Be wise about food management

                               (By Lisa Sarah John, Courtesy Bangalore Times, Aug 06, 2007)

Managing your body weight can be simple if we understand food management. Today we are able to manage just about everything, so why not our bodies, too? While driving a car, the first thing we check is if there is enough petrol in the tank to reach our destinations. If the petrol level is low, we fill the petrol tank.

Similarly our brains have a chemical called serotonin which is the body’s ‘energy inspector.’ It sends a message out to look for food when energy levels are low. It is usually a very strong message, which overrides caution and intelligence. When this happens we want to eat anything, anywhere and immediately, and most often eat the wrong things, like deep fried, extra-salty or sweet things. Weight control is best managed if we try to over come this by committing ourselves to eating every meal without skipping a a single one, three times a day.

Secondly, we need to eat balanced meals. This is an age of fad diets. Some complete nutritional no-nos are eating only fruits for breakfast. Fruit gets digested in 20-30 minutes and within the next 1-2 hours your energy level will drop. You will end up snacking by 10 or 11am. Many skip lunch or only carry roti and vegetables for lunch or eat a veg sandwich.

These items are mainly carbohydrates, which are digested in 1-2 hours. Again, we start feeling hungry and end up eating junk food and snacks. Similarly, those who eat only soups and salad for dinner or only roti and vegetables at night, might soon feel hungry and raid the refrigerator late at night. All three meals must comprise of carbohydrate (bread, cereal, roti, or rice) combined with proteins (milk, curd, egg white, dal/pulse or poultry/fish).

Protein foods take four hours to digest so they keep us from becoming hungry and snacking in between meals.

However eating only protein and avoiding complex carbohydrates is equally dangerous as carbohydrates are our main energy suppliers and those who avoid carbohydrates end up with sugar cravings and indulge in heavy sweets and chocolate intake.

The best option: eat three balanced meals and include fruits in between. Fruit is the best snack along with a glass or two of skimmed milk or curd. This is also safe to have at night if you are a late sleeper. Chocolates, cookies, chips, popcorn, etc can seriously ruin all your weight control efforts.

Last, but not least, if you drink two and a half to three litres of water through the day you will definitely snack less and be able to control your food intake much better. 

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