What I Eat In A Day

Since majority voted ‘Yes’ on instagram to know about my daily eating habits when home, I’m here to deliver, as promised. This post will give you an up-close look at my usual go-to choices for meals at home.
I’m not, by far, a nutritionist or health advisor so please do not adopt things from here on a whim if you have any sort of health issues. Please always consult an actual professional before doing so. This is just what I eat, keeps me happy and works well for me. Ok, here we go.

Breakfast
I usually wake up at 9-9:30 am. NOT a morning person. I have phases where I may take up a workout for a couple of months for which I’ll start waking up early. But, if history has proved anything, it is a definite fact that I’m happiest when not woken up to alarms. So 9:30am is when my body’s natural clock tells it to get up.
(1) The first thing I usually consume on a daily basis is a very tall (650ml) glass of warm-hot water with lemon, organic honey and shredded ginger bits.
I usually order 4-5 bottles of honey together from Amazon because quite frankly, I suck at being punctual with ordering groceries very often. Best to cut the headache by ordering bulk especially when the shelf life is longer. Here are the 5 bottles of honey that I ordered the last time:
– ‘Wild Honey’ by Honey & Spice
– Dyu Honey
– ‘Turmeric Honey’ by Farm Honey: I’m using this currently and I quite love it because of the additional turmeric that automatically gets added in my warm water.
– Unprocessed Wild Berry Honey by Farm Naturelle
– Organic Forest Honey by Organica
(2) This is followed by a small bowl of a handful almonds, soaked overnight and peeled
(3) After this I eat 1 fruit, any fruit. I love apples so either that or pomegranate or mangoes when in season. I also only shop organic fruits so the variety of fruits available in that are limited – Apples and pomegranates are usually available. For mangoes, I love the Banganpalli variety thats available on isayorganic.com
This is my first breakfast. I eat my second brekkie after about an hour of this so around 11ish.

(1) 2 eggs either soft boiled or sunny-side up. Currently I’m loving them soft boiled.
(2) 3 bite size morsels of smoked salmon. As much as I hornishly love smoked salmon, the damned thing is kinda expensive and also not ideal to eat everyday mostly because of it’s high salt content. So I make sure that eat smoked salmon 3-4 times a week, in very controlled portions. I purchase my smoked salmon every 1 or 2 weeks.
(3) Freshly squeezed juice of 1 orange and 1 mosambi. These are unfortunately not organic because not available. But I can’t resist how refreshing the tiny glass of juice feels.
(4) When I’m feeling fancy and I also have avocados at home (again, so bloody expensive), I’ll have an ‘Avo-Toast’ or even home-made guacamole on toast. But this usually happens about 3 to 4 times a month, no more.

Lunch
Lunch happens about 2-3 hours after breakfast so that would be around 2-3pm. Again, I eat 2 small lunches.
(1) The first is a medium sized bowl of whatever has been cooked at home – it could be a sabzi or dal (pulses) or rajma combined with either homemade quinoa (with or without veggies) or rice. Rice is either unpolished or brown or red – I keep changing the rice after every 1 kg is consumed. Again, I try and order organic rice and quinoa when available.
Rajma & Quinoa

When I’m travelling I obviously eat white polished rice because that is what you usually get.
I almost never eat roti/chapatti or bread (except for avo-toast). No particular reason, just the way the habit has developed I suppose.
I have a weakness for homemade aloo (potato) parantha with a mountain of ghee or white butter on it (and when I say mountain, I mean mountain, I mean that you’ll be able to see more butter than parantha). So I eat this at a frequency of about once a month or even 2. Speaking of which, I can’t remember the last time I had aloo parantha so looks like I have my lunch set for one of these days.
If not quinoa, sabzi or rice, lunch can also be a salad. These days I’m loving eating my watermelon + feta + mint leaves + pistachio salad or a chickpea salad.
Also, when there is a little bit of different veggies left in the refrigerator, I combine them all together and make a stew in coconut milk to eat with rice or quinoa.
(2) After an hour and a half or two, I have a little treat – either some dairy free ice-cream sprinkled with organic roasted cacao nibs. I’m currently having White Cub Ice cream, choco-heaven flavor that has no added sugar and I get my cacao nibs from HERE, or HERE, or HERE. The cacao nibs I’m having right now are no longer available sadly on Amazon but these are just as good. I pick up my White Cub ice-cream from Foodhall.

