Thread by @krishashok

A short thread for #worldfoodday2019 on my personal experiences in reducing food intake over a 2 year period.

Please do not treat this as expert nutritionist/dietician advice. It’s just personal observations on eating habit-forming challenges I’ve experienced

At the outset, all of this is predicated on Michael Pollan’s suggestion - Eat food, not too much, mostly plants, and the scientific consensus that eating less is generally a good idea.

Looking back (due caveats for post facto analysis fallacy), I’d categorize my various eating routine changes into 4 buckets
1. Ingredient control
2. Food group control
3. Portion control
4. Meal control

Ingredient control was about trying to reduce sugar and oil, switching to millets instead of rice and wheat etc. Essentially not changing what dishes I eat but changing how they are made

From a habit forming standpoint, this has several problems. Unless you personally cook all your food (or have employed a cook), this is hard to sustain, and constant travel & eating out make this harder. Restaurant food is tasty precisely because they use unhealthy ingredients

Food group control was about taking it up a notch and changing the macronutrient composition of what I eat. Increasing protein intake, reducing carbs, adding fibre, keto diets etc.

Again, while this can be effective, most animal protein sources are terrible in Indian cities. They come from industrial farms that are terrible for the planet (and palate, for most part).

Likewise, if you eat out regularly, only the ascetic willpowered individual can manage a high protein/low carb diet in an Indian restaurant. South Asian cooking sneaks in carbs in a billion different ways.

Think about a typical meal in a vegetarian restaurant. Free papad (carbs), dal (carbs), roti/chawal (carbs), dessert (carbs). The cognitive overload of micromanaging this can be tiresome.

Portion control addresses some of the problems above. Just eat less. You can partake without being a keto-pest in your social group or putting undue demands on those who cook your food.

Further, if you use a few other behavioral science tricks like buying smaller plates at home, or keeping snacks in inaccessible places, this is a relatively more sustainable habit

But even this has limitations. If you eat out regularly, the desi in me finds it difficult to waste food, and places like the US serve enough food for a village in a single serving.

Which brings us to meal control - after trying some combination and sequence of the previous methods, I found meal control to be ideal.

Simply choosing to skip a meal entirely was the easiest, low cognitive load, sustainable method for me. Of course not something one can jump straight to, but a milestone that represents an inflection point

I started with a 10 am brunch, light snacks and dinner routine, and over time, pushed the brunch to 11 and then 12 noon. Small incremental changes work better for me.

Meal control is flexible - you can switch to a breakfast + early dinner when the situation demands it, and it also imposes the least amount of burden on those who make your food and makes every meal truly enjoyable.

It’s been a fascinating journey. I’ve reached the point where I find it hard to overeat, sleep longer and feel sharper and more focused more often.

In conclusion, before you try any new diet or eating habits, talk to an actual expert! Every individual body/metabolism is different. Anecdotes don’t generalize well.

The only takeaways I’d urge you to consider are
1. Incremental changes in habits are better than drastic shifts (like overnight keto etc)
2. Willpower is hard. Changing your environment is a better idea (smaller plates, inaccessible snacks etc)

And 3. Habits that don’t require too much thinking are more likely to be sustainable. A tired brain will reach for the Mysore pak in a jiffy.