How I transformed my diet and improved my health
Editor’s note: ?One of the most active participants in our WhatsApp community group teases us all with photographs of her aesthetically plated meals which, even from a distance and only through virtual access, feels mouth-wateringly delicious and bang-for-the-buck wholesome. That’s Riya Rashmi. So I asked her to write about how she does this. What can we learn from her to make balanced, nutritious meals? Great tips follow.?
Riya works in HR at Swiggy and is a self-proclaimed health chef, always finding ways to make tasty and nutritious food in the easiest possible way. You can connect with her on Instagram .?
What exactly is ‘healthy’ and how can I eat that way?
This question nagged at me a few years ago when—unsurprisingly—I gained weight and wanted to shed some kilos. With so much conflicting information out there, it was hard to figure out what truly constituted a healthy diet.
The journey was far from straightforward, revealing the complex interplay between diet, lifestyle, and well-being.
I started with a simple criterion: high-protein, low-carb meals would be healthier than what I was eating, so I’d go for those. And I committed to consistent workouts. After following this approach for a year, I felt pretty good about my fat loss progress.
However, despite losing fat and clothes becoming looser, I experienced excessive hair fall, and my skin didn’t look its best. I could barely lift 50% of my personal bests, indicating a loss of muscle mass and strength.?
These issues prompted a deeper exploration into my diet’s balance and nutritional adequacy. I faced four specific challenges.?
First, I realised my supposedly ‘high’ protein wasn’t really high-enough protein. I knew why: I had started cheating on my protein sources. For one, I had trouble digesting whey protein isolates, leaving me feeling unwell, so the supplementation wasn’t the ideal solution. Then introducing animal protein back into my previously egg-etarian diet—I never enjoyed having meat and fish—proved challenging, but eating those would make life easier so I did, but then I often slipped back into old habits.
Second, the cognitive load of making low-carb, high-protein meals. It was taxing. The general mindset that healthy eating meant giving up on roti/chawal made meal preparation mentally draining, even though I enjoyed experimenting with new recipes. The lack of readily available information on creating low-carb, high-protein Indian meals only made it harder.
Third, the stress of sourcing specific ingredients for, say, making salads: from fresh greens or artisanal cheeses to some nice and fancy dressing. I remember once when the salad leaves box from my go-to grocery shopping app went out of stock, and I went crazy hunting all other apps to find it—just adding unnecessary stress after long workdays.
Fourth, many nutrition experts don’t warn about the potential digestive issues like bloating, burping, and stomach aches that can come with increasing protein intake, which were common for me. As I’d later learn, these issues weren’t caused by the increased protein intake itself, but rather by my failure to include adequate fibre, probiotics, and prebiotics in my meals.
It’s because of these reasons that “eating better” felt like a punishment instead of making me feel good.
But I needed to find a way out because I realised that the traditional carb-heavy Indian diet did not align with a modern sedentary lifestyle involving mostly desk jobs with minimal physical activity. This mismatch between dietary habits and lifestyle demands made it clear that reducing carb intake, increasing protein and fibre, and adopting a balanced meal approach was necessary to meet my nutritional needs effectively.
A balanced plate typically consists of a serving of carbohydrates like grains or starches, a serving of protein, some fat, and one or more servings of vegetables and fruit (fibre). This is how I came to understand the idea of what is truly ‘healthy’ for me.
These realisations led to a journey that turned into an obsession: creating interesting and tasty healthy meals. In this piece, I’m sharing the lessons I learned along the way.
1) Meal Planning
Khane mein kya khana hai??
This question haunts many of us every day, and without proper planning, we often resort to obvious go-to meals like dal chawal or roti sabzi, which may not always align with our health goals.
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To overcome this challenge, I’ve become a fan of daily meal planning. It’s a habit I developed through morning delivery apps, which require you to place your order before a certain threshold, usually around 9 PM. This forces you to think about what you’ll eat the next day, turning meal planning into an end-of-day ritual.
My husband and I take just two minutes to plan our meals for the following day, and we get fresh vegetables and fruits when we are back home after our early morning workout.?
Some of my friends prefer weekly meal planning, which offers two major benefits:
1. The responsibility of deciding what the cook should make is no longer dependent on one person. Instead, a written note displayed on the fridge makes it easy for everyone.
2. Weekend grocery shopping reduces waste. Especially when ordering online, minimum order quantities can lead to excess purchases, particularly for vegetables, leafy greens, coriander, and mint, which can accumulate in your fridge over time. Shopping in person for the week allows you to select the right amount for your needs.
Snippets from my daily vegetable shopping.
If you struggle with meal planning but want to improve your eating habits, take a few minutes at the start of each week to plan your meals. Discuss with your partner or family about what to include, shop for missing ingredients, and consider preparing a meal chart to simplify instructions for the cook. This approach helps you focus on executing the plan rather than constantly thinking about what to eat.
When planning your meals, ensure that you always have versatile vegetables like carrots, cucumber, tomatoes, or any seasonal produce on hand, and instruct your cook to include them in your dishes.
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2) Start small—one change at a time.
Now that you’ve got meal planning down, it’s time to focus on making sustainable shifts in your eating habits. The key is to start small and make one change at a time.
As a former vegetarian with some level of lactose intolerance (I can’t have milk but can consume curd, yoghurt, and paneer), protein was a major issue for me. To address this, I made a point to start by adding some amount of protein to every meal.
When preparing entirely vegetarian meals, it’s important to keep in mind that most vegetarian protein sources also come with a significant amount of carbohydrates and calories (except for soybeans and related products).
To counteract this, I usually include more than one protein source in an entirely vegetarian plate and significantly reduce the absolute carb sources like rice, roti, or bread.
For example, look at this plate: it’s a well-balanced vegetarian meal with a big bowl of red chana, a 100-gram paneer cutlet, 50 grams of yoghurt, a small serving of rice, cooked radish leaves, and one medium-sized raw radish for fibre. This combination ensures a variety of protein sources while keeping carbs in check.
Compare that with the meal below that relies heavily on curd (kadhi) with low fibre and excessive carbs (see rice portion) which may not provide the same nutritional balance.
By making small, incremental changes to your meals, such as increasing protein and fibre while reducing carbs, you can create sustainable improvements in your eating habits.
Remember, it’s not about overhauling your entire diet overnight, but rather about consistently making better choices, one meal at a time.
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