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