Celebrity nutritionist Rujuta Diwekar on her latest book Common Sense Diet

Fifteen years ago Rujuta Diwekar hit the headlines for her best selling diet book Don’t Lose Your Mind, Lose Your Weight. The fitness and nutrition expert famously put actor Kareena Kapoor on a diet that included rice, ghee, and parathas, proving that you can get into skinny jeans without giving up dal-chawal, or the occasional ladoo. Over the years, defiantly refusing to do any paid campaigns, collaborations or brand endorsements, Rujuta has created a loyal following. This includes 1.7 million people on Instagram and plenty of celebrity clients, enamoured by her practical advice and forgiving diet charts.

Now, she is back with her latest book, The Commonsense Diet, (published by Juggernaut) and she is not mincing words as she takes on some of today’s most popular fads, influencers, and ingredients. In a world noisy with wellness trends and weight loss advice, we ask her how to get fitter without giving up on the joy of food.

Diets are getting nastier, and the people on them are getting angrier

Hanger is a real word and hangry a real phenomenon. Diets and dieters have become cultish and therefore I say, angrier than earlier. The reason why my messaging hasn’t changed is because eating right isn’t rocket science, it’s common sense.

Right from the beginning my diet advice has been rooted in science and has always been on the same page as our grandmothers. You have to see your diet in the context of climate and culture.

I think the shortfall is in health professionals not making diets local enough for their clientele — the people who come to us for diet advice are vulnerable, they are scared, no matter what they have achieved, and often fear that they are messing up with food or lack the discipline to eat correctly, hence must be whipped into shape.

Then you have the influencers weighing in, you have the doctors weighing in. Opinions are misconstrued as facts when reels go viral. On social media, especially now when you can buy reach, everything including following or even trolling is just business as usual. It is becoming more confusing than ever as everyone comes across as an expert.

I say diets are getting nasty because there is also a lot of cultural appropriation too. Turmeric is now a miracle food. But haldi was always used with fat, like a tadka, or with milk, not as haldi shots in water. If a little is good, a lot is not better.

We have made the simple pleasures of life, like food, complicated. If your diet has a name, it is bound to fail. All of us should eat differently — if we all wake up to a green smoothie, avocado on sourdough for lunch and chicken breast for dinner, that is not a world you want to be living in. 

Health is not about maintaining appearances. It’s not about the six-pack, the weight loss, the skinny jeans or sleep score. It is about living a kinder, gentler life. When people are shamed into getting ‘healthier’ it just doesn’t work.

The one diet you should be on is the one the social media influencers do not approve of. 

If your plate is full, your protein is adequate 

People now worry constantly about whether they are getting enough protein — but a shortage of protein doesn’t exist, and surely doesn’t exist in isolation. The ‘Politics of Protein’ report by the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food systems has shown that there is no such thing as a global protein gap. The only people who fall short on protein are the ones who fall below the poverty line and therefore short on access to adequate nutritious food.

Removing carbs and consuming protein tries to fix what is not broken. It’s also expensive. What’s good for profits is often bad for people, and the planet.

You just need to eat normal regular meals. We ensure that clients have a diverse diet, we account for different seasons, for their lifestyles. We keep it local, seasonal and traditional. Eat dals and legumes, nuts, dairy-based protein like milk and dahi, and fish, meat and eggs if you are non-vegetarian. You are more than covered that way.

If you do more, you may get more protein but it is not going to accelerate weight loss or give you better skin and hair as quick as you think you deserve them. Physiological adaptation takes time. We want to get thin yesterday… But remember, we are living long lives, we need to look beyond that cousin’s wedding, beyond a new year’s party. We need to be on a plan we can live with for life.

There is no point in going off sugar, dairy and gluten. The sensible thing is to put them in context.

People say they are giving up maida and then buy an almond flour cake. People turn down the kokum sherbet because of the sugar and miss out on the micronutrients that it offers, the diversity, the taste….

We used to be good guests in India, now we go to people’s houses and say we are off sugar, gluten, carbs… it’s become some sort of a flex. But when you cut sugar, gluten and dairy out of your meals, and therefore your life, you cut your connect with culture, cuisine, and climate.

First check on the basics, Are you eating on time? Exercising too much, or nothing? Sleeping too late? Work on fixing that first. Because going #glutenfree and #dairyfree will not resolve the problems that these bring… if you address the underlying issues first, there is a good chance that your tolerance will improve. If you are intolerant, simply avoid them instead of replacing them with alternatives.

Millets are the new — and it breaks my heart to say this — maida. Because they are eaten out of context. Yes, they are rich in micronutrients, dense in fibre and can help with weight loss. They are our super food, a part of our rotis, our ladoos, our chutneys… But now they are being made into two-minute noodles, or junk food burgers. We are using them to virtue signal that this food is healthier, that is a reductionist approach to millets…. we need to go back to our old ways of cooking and eating them with the right combinations to optimise the benefits.

Now, the gut cleanse is the new way to detox the age-old guilt… Truth be told, that cleanse of yours is just as toxic as your weekend binge

The only thing that is useful is eating correctly, in a sustainable way, knowing that our bodies will change with time, knowing that sleeping and exercising also have a role to play. Things that don’t come with a hashtag will stay.

Now you have so many young people needing to take additional fibre supplement — if you need it in your 40s what is going to happen in your 60s and 70s? We should need lesser aids for day to day functions.

You don’t need to drink green potions to cleanse your system. You don’t need an external aid to clean your system barring bathing and brushing your teeth. Everything else is just full time-pass. And costly. Because going on a cleanse is like giving away your inheritance. We inherit good microbes from our parents, take a lifetime to build on it and then risk washing it away with this ‘cleansing’.

People are being health washed — where logic is put aside to accept a narrative as fact. Like cleanses. Misinformation is coming to you from all directions. There is a barrage of ads on your phone, and social media algorithms are monetising your anxieties, vulnerability and fear.

The only diet to get on is the one you will keep for life. And that diet is eating ghar ka khaana. Quick fixes just don’t work. Sustainability is crucial for success. 

I get many request for endorsements, but I don’t take them because it is a policy decision I made long ago. It is a clear conflict of interest. I am also careful about what talks I agree to participate in — because under the garb of awareness, there can be a spread of misinformation and fear. I care about transparency and am happy with the money I make with consulting.

One of the biggest things that dieting takes away from us is the ability to eat freely, and therefore share fearlessly and live fully

There’s a lot of conversation about ageing, menopause and perimenopause, which is good, but it can also become another trap for women to not accept their bodies. We need to accept that our waists may be two-three inches more than they were in our 20s. There is nothing wrong with that. Because that is how the body works, it is called the middle-age spread. We forget that growing old is a blessing.

A change in the body is not the same as deterioration. We need to make peace with that.

We all need love, kindness and empathy. We should enjoy our food. It is one of the primal pleasures of life. When we lose the joy of eating we don’t function well. None of us overeat chronically but once in a while if you are having an extra slice of cake or a larger piece of pizza it’s fine, food is our sense of sharing joy, love and security. Don’t reduce it to the sum total of calories.

In the end its about how fully I lived, not how skinny I looked.