JOIN USThe macro picture
As a child growing up in the early ’80s in a South Indian vegetarian household, most of my meals were home-cooked, with the occasional snacks in the evening and a weekly outing for dinner. My activity levels were also high, with lots of sport being played. While there was no awareness about macronutrients, energy balance and other such intricacies often associated with nutrition, I was lean and athletic, almost exclusively because most of my meals were from minimally processed, whole foods and I didn’t have a
sedentary lifestyle.
While at college, in a remote desert town called Pilani, the slow inclusion of more junk food started to show as a subtle increase around the midriff, but as activity levels were still high, it wasn’t entirely alarming. The early 2000s in a high stress, IT environment, saw most of my meals being consumed outside and sleep patterns being highly irregular and the midriff starting to expand even more as activity levels came down, with food intake going up.
I quit in 2003 to become a professional drummer and even though activity levels were high, my food and lifestyle habits were the worst. Fast forward to 2015, and a blood report was a much-needed wake-up call to overhaul myself. Reading nutrition textbooks, papers, research articles, experimenting, certifying myself and eventually starting to coach people through their eating and lifestyle changes.
Over the years, I’ve come to realise that there is so much noise with respect to nutrition, that people jump onto the next big thing, only to give up in no time at all, when they find that it is not a sustainable way of living in the long run.
The ‘Eat Simple’ approach, as I like to call it, is a healthy mix of education and practicality to help people find their own sustainability when it comes to eating better and taking control over their health and lifestyles.
Since the whole world is facing a massive obesity problem, one that is increasing at exponentially alarming rates, this column will deal mostly with the challenges associated with fat loss, demystifying nutrition and simplifying it so that people can make better and informed choices.
(The author is a Chennai-based sports nutritionist, strength and conditioning coach and mobility specialist and the co-founder of The Formula. He is also a professional drummer and has a love of all things cats and martial arts.)