfast time, glucose levels are at its lowest, having steadily fallen through the night, and then this first meal of the day with only carb is the worst thing you could do your oxidative stress.

Newfound truth: Include some protein with the breakfast dish. Either a protein shake, or simply an egg topped on the dosa or upma you’re having.

 

3.     Protein shake with any fruit is fine

Protein shake with a banana and protein shake with strawberries have huge differences. It’s true bananas are incredibly healthy, and far more nutrient dense than strawberries. However, the excess carbs that banana have doesn’t compensate for the protein in the shake, which ends up shooting up the glucose levels.

Newfound truth: Protein shakes should be prepared with lower carb fruits

 

4.     Protein shake should only be had on days you work out

I believed protein shakes must only be had when I work out to rebuild and repair those inflamed muscle fibers. Otherwise, the protein may be in excess which could damage the kidney.

Turns out, we need a LOT of protein to really damage the kidney. Above 3.3g of protein per kilo of body weight per day, which even for a 60-kilo tiny Indian male like me, is something like 6 chicken breasts, which is impossible for me to eat over the course of an entire day. And even if the protein is higher than what I require for muscle repair (probably in the range of 2-3.3g of protein per kilo of body weight per day), being water soluble, the protein comes out quite easily with sweat and urination.

So, what I really need to do is have as many dishes through the day with protein in it, including the protein shake to meet my protein intake, irrespective of whether I’ve worked out or not.

Newfound truth: Never restrict protein, and have as much of it in as many meals possible through the day

 

5.     Ensuring some nonveg in a meal is good enough to meet our daily protein requirements

For the same reasons mentioned in the previous point, just ensuring the presence of nonveg in a dish is insufficient. We would need to increase that quantity of protein as well. Be it a protein shake daily, or 2 eggs with that upma, always try to increase the quantity of protein in every meal.

Newfound truth: Ensure protein takes center stage (or center plate) in every meal

 

6.    The only thing that matters in a meal is ensuring it has a balance mix of macronutrients

A balance of macronutrients is paramount in every meal. Companies like Uba create utensils to remind you to include all 3 macronutrients of carbs, proteins and fats in every meal.

Turns out, just ensuring the good mix of macronutrients by itself isn’t sufficient. The order in which you eat them and the time of day you eat them also matter.

The exact same dish, if had carb first, causes a much higher glucose spike. What I did before eating a carb main course like a pizza was to have a soup before that, and the glucose spike was tempered.

Time of day also matters. Having a meal slightly later than your usual time causes a higher glucose spike, since your glucose levels would have started dropping at the usual time it is expecting the food.

Newfound truth: A balance of macronutrients should be had at the same time everyday in an order that the carb is eaten last

 

7.     White rice is the enemy

Any kind of processed carb is quite bad for the body, as I will explain further in point 8 below. However, different types of processed carbs have different degrees of glucose spikes. 

Turns out, bread and including the glorified brown bread, causes a much higher glucose spike for me than rice. I wondered if this had to do with growing up in India on a rice-rich diet, but there is no literature to support this.

So, it’s probably just my gut which seems to tolerate rice better than bread.

Having said this though, brown rice is still better than white rice. Both from a glucose stability as well as other health benefits, as it happens to be less processed than white rice.

Newfound truth: White rice is not all bad especially if the alternate is bread

 

8.     A little packaged snack or juice can hardly do much harm

Packaged snacks and juices are another form of processed carb like white rice, and while I thought a tiny snack would hardly do much harm, it turns out that even a little bit causes a wild spike. And what’s worse, every steep spike leaves a reverberation through the rest of the day, like the aftershocks following an earthquake. So, the little snack and juice has caused far worse oxidative stress than a white rice meal or even the pure carb breakfast. At least the rice and carb meals offered some sort of nutrition in exchange for the oxidation, but this snack and juice comes solely with the baddies, and it doesn’t matter if it is even a tiny bit.

Newfound truth: If you need to have a packaged snack, might as well go all in.

 

9.      Coffee to break the fast in the morning is bad for the gut

Coffee on an empty stomach is a bad idea. It is better to have some other beverage, even simple hot lemon water as the first drink the morning before coffee. I used to delay drinking coffee all the way to post breakfast.

Turns out, coffee just before breakfast helps ease the glucose spike as you’ve tempered your gut with the milk protein.

So, from a glucose spike point of view, coffee before breakfast turns out better than coffee after breakfast. And if you are still having that other warm beverage first thing in the morning, and coffee a little later along with breakfast, you are still getting the best of both worlds.

