BENGALURU: Ever since super star Hrithik Roshan announced his fitness mantra – intermittent fasting – it has caught the imagination of many. It’s no surprise then that the biggest fad in terms of eating habits turned out to be the intermittent fasting diet. According to a survey by HealthifyMe, a mobile health and fitness app, the other fad was the keto diet. The survey was done across 30 cities. Among other fad diets that drew people’s attention were vegan diet and carb cycling diet.
On the other hand, those that were least popular amongst Indians in 2019 were Dukan Diet by French nu t r i t i o n i s t Pierre Dukan and Atkins diet by cardiologist Robert Atkins from USA. Interestingly, Atkins diet has been extremely popular over the past 40 years, with his books having sold over 45 million copies so far. The third least popular diet amongst Indians in 2019 was Paleo diet, which involves only eating foods that were available during the Palaeolithic period when humans hunted and gathered food, for eg. lean meat, fish, fruits and seeds.
Interestingly, Paleo was amongst the most popular fad diets in the world in 2018. Agrees celebrity nutritionist Shalini Manglani, adding that intermittent fasting is the more sensible one if done correctly. “Let’s eat balanced meals in 2020, and try every fad if we must, but remember to get back to a balanced plan,” she says. The turmeric fad that took the Western world by storm a couple of years ago, continued in 2019, along with green tea and chia seeds being the top three superfoods consumed during the year. This was followed by ghee, ragi and quinoa. Also, a large number of white rice and wheat are replaced with brown rice and millets.
The survey also pointed to sleep deprivation due to streaming services that affected fitness. According to Vidhya Ramasubramanian, chief nutritionist at Cloudnine Group of Hospitals, Bengaluru, “Intermittent fasting and keto diets does not fructify sustained weight maintenance post the initial drop in weight. Both diets fall into hypothetical propositions for weight loss as they do not aid in typically satiating the ‘hidden hunger’, the hunger of micronutrients. Micro is as important as macronutrients though quantitative differences exist in their requirements.
But despite these disadvantages, they were still a hit in 2019. Tushar Vashisht, co-founder and CEO, HealthifyMe, said, “It is interesting to see the impact of emerging social trends on Indian fitness levels. From following fad diets on one hand to binging while streaming their favourite shows on the other, 2019 saw a lot of change in the way people approached fitness,” he said, adding, “Frankly, we do not think one needs to make radical changes to their lifestyle to achieve fitness. Setting realistic goals, exercising regularly and being calorie conscious is a sure-shot path to sustainable fitness. A little bit of discipline is all that it takes.”
WHAT IS INTERMITTENT FASTING? It pertains to eating in a certain window and fasting for the rest. For example, eating all meals in a six-hour period and then keeping away from food for 18 hours.
MORNING MOOD Indians’ favourite workout time was mornings, with almost 70 per cent completing their workout between 4 am and 12 pm. Out of these, 40 per cent preferred to work out between 4-8 am while 30 per cent worked out between 8 am to 12 pm. On the other hand, 30 per cent Indians preferred working out between 4-8 pm. When it comes to top three activities that Indians adopted in 2019, marathons took the pole position followed by yoga and crossfit.