My thoughts on dieting…

With the fitness bug hitting everyone, everyone around is a nutritionist… I get nutrition advice every other day and my timeline is flooded with wanna-be nutritionists’ ‘daily tips’… A number of my runner buddies are on Keto!!! Recently I uploaded on Instagram a photo of my Christmas cake ingredients and I was advised to replace this and that to make it Keto…

My question is do runners need a special diet like Keto?

A ketogenic diet (or, Keto to be short) is a very low-carb, high-fat diet that involves drastically reducing carbohydrate intake and replacing it with fat. This reduction in carbs puts your body into a metabolic state called ketosis. When this happens, your body becomes incredibly efficient at burning fat for energy. It also turns fat into ketones in the liver, which can supply energy for the brain. Though it has a lot of advantages, it is used mainly for weight loss!

I, being underweight since childhood, with an active lifestyle and also being an athlete since school, am a no-no to any kind of special diet… To be honest, I eat everything I like… I have a balanced carbohydrate, fat and protein intake and I like it that way… So, a person like me will fail miserably on the diet plans!!! Also, I need my carbohydrates for my runs and workouts… I grew up eating rice and a whole variety of fish and meat… If I change my diet to eating salad every day, I will be weak as hell; I have tried doing that…

Thinking further, people a generation before us cared less about the food they eat; they eat things that are available… they also had a lot of physical activities… unlike us, they ran, walked, hiked, worked in their fields because they had more time for outdoors than social media! We have both social media and machines doing the work for us!!! We, basically, stopped moving… instead we started exercising!!!

My philosophy is ‘food is supposed to be eaten… and the human body is designed to run, walk and keep moving…’ You stay idle with a special diet and all, the next human body part disappearing during evolution will be your legs!!! That’s too harsh a thought… but, that’s my feeling towards inactive, ‘sitting in a chair whole day’ lifestyle…

My health tip is ‘have a balanced meal and stay active every day’… And the main thing is ‘listen to your body’… For sure, the body wouldn’t feel great if you are on sugary drinks and food with little dietary fiber, protein, vitamins or minerals and have zero or very little physical activity every day!!! Have that chocolate brownie you love, but, don’t forget to take the stairs…

Last thought: We have ‘unhealthy food’ in this world because people forgot the fact that movement is essential for a human body!!! So, keep moving!!!