On my experiments with fasting/weight loss/health gain: Update

Further to my post a couple of months ago on diet, I am happy to report reaching 73 kg from 88 kg Pre Covid. I am feeling quite energetic and also focused. Hence, I am feeling quite satisfied with my experiments. I have enclosed the self formulated diet which I am following without any advice from any nutritionist or health professional. It has worked for me and may not work for others. For my friends who worry that I am starving myself, have enclosed a picture of how my lunch looks like! Its quite sumptuous and filling! I have added a pic of my dinner today evening too which is equally sumptuous. While working earlier in my career more than 20 years ago, I did dabble in LINDO (I feel quite ancient!) for optimisation of diets for cattle and poultry with the objective function of maximising milk in milch animals or egg laying in Layers or body weight for Broilers subject to various constraints including costs and nutritional element available in various products for feeding to these beings. Intuitively one tries to achieve the objective function of staying alive and healthy with all necessary nutrition minus the excesses for human beings too. Not a difficult problem to solve.

To those who find weight loss a difficult puzzle to crack, the magic solution (for all practical purposes there is only 1) is to follow the 3 words “Eat Less Food” The second mantra is grandmas remedy “chew more “ The hack in my diet is to choose food ingredients for their nutritional as well as their “Chewability Index” I haven’t heard this concept before so made it up on the fly. For example grated coconut, peanuts and many of the seed mixes that I eat require chewing for quite a long time relative to the cooked food. For millions of years the brain has been conditioned to be wary of these commodities since they would have choked and/or killed quite a few human beings over the millennia hence whether you want it or not the brain ensures these type of foods are chewed well before you push it down into the esophagus. Raw food stuff in general requires more chewing time. It is my hypothesis that increasing the chewing time automatically ensures that the satiety centre brain in the brain is activated when the stomach feels full. There is a lag between the stomach being full and the signals going to the brain. With food that can be gulped down or wolfed down this doesn’t happen as we finish the lunch or dinner within five minutes or 10 minutes there by short-circuiting the signals between the brain and the stomach. I don’t think human beings are evolutionarily built to finish an entire meal within minutes. Hence “Eat Less Food” and “Chew More” should be the mantras for those wanting to reduce weight and gain health.

I am continuing with walks, yoga (kunjal kriya, shankh prakshalan, neti et al), meditation etc besides the above stuff.

Published by Sunil Khairnar

I have been working in the agribusiness, commodities and development sector in India for more than 27 years. I have a B. Tech in Agriculture Engineering and a Management Post Graduation from IIM Ahmedabad.