A balanced diet comprises of Carbohydrates, Proteins, Fats, Vitamins, Minerals and Fibres.

Carbohydrates, Proteins and Fats are also known as Macronutrients (The most of the visible part of food on our plate)

Vitamins, Minerals and Fibres are also known as Micronutrients (The least visible and invisible part of food on our plate)

As our lifestyles became more automated, we realized that it is a lot easier to produce carbohydrates in larger quantities with a minimum cost.

Just a couple of decades ago, during the early 70s, we realized that 1 gram of fat equals 9 calories as compared to 1 gram of carbohydrate or protein which equals 4 calories. So, people thought that since fat was the densest macronutrient, it is what makes us fat because we would be piling on the calories. So, we switched to eating carbohydrates and protein while avoiding fats.

This was the start of the carbohydrate boom in the world which saw many companies mushroom with a multitude of chocolates, biscuits, cereals and snacks which were loaded with carbohydrates and distributed across all the supermarkets in the world.

This led to a significant problem, because what the people then didn’t realize is that eating a lot of carbohydrates broke down into blood glucose and this in turn made the pancreas produce more Insulin (which happens to be a fat storing hormone). This hormone was one of the main reasons why people were putting on a lot of weight and getting prone to a multitude of illnesses like Type-II diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.

Fat, by the way is the only macronutrient which has little to no effect on Insulin Production and keeps Insulin levels low, which in turn helps fat burn happen more efficiently.

Eating less has always been the USPs of crash diets around the world. People always associated eating more and becoming fat to eating less and losing fat. What many don’t understand is that macronutrients follow different metabolic pathways. And each pathway has its own characteristic feature in handling the way food metabolizes in the body. The body usually chooses the macronutrient in abundance as the primary source of fuel (provided the other macronutrients are in a limited quantity)

When we start eating less but do not change the ratios of the macronutrients to maximize fat loss, we do tend to lose weight, but not necessarily fat. Because the body preferentially burns muscle instead of fat when it is given a caloric deficit. When this happens, the body’s metabolism slows down and the body is prone to gaining the lost weight pretty quickly. When a person resumes eating normally, the weight gain happens almost instantly. Most of the time, people gain much more than they have lost.

Our bodies are programmed to be either in the feeding state or the fasting state. When our bodies are in the feeding state, we tend to be burning the food that enters our bloodstream. When the food is completely digested, the body searches for alternative sources of energy for sustenance, that’s when it starts utilizing stored energy. Depending on eating habits, exercise and lifestyle, a person can tweak the body to burn food or fat while asleep.

Junk is usually not suggested to be eaten, but to all the foodies out there who like to eat for taste and not for function, you could include a meal or two of food that your body doesn’t necessarily require. This food could be suggested only to people who need to socialize a lot and cannot abstain themselves from unhealthy foods due to their circumstances. If you can avoid junk or unhealthy foods totally from your regular eating habits, by all means please do. But if you cannot, you could manage to eat junk once or twice a week depending on how strict you are with your eating habits and other healthy lifestyle factors.