Or a bottle of almond milk with a handful of walnuts. I’m currently ordering the almond milk from Sain Almond Milk

Or a tall glass of homemade iced-tea

Dinner
I try to eat my last meal for the day before 7-7:30pm. Sometimes I even eat at 6:30pm if I get hungry. Dinner is either similar to lunch or I can even eat besan ka chilas/poodhas. I also love eating broccoli cutlets that are covered in homemade almond meal instead of bread and pan-fried. You can also use cauliflower if you don’t have broccoli.
Or it could just be whatever leftovers are there in the refrigerator.
I do love my pint or 2 of beer in the summer evenings or wine. We play around with homemade cocktails about once or twice a month because it takes effort lol.

I love pork but I usually don’t eat it when I’m in Delhi (only in reputable restaurants)
I have substantially reduced my consumption of chicken because it’s a bit horrid when you learn about the condition of the place that your chicken is most certainly coming from.
I love beef when I can get my hands on it (obviously finding it in North India is not the easiest) but I definitely love pork more.
My consumption of non-vegetarian food at home is usually restricted to the fish that I eat and chicken will be about 3-4 times a month max.

Ofcourse when I’m a raging hormone bucket, everything is fair game – I’ve eaten entire 1 litre tubs of dairy ice-cream to 3 doughnuts at a time (and I don’t even like doughnuts) but that is usually a one off thing and not what this blog post is about so I’ll try not to scare you with it.
Another weakness of mine is chips – goddamned potato chips so best way to avoid them is to not have them at home. Otherwise, they only go one way and that’s my gut. What I try to do in such scenarios is try to put some chips on a plate for consumption instead of sitting with the whole bag of chips in my lap.

I mostly avoid dairy – I don’t drink milk at all, no cheese for the most part (a little bit in salads maybe or sometimes a paneer sabzi or the occasional pizza). Not because I’m allergic but because I’m fairly certain it adds fuel to my acne problem and also because it’s an outdated concept. Nobody needs to be consuming dairy. I mean if you’re fit and love the taste, by all means have it. But I feel a lot lighter in life when I’m not consuming dairy.

I never count calories when it comes to home-cooked food but yes, I do look at the label if my food is coming from a packet. For example 1 big bag of LAYS chips cream and onion is a whopping 1000 calories – that’s 2 or 3 days of 1 hour swimming so I really must make up mind on whether it’s worth it. Which almost always helps in motivating me to eat the entire packet over 4 days instead of 1 sitting.

I hope this has given you guys a good look at my at-home eating habits. I’ve tried to give as much detail as possible. Now on to some of the questions you guys sent to me through Instagram:

Q. Wanted to know how you detox after a cheat day.
A. I don’t specifically care out cheat days since I don’t believe in that concept. Cheat days mean that you are automatically training your brain to be okay with deprivation – and that is not how food works or should work (atleast for me). Food is supposed to a) give your body nutrition and b) make you feel happy and good. You should never deprive yourself of any food only to justify being able to go nuts for 1 day. Personally, I eat whatever I feel like eating. I just try to practice portion control and try to be as aware as possible of what I’m putting in my body when I eat something (both good and bad). When you realize that 1 can of Pepsi etc goes over your entire day’s worth of sugar, you automatically try and avoid it or reduce the consumption.
Emotional eating is a totally different area – like I mentioned earlier, I’ve eaten 3 doughnuts at a go and I don’t even like dougnuts. I usually blame my hormones for it, make peace with it, try and feel happy about the doughnuts and tomorrow is always a new day 😉
If I’m feeling really guilty I’ll automatically make sure I don’t consume any processed sugar for the next few days and try to eat extra clean but I don’t beat myself over it.

