Low-fat or low-carb or low gi?? The answer my friend is blowing in the wind.

The jury is still out about the best diet for weight loss. Some research favours a low carb approach, some a low GI approach and some a low fat approach. Some research says that it doesn't make any difference what you eat as long as you watch your calories.

So, to the question of what really works for weight loss, there is no definitive answer yet and there might not be for a really long time.

But if you take a holistic approach and try and extract some universal principles from what all of these guys (not counting fringe elements like Dr. Atkins) are saying, it really boils down to this.

1. Don't eat any food that is liable to push up your blood sugar very quickly
2. Don't eat too much, but for god's sake, don't starve. 
3. Don't eat a lot of fat and eat absolutely no transfats (that's dalda. Dalda is horrible and yucky. Avoid.)
4. Don't eat a lot of red meat
5. Don't eat white processed foods (white bread, white rice, rotis made of maida, french fries, sugar)
6. Drink no sugary beverages including fruit juice (eat fruit instead)
7. Eat a lot of fiber
8. Eat a lot of vegetables

The first principle is the most important. Especially if you have diabetes, are obese or have PCOS. When your blood sugar goes up rapidly, your insulin levels shoot up to deal with that sugar. High insulin levels mean that you store fat like crazy. Also when your blood sugar goes up really high, it rebounds and then goes really low, making you awfully hungry and making you want to eat a lot of food. So you eat a lot of food and guess what happens? Blood sugar shoots up.

That is a vicious cycle that is easy to break. There are several ways to make sure your blood sugar never goes up that high.

1. Eat the same food. But break it up into smaller meals. Less of the same food means lower blood sugar levels.
2. Eat the same food. But add lots of fiber to it. So use brown rice instead of white rice. Use whole wheat or mixed grains instead of white flour. Use oat bran instead of oats and so on.
3. Replace high glycemic index foods with low glycemic index foods. Eat pasta instead of rice. Eat oats instead of wheat. (High glycemic index foods mean foods which push up your blood sugar really fast. For a good explanation of the terms glycemic index and glycemic load go to http://www.mendosa.com/gi.htm)
4. Eat the same food. But reduce the quantity of that food and add tons of vegetables.

The best approach is just using common sense and mixing up all of the above strategies. Here are some examples:

• If you're eating a "bad" food like cake, eat very little of it. And then after a couple of hours eat very little of it again.
• If you're craving white rice, use half the amount of rice you usually eat and replace the remaining half with vegetables or dal.
• If you are dying for a filling carbohydrate rich meal, eat something made of besan (chickpea flour) or eat pasta instead of rice.

This is the essence of any good weight loss plan. As for fat, should you eat low fat or should you eat as much fat as you like? The answer is eat as much fat as is good for you. You don't have to deprive yourself, but your food should not be swimming in oil. Also, try to get more fat from within natural foods instead of adding fat to foods. That means peanuts instead of peanut oil and grilled chicken instead of fried chicken ( if you eat meat).

This blog is an attempt to create a database of recipes that stay true to these principles. I am a South Indian and although I eat non-vegetarian food, I like vegetarian food much more. So, my recipes will mostly be Indian and vegetarian. They will also definitely be healthy, low-fat and low glycemic index.

So, bon appetit and good health to all of you. If you try something here, please let me know how it worked out :).