Dear Pooja,
I am in college and I have been working out in the gym from the past 5 months. I first started out by doing cardio and rigorous weight training in the gym during my break, then when college started, I started running for 45-50 min in the park. I would sometimes do 50 min cardio in the gym (25 min cross trainer and 25 min running on the treadmill instead for running out in the park). My diet is extremely healthy, I make it a point to eat healthy home cooked meal. I sometimes each red rice or jowar roti or normal roti during meals. I each 3 fruits during the day and plenty of water. As I belong to a Punjabi family, we eat non-vegetarian dishes cooked in minimum oil 5 times in a week. But my mom compensates that with giving us lots of vegetables to each. I eat an egg every day. I don’t indulge in deserts and i avoid fried foods. Despite my efforts, I’ve gained 6 kgs in the past 4 months. Could you help me with the same.
To start with I must say I am happy to hear that as a teenager (assuming that since you said college) you are trying to lose with food and not without it – as most would just think of food as calories and thus the main culprit to weight gain. Food is your sole nurturer and growth provider – never ever shun away from it.
Now to comment on your diet- at the first glance absolutely nothing looks wrong in your eating pattern that would cause this weight to go up – you are doing a good balance of input (food) and output (cardio). It seems to be a good balance of carbs (brown rice, jowar roti), proteins (non veg + egg), vitamins and minerals (3 fruits+ vegetables).
However, Sanjana please note that your input (however healthy) has to within the specific need of your body. When I say ‘need’ I mean that every body has its BMR (basal metabolic rate), which is the minimum calories it needs for its own basic functioning. Weight gain is a consequence when the input is more than the output. To perfectly know your body’s need you could ask for professional advise or even calculate your BMR using online tools that only need your height, weight, age and gender to calculate the same for you. In my book – Eat.Delete I have taught you how to do this and then also pick up a diet as your BMR that will give you the total amount of food you need to eat in a day.
Sadly I have no simply answer to give you for your weight gain – but remember our body is a magnificent machine that works relentlessly day and night – its needs thus are special and require a little fine tuning when we are talking about losing or gaining weight. Learn this delicate balance once and your body will respond to it marvelously and continuously. Whatever you do never give up your faith in food – that then is my mission accomplished!
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