STARVE, but your way

Don’t ape celeb diets. Consult a dietician and get one that suits you

Don’t ape celeb diets. Consult a dietician and get one that suits you
Jennifer aniston goes on the Zone Diet and loses an impossible 30 pounds. Kareena Kapoor lives on boiled cabbage, soya milk and almonds and slips into Size Zero outfits. No wonder celeb diets seem to be the best way to shed the kilos. Well, should you?

Thirty-one-year-old Shifali Gandhi went on the popcorn and juice diet after watching Raveena Tandon lose weight. In six months, she lost over 30 kg. It’s been a year since she got back to eating normal food and Gandhi has only put on more weight than she had lost. “The diet helped me lose a lot of weight but it has also affected my immune system. I fall ill at least twice every month and feel low on energy even if I go for a walk. Moreover, I gained 35 kg once I went off it,” says Gandhi. The popcorn diet has other disadvantages as well. “Corn contains a lot of fibre but too much of it blocks the absorption of vitamin B in the body. This may lead to skin problems, memory loss and low energy levels,” says nutritionist Preeti Puri.

When 25-year-old Shivani Maira read about Kareena Kapoor living on orange juice for four days before shooting for a song, she decided to do the same before her wedding. “After a day-and-a half on the juice diet, I started feeling dizzy,” she says. “Having only fruit or vegetables deprives our bodies of the vitamins, minerals, fat and protein that it needs. This can lead to deficient nutrition,” says Chawla.
Take the Zone Diet, for instance. It is low in fruit, vegetables, grain and fibre and high in protein. “A low-carb diet produces a quicker loss of fluid which results in rapid weight loss. Since the calorie intake is too low in this diet, it’s not the fat that is lost but lean muscle. Not only is this kind of lost weight regained quickly, it also makes the body put on double the amount of weight when a person goes off the diet,” says Dr Karuna Chaturvedi, chief dietician, Apollo Hospitals. The Atkins is a high-fat-low-carb diet, which promotes meat, cheese and whole grains and keeps one off sugar and white bread. However, doctors say that going off sugar or white bread is not the answer. “A diet consisting of only one food group does not meet nutritional needs and will only prove to be harmful in the long term,” says Puri.

Instead of aping a celebrity diet, consult a dietician who will put you on a diet that suits your body. “These celebrities make a living out of looking good so they go to extremes trying to shed all the extra kilos,” says Chawla. However, while they are under the careful supervision of medical experts, people who try to ape these diets just get them off the Internet. “Since everyone’s body works differently, it is not possible for one person’s diet to have the same effect on another,” says Dr Chaturvedi.