Newfound truth: Enjoy coffee before breakfast and/or after breakfast

 

10.  Intermittent Fasting is the best

Intermittent Fasting offers a ton of benefits but there’s increasing evidence that its true impact can only be seen when it follows a 16 hour plus fasted state. And such long hours in a fasted state directly conflicts with the amount of protein you need to consume in a day. Therefore, in a battle being the benefits of Intermittent Fasting and protein consumption, the latter wins, especially as you grow older when the body starts to lose muscle mass.

Newfound truth: F* Intermittent Fasting

 

 

Amsterdam marathon

I did everything right for the race. Carb loaded with good carbs yesterday, which helped me go to the loo properly in the morning. There was a race in the past where I didn’t completely empty my tummy and then after all the banana and water, I had to go once in a train station. This time my stomach was empty and then I had coffee without milk after a gap of 4 days and ate bread with jam along with banana and isotonic water about 2.5 hours before the race. Everything as recommended. Strangely, I went 5 times to pee in the morning. Wondering why that was so, but I was guessing my water intake is good and hence. When the race started, I was keeping good pace. Everything was feeling fine until the 13km point when my right knee started to hurt. That’s exactly what used to happen 6 years back which made me give up on running since I was doing many half marathons back then. Anyway, I sprayed volini and thankfully it got better and I resumed running normally. Then at 22km point my left knee began to hurt this time. I also started to feel tired. I was doing sugar every 45 mins till that point, but given the fatigue and knee pain, I started to take walking breaks between the run. This was a bad idea because my legs started to cramp up. And soon the walks became longer than the runs. By the 28km point I just couldn’t run anymore. Every time I started, my knees would hurt bad. That’s when I put on my knee guard that I was carrying as emergency as I used to wear them during the half marathons. It only helped marginally as the pain persisted. But I persisted walking. Tried walking fast and breaking into mini runs every now and then. But at 32km point I couldn’t run anymore, and in fact, was limping even while walking. The kms started to pass really slow. Nearly every km that passed, I wanted to give up. The knee pain was searing by this time. At 35km point, I noticed a Red Cross van and wondered if they could help me. As if the medic there read my mind, he asked me to come in and cool off my knees. It helped a bit, but the pain remained. I continued to walk. I was in too deep to quit. From 37km point, there were cheerleaders throughout the race and it was terrible to keep limping in front of them. They kept screaming asking me to run. And every time I gave in and tried to run, my knee would sting. Around this time, my right knee pain also returned. With both knees out, the kms started to pass by even more slowly. And the cheerleaders made me feel worse. Finally, 5:46 later, I limped across the finish line.

Babymoon

Prelude

I never thought I would write this simply because I never thought it would happen. And I never thought it would happen because I exaggerated parenthood in my head. Would see people like Jeethu over-investing in parenting and decided it was something I could never do given the number of other things I have going on.

I used to always say that it may take an earth-shattering event for me to come around to becoming a parent. And then this year we had the pandemic.

For the first time ever, I decided to just let it be and see if anything happens. And all it took was just that first time, because we immediately realized we are expecting, and everything changed from that moment.

We got a car, and not just any car, but literally the dream BMW I wanted ever since our Chintu i10. Then I got promoted. Something I have been waiting for so long.

And as if all the pieces had to align themselves perfectly, it so happened that my role was to start on September 1, and I was finishing my previous role by the end of July, giving me exactly the full month of August as a break before I resume work.

Again, something I always wanted to do - have a break in between roles.

In every transition I had in the past, I moved instantly from one role to another. I remember all my engineering friends having a long break between BE and their first job, but I barely got a few days. I had to miss out on my first ever international trip that Hari and Bala ended up going by themselves because of that job. This trend just continued. Even when I was relocating to Netherlands, all I had was a week between getting to know that I was to move here and landing up here.

This time though, not only did I get the full month break, but I also aptly got it in my birthday month, and the month the rest of Europe is on holiday given it is the best season of the year.

It was literally all pieces falling together, and we set off on our 2-week hiatus filled with scenic views and delicious food. 

 

Luxembourg

Our first stop. I would have ideally liked to travel a little more than just 4 hours from Rotterdam, but we had to make do with this given the time it took to pack and finally leave home.

No complaints though, as we slept comfortably at Nirav’s place and then ate a hearty meal at Romit’s the next day given the awesome cook he is, before proceeding to our next stop.

