Food is not meant to satisfy just the nutritional needs of the body, but it has a crucial role in accomplishing the internal desire to feel good after having the food or in other words, we can say that food sometimes play a similar role as generally done by morphine like drugs to create the feeling of euphoria or sense of happiness that helps a person in tackling out daily life stressors. Now a days, people percieved food as an addiction to satisfy their mind instead of hunger. Through a famous quote “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” Hippocrates explained very well about the medicinal properties of food and how it plays a significant role in healing mankind. However, the journey of food from medicine to addiction makes the person sick.
Food is just a food, it is not meant by nature to harm our body, it depends on us that how we consume it. Anything that remain stored become a cause of concern in a longer run whether it is garbage in house or fat in the body. Our body is meant to work and process the macronutrients and micronutrients to carry out the daily vital activities as a machine does with the help of fuel. It is not the fault of food, which gets stored inside the body. It depends on us how we burn our fuel to properly utilise the nutrients. Machine has to run by the person which generally operates the system. Likewise, it depends on us that how we start our metabolic engine to ignite the fuel like carbohydrates, fat and protein to generate calories that gives the power to carry on the vital activities.
Vitamins and minerals are meant to support the vital reactions that generally run in the presence of various enzymes. Vitamins play a role of cofactors to enhance the ability of our metabolic engine in accomplishing the routine work more efficiently. If we talk about recommended dietary allowances, we know that nutrients are considered macro nutrient as they needed in large quantities in our body and micro nutrients as they needed in small quantities in our body. Hence, it is also a wrong practice when anyone restrict themselves to low calorie diet which includes less carbohydrates, fat and large amount of vegetable, fruits for fast weight loss as our body needs enough calories to run the body’s machinery and we can’t ignore carbohydrates and fats too.
It is better to have proper meal containing balanced diet but restriction of any macronutrients might be hazardous for our body which depends on such nutrient for the supply of energy. However, it is better option to utilise the calories stored in the form of body fat through physical activity. When we do any physical activity, glucose burns initially into ATP, which is followed by fat burning and in last protein burn to generate ATP. However, burning of fat need some carbohydrates initially, hence some carbohydrates is necessary to initiate fat metabolism if not available then protein metabolism initiates in the body. If protein metabolism continues for a longer period of time, there will be overproduction of urea in liver, that is usually carried through blood to kidneys for filtrarion.
During this process, urea levels in blood increases drastically, leading to a condition known as uremia and it creates burden on kidneys to filter out nitrogenous waste. Hence, it often leads to kidney failure. Hence, ample amount of carbohydrates is necessary to spare protein for other vital functions. If we talk about the weight reduction process then we must know that we can reduce weight by metabolising more fat stored in liver and adipose tissue through physical activity even more than dieting alone. Crash Dieting is not a healthy way to cut down calories for fast weight reduction as it makes our body malnourished to a considerable extent in vital nutrients too which actually helps in metabolic reactions.
Strict calorie restriction during dieting and starvation initiates the metabolism of glycogen in liver and create burden to metabolise more glycogen from liver to ensure glucose supply as per body needs, excess glycogen metabolism deteriorates liver function too and send a signal to brain about the emergency situation that arises as abandonment of reserves to support the bodily needs in future. Along with it, fat has many roles in our body in synthesis of many hormones, lipoproteins (that act as a carrier), bile, etc. Protein is necessary for synthesis of enzymes, antibodies, RBC, WBC, etc. that has an essential role in whole metabolism. Thus, all the macronutrients has a specific role in body and restricting body to limited calories may starve your body of essential nutrients that actually starts the metabolic engine of our body to efficiently utilise all the nutrients.
In absence of macronutrients, all bodily reserves may be devastated which ultimately slows down the metabolism too and put the body’s whole mechanism in an emergency situation. We must remind of the fact that any machine work efficiently as long as it is in running condition, but it is necessary too that we put the machine off when not in use to check the emptying of fuel. The same is the case with our body, we must opt for physical activity and balanced diet, but it must not be done in an abnormal manner as it may drain out all the essential reserves of the body that ensure glucose supply even in the emergency situation. Hence, we must follow the gradual weight loss through enhancing physical activity along with consumption of balanced diet.
Be Aware & Grow Healthy !
Thank You
Dr. Richa Srivastava
Excellent
THANK YOU SO MUCH MAM