Q. Hey, you travel on daily basis and may eat out and drink too, so how do you maintain that amazing body?
A. Hey! Firstly, I don’t travel on a daily basis, I’d positively lose my mind. But yes I do travel quite a bit and love eating and drinking when I do. The most basic rule I follow when travelling is that I try to eat as local as possible and none of that processed local crap like going to a starbucks or dominos. As long as I’m eating freshly prepared local cuisine, I’m okay. I try and avoid sugar more than usual. Plus I prefer alcohol over dessert any day of the week! I also try and get some form of physical activity done regularly when I’m back home but while travelling I pretty much suck at taking out time for a workout. Never been able to kick that habit in the teeth sadly.

Q. What do you snack on post dinner, if you are up late? Have always found that a little difficult.
A. I’ll be honest with you, I feel quite lucky to not have a snacking-post-dinner-habit. I usually tend to want to snack when I’m bored so if that happens, sometimes, I usually head to the refrigerator, open the door, look at what my options are and just dig out a spoon or two of whatever sabzi I can find. ABSOLUTELY no sugar post dinner (that’s a sin for me), barring alcohol ofcourse. I enjoy my beers post dinner! I also find pistachios to be a great option for snacking – the whole activity of breaking the shell with your fingers and getting to eat the nut and then eventually your fingers starting to hurt so you stop eating, makes good sense to me. When you have to work for your food, you tend not to eat too much.

Q. Do you completely avoid any form of sugar for flat abs?
A. Really wishing I actually had flat abs here but to answer your question – no. I did give up sugar completely for a whole month earlier this year and honestly did not see much of a difference. But, that would probably be because I’m not much of a sugar person anyway. I don’t drink colas or packed juices, have my coffee without sugar, I quite hate any Indian sweets or desserts, I have now shifted to dairy-free ice-cream with no added sugar and I only seem to want to have chocolate type of desserts (those I never stock at home) so I’m mostly okay with sugar. A little bit of honey in the morning, a cookie or slice of cake once a month and I’m quite happy.
So to answer your question – the form of sugar that I try and avoid at any cost is processed added sugar.

Q. How often do you change your diet plan? Do you experiment often?
A. The last ‘diet plan’ I tried was about 5-6 years back when I tried the GM Diet for the first and last time. Really not been into diets after that (because I believe in enjoying my food and not feeling miserable mostly). So, I don’t have any diet plans – it’s more of a slow lifestyle change in my eating habits over the years like reducing my sugar intake or reducing my dairy intake etc. But I don’t go ‘ON’ diets or nutritionist plans or any other fancy terms they may have come up with. Again, don’t experiment often – just basic homemade food, good habits, eat when you’re hungry and try to eat only as much food as can fit in both your palms held together. We all know what’s good and bad for us (for the most part) – the only thing we need to do is to train our mind to want the good stuff and hate the bad.

Q. If we eat junk whenever we feel like but we workout and compensate for it, are we safe?
A. Not really! That’s not the best attitude to have if your goal is to have a healthy and fit body and mind. That’s like saying, if I buy you gifts after throwing garbage in your face everytime, am I a good friend? No you’re not. Buy me gifts sure (work out) but no need to throw trash at me(eat junk) – it doesn’t lead to any sort of balance. Please tell me I’m not the only one this analogy made sense to. It’s great that you work out, but eating junk everytime you feel like it is a habit you may want to try and break. Real benefits are reaped when you eat clean AND workout. Junk once in a while is perfectly alright – but you have to realize that it is literally poison that you are forcing down your throat.

If you guys have any more questions please leave them in the comments below!
Phew! That was a lot of writing.

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