Le Grand Cafe by Redbeef

Cafe Veneziano

Baden-Baden

I never knew West Europe had thermal spas like Budapest or Istanbul or even New Zealand. We figured this place existed just 2 days before deciding to travel there and so glad we did. The hotel we stayed itself had a spa and swimming pool which I maximized. But beyond that, there were big community spas at walking distance where we could literally spend the entire day, much like the geothermal pools of Iceland.

Celebrated my birthday here among great German beer and local food, and of course the coveted Black Forest cake of Black Forest!

Loewenbraeu Keller

Merkurstuble

Leo's

Laterne

My Lyn

Amadeus

 

Zurich

This was a quick halt for Geet to complete her Coaching course before we continue towards Italy, and for me to get an opportunity to meet Munda. 

Deepak and Supriya were kind enough to once again share their place. And it was a perfect prelude for what is coming given the interaction we had with their little 2-year-old.

What made the stay even better was that it was Ganpati at this time, and Geet got an opportunity to even perform Visarjan that we little expected to happen in this part of the world.

From here we drove towards Tuscany, with one stop at Lake Como for our first Italian meal of the trip.

Indien Mirchi

 

Marina di Carrara

The highlight of our trip. This place was simply stunning. Nobody ever talks about it and the only tourists there were the 2 of us. But it really should be more popular.

For one, this is a town by the Tuscany beach that is filled with youngsters wearing next to nothing. For another, it is just an hour from Cinque Terra, which is exactly what La Spezia serves for tourists wanting to visit the colorful 5 towns of Instagram.

We figured Marina di Carrara is so much better than La Spezia as an option to stay in Tuscany close to Cinque Terra, and the next 2 days were incredible.

The first day we travelled to Cinque Terre and revisted Riomaggiore and Monterossa, the 2 towns we liked the most here.

They were too many tourists and the weather way too hot for us to enjoy it much though.

The next day we visited Porto Venere and this was an even better place than Cinque Terre to visit. Similar colorful houses and beaches, but fewer people and more restaurants.

Verandah

La Chiglia

Ristorante Portivene

Kitchen

Torre Aurora

Pizzeria Venezia

Cristalo

 

Lauterbrunnen

We drove from Italy to Lauterbrunnen with another quick stop at Lake Como, this time meeting Christina for lunch.

Lauterbrunnen is again lesser known for this specific highlight – the sunset off the mountain. We got to experience this given we reached there exactly one hour before the sunset, and the views were breathtaking.

We drove back from Lauterbrunnen to Rotterdam in one stretch for 12 hours in a day, but it was fine as we felt we had a good enough trip and now wanted to get back to our own bed at home, and prepare ourselves for the next phase.  

Oberland

Pâtisserie Klugesherz

How to measure marketing effectiveness with irrefutable data

The difference between Sales and Marketing is the very first thing you learn at B-School. Philip Kotler taught us that Marketing is about creating value for something, and Sales about the realization of that value.

However, what none of us learnt at B-School, and possibly still grappling with, is how do you measure the effectiveness of Marketing? Sales is the most straightforward thing to measure, but Marketing seems to be measured basis the whims of the marketer themselves.

Most organizations use something called Brand Equity where they define a bunch of parameters for the brand and track the scores against them basis responses from consumers. Writing that itself sounds like hogwash.

With Digital Marketing, you can quantify the effectiveness of Marketing a little better, but even the KPIs like CPM, ROMI, Conversion Costs etc are only related to a specific campaign, and does not differentiate between the legacy, penetration, usage or recency of the brand.

One seemingly straightforward manner to measure Brand Equity was once narrated by Nitin Paranjpe at Unilever, where he said the exact price difference between the average value of the category and the price the brand is capable of commanding, is the Brand Equity for the Brand.

While this is possibly the closest to measure the effectiveness of marketing with irrefutable data, since there is measurable currency involved, just like in Sales, is there any other way to measure the effectiveness of marketing?

One possible option could be the Turnover contribution of all the non-core business of a Brand.

For example, in the case of Harley Davidson, 12% of its overall Turnover comes from accessories like Helmets and Jackets linked to the Harley Davidson Brand. These may be a distraction from the core product of Harley Davidson, their bikes, and possibly the least profitable as well. But the fact that consumers are so loyal to the brand that they spend on these accessories, shows the strength of the Harley Davidson brand.

The earphones, charging cables and phone cases of the iPhone could define the Equity for Apple, where consumers may purchase these even if they don’t have an iPhone, which only shows the strength of the Apple brand.

The caveat to this option is that the very premise behind the existence of any brand is to grow its business, and the way to grow business is to bring in more users (courtesy Byron Sharp from Why Brands Grow), and therefore every brand, Apple included, is always looking to democratize their offerings, so that more users can buy into their core products and services.

Anything outside of this is simply a distraction that does not help grow the business. Apple for example will grow by creating a cheap iPhone that more consumers can purchase rather than selling phone cases!

However, if a Brand is on the journey to build loyalty and not grow penetration (I know Byron Sharp and all of his lackeys will vehemently disagree this to be the job for any brand at all), then it is possible to use this specific metric of non-core Turnover contribution to measure the Equity of the Brand and therefore the effectiveness of Marketing.

Take a luxury brand like Louis Vuitton for example. Maybe they don’t really care about getting more users and are losing significant value to counterfeits. But if their sole purpose is to build loyalty on the brand, then this form of measurement may indeed have some merit.

What do you think about this this form of measuring Marketing?

Are you aware of any other ways to measure Marketing with irrefutable data?

Importance of partnerships in running a successful business

Every single time someone quotes a successful business, it is always attributed to one person. Bill Gates of Microsoft, Steve Jobs of Apple, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Sam Walton of Walmart, Richard Branson of Virgin, the list is endless.

Occasionally, the success of a business is attributed to the entire team rather than a single person. Semco Partners from Brazil is probably the best example here. They were one of the earliest companies to move from corporate autocracy to corporate democracy, where the decision making was left to the employees.

Back in 1980 when Semco underwent this transition, they had many skeptics, but they have proved they could be like a bunch of ants working towards to a common goal of building an anthill, without any direction from a single leader.

One could argue that there indeed was a leader in Ricardo Semler who laid the foundation with a motivating vision, and this brings us back to the first point of attributing the success of a business to an individual.

A motivating vision is the driving force behind several companies today, in some cases that vision has surpassed a century of its existence. Unilever is a prime example here where despite divesting their margarine business a few years back, which was the basis of their origin (Uni was the margarine brand and Lever was the soap brand that formed the company 134 years ago) they continue to uphold the values setup by the founder, Lord Lever.

Unilever and Semco are great examples of a team working efficiently despite their founders being long gone. Apple and Walmart are great examples of companies that continue to be quoted in the same breath as their founder. However, in all cases, success is either attributed to an individual, or a team that has embraced the vision of an individual. Very rarely is any credit given to one important element of all these companies, which is the person who first partnered the founder.

This is about Steve Wozniak partnering Steve Jobs, Paul Allen partnering Bill Gates, and possibly even Helen Walton partnering Sam Walton.

This person is the inspiration, the execution, the pragmatism, or sometimes just the capital, behind that visionary. But there is usually that single entity that compliments another in a manner that it snowballs into something much larger than anything each individual of that partnership ever deemed possible.

We never give this second person much credit because our brain remembers in stories, and stories are best told with one hero. It was just Neil Armstrong or Usain Bolt. Nobody ever remembers or at least cares too much about who came second.

There are exceptions through. Wright brothers were a partnership, and so were Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay. But these are exceptions because their stories were always written and shared with both members together.

The importance of a partnership should not be underestimated though. Steve Jobs may have almost never made Apple if it wasn’t for Steve Wozniak, or at the very least, taken a much longer route or found much lesser success than becoming the world’s largest company in 2019.

The importance of a partnership can be found all around us when we break things up to its lowest form. Every single piece of software code breaks down to either 1 or 0. Every single atom contains a proton and an electron (the neutron is just a good friend of the proton sitting tight in the nucleus).

There is always an entity of a complimentary nature to make another entity as big and successful as we know them to be. Partnerships are therefore vital to the success of a business as much as it may be to a relationship.

Finding that single right partner is the key to ensuring you’ve taken that vital first step towards creating something of value and leaving a legacy. Attempting to do this alone or attempting to directly start with a team may make that effort a lot more arduous.

What therapy can tell us about consumerism

Therapy is an understated and often scorned at phenomenon, where people are stigmatized to believe that they have some sort of a disorder if they seek therapy.

But the great equalizer this pandemic has been, where you are forced to do exactly the same thing that almost everyone else in the world is doing, therapy is also beginning to receive its much-needed attention and acceptance.

Be it talking to a professional therapist, or a life coach, or even a friend, people all around are starting to reach out. And for those who may still be uncomfortable opening to a another human, there are plenty of virtual therapists, and even bots in some cases, who can address you and potentially alleviate your vexations.

The most common form of therapy though, that almost everyone in this lockdown is embracing, is some sort of home-skill that they never knew they were interested in before, or never had the time to delve into as much as they are doing now.

Bet it painting a canvas or baking a “coronabread”, everyone is up to something and splattering their achievements across social media. While the ones we have visibility to may be out of vanity, most of them are also underpinned with therapy. Because these things people are doing are also bringing in a sense of peace to our idle and perturbed minds. At its very core, this is exactly what therapy is.

What’s interesting though, is that what one person finds therapeutic, may be stressful for another. I find doing the dishes in the dishwasher therapeutic, and I know this is a source of stress for many others. However, I also know I am not alone in this, because Bill Gates himself does the dishes to unwind, and he is definitely not short of help, either humans or machines, to do this for him.

Why is it then that we have different tasks that are therapeutic for us? It’s because we have a System 1 at play in the brain, that operates as differently as System 2. System 1 is led by the limbic brain that controls primary emotional functions like fear, hunger or sex, while System 2 is the neocortex that is unique to just us humans which is what makes us top the food chain.

Now how is all of this understanding of the democratization of therapy and its relationship to System 1 linked to consumerism? Well, that’s because as much as we may want to deny it, purchase decisions are not driven by System 2 or our rational brain, but always by System 1. So much so that we will concoct rational explanations and even become brand evangelists for a purchase we have made, while it was actually just the food-craving, sexually-starved limbic brain making that choice.

So if both therapy and purchase decisions are driven by similar underlying motivations, does it not make sense then to develop an understanding of what we find therapeutic, in order to sell something to us?

As marketeers, we always need to ask why repeatedly to go beyond the root issue, but also hold back before we reach God, in order to find the real insight behind any consumer problem or opportunity. Delving deeper into therapy, which everyone has now embraced, may just open up some interesting demand spaces.

In the mighty challenge to generate strong insights, asking the right questions are key. 

Maybe questions around therapy could also be added to our repertoire. 

What therapy tells us about people

Therapy has never been as relevant as it has been now in these lockdown times of Covid. Often understated, this time by ourselves is leading to enough self-introspection to reach out to that therapist, life coach, best friend, or even perfecting that sourdough bread that may as well be called coronoabread going by the number of posts by people trying their hand out at baking bread.

But when it comes down to what really feels therapeutic, the coronabread is not the only option. People are dabbling with dancing, painting, and maybe even doing the dishes!

It’s a little surprising though, that what feels therapeutic for one person, may even be stressful for another. Dishes for example is a huge source of stress for many people. For me though, this is therapeutic. And I’m not alone here. Bill Gates himself does this, and he’s clearly not short of people or machines who could do this for him.

What is it that makes doing the dishes therapeutic for people like us, and coronabread for the others?

To understand this, we need to know the operations of System 1 and System 2 in the brain. System 1 is the operations of the limbic brain while System 2 is the neocortex brain. All mammals have the limbic brain which gives us basic emotions like fear, hunger or even having sex. Humans are blessed with the neocortex or the cognitive brain that gives us rational thought processing and made us all-powerful.

However, we give the neocortex too much credit. We tend to believe that our neocortex is operational through most of our waking day, but in truth, the neocortex is only marginally more active when we are awake than we are asleep. It is the limbic brain that remains most active even when we are awake.

Continuously operating the neocortex is exhausting. Which is why, it is a default mode for us to quickly find the best way to operationalize or standardize a task, so that the limbic brain can take over, giving our brain the rest it always craves for.

Increasing the operations of the neocortex is of course possible, and there are two ways to do this. Through meditation, which is akin to a sharpener if our neocortex were the pencil. Or through performing tasks that use up our limbic brain, so that it is well rested enough to then fire the neocortex.

Yuval Noah Harari meditates 2 hours a day, which gives him enough brain power to write books like Sapiens and Homo Deus, and then some to even write 21 lessons that nobody wants to read. Bill Gates does the dishes so that he has defaulted to his limbic brain for long enough to figure the solution to the corona crisis.

Given most of us don’t meditate, since the results appear a lot slower than the cuts on your biceps after a month of bicep curls, we tend to use the limbic brain more, thereby leading to tasks that are in effect, therapeutic for us.

The limbic brain is as different for us as our neocortex is. Just as how the neocortex for one person is sharpened to Jave code, while for another it is playing Fornite, the limbic brain also differs in the exact same way. For one person it is painting, for another it is dishes.

The reason for this difference goes down to the fundamental operations of our brain. When it comes to the dishes, there is a certain geometry and arrangement involved, and this lies in the limbic for some people, while when it comes to painting, it is the brush strokes that lie in the limbic.

It is up to each of us to identify what exactly it is that fires System 1 and therefore makes this therapeutic for us. But the bottomline is, it can be very different for each of us.