Most of the people I meet at work or socially say they would like to lose weight. However, there are also the rare few who wish to gain weight. Often their plight is worse than of those who want to lose weight. When I tell them that the principles of weight loss are as applicable to them, they feel let down.

But this is a fact because besides how you were fed as a child, your genetic make-up and eating habits, the truth is that your weight is determined by your current state of metabolism and digestion pattern. I know this not just from my nutrition studies, but from my own need and struggle to put on extra kilos. It isn’t that I ate less than others, but putting on even half a kilo was difficult for many years.

This suddenly changed when I took a real holiday recently. By real I mean a holiday which totally excluded work for ten full days. I quickly gained 4-5 kg and I have to admit it makes me feel sluggish. Following this experience, I wonder how people with extra weight manage to get around because I don’t feel as agile as I used to. I can feel the strain on my heart, pumping blood through the extra fat and making me lethargic. This time the weight is not shaking off because my work load has reduced and for the first time in my busy life, I have time to relax and rest.

This experience confirms my belief that to lose or maintain body weight, work activity is a prerequisite. Not just sporadic exercise, but continuous activity. That is, getting so involved with work and living that there’s no time to sit around. Weight maintenance apart, being busy with what you enjoy doing is also the recipe for happiness. So getting passionate about things is a very real solution.

Therefore I spend a lot of my time assuring fat-paranoid people that they aren’t fat. I don’t believe in consulting weight charts which prescribe height-related weight. Just as people function quite normally at varying blood pressure levels, some even dangerously low or high, there isn’t one standard for measuring whether a person is overweight or under par.

In fact the only extra weight one need worry about, which is generally the first indication to heed, is weight on the belly. And if your thighs touch while you walk, it’s a signal to take stock. I’ve time and again discussed in this column good eating principles which apply equally to weight gain and weight loss, because sticking with a natural diet balances the body whichever way you’d like to go.

In this dispatch I’ll touch upon certain subtler elements that can help you attain the balance your body needs at all times even if you aren’t aware of it.

• Choose foods in season, especially fruits and vegetables

• Don’t waste any part of the food you cook

• Don’t cook in a hurry. Cooking and eating are sacred acts, necessary to sustain and enrich life. Therefore one should neither cook nor eat in a hurry

• Don’t throw away cooked vegetable juices, especially of organically grown vegetables. They contain valuable minerals and can be used again

• Keep an orderly kitchen. If your kitchen is messy, it not only creates chaos while cooking, but also in your family life

• Don’t waste. Take small helpings on your plate. Hunger makes you imagine you can eat more than your stomach can handle

• Older people and children should eat less salt and smaller helpings of food

• Chew your meal well. This means eat your meals leisurely, at the rate of 50 chews per mouthful, especially for cereals

• Use only rock or sea salt. Commercial salt contains calcium bicarbonate and dextrose to keep it dry. It is hard to dissolve and not the best either for cooking or health

• Use only cold-pressed (ghani) oils. The traditional cooking oils of India — peanut, sesame, coconut, kardi (safflower), mustard — are good for health

• Use traditional ingredients like millet, flax, alfalfa, sesame, watermelon and poppy seeds, spirulina, amla, etc, in your cooking. And unrefined rather than refined brown and red rice for healthy nutrients

• While combining foods and cooking them, consider shape, colour and taste. Don’t overcook vegetables and include salads and raw vegetables in your diet

• Never use sugar or MSG. In India we have organic jaggery and even jaggery powder as substitutes

• Be cheerful while preparing meals

• When packing for lunch or a picnic, don’t mix hot and cold food. It will become rancid

• If you want to get rid of a strong lingering smell in a jar, add mustard powder and boiling water and leave it uncovered for a few hours

• After deep frying, use a thin muslin to strain oil while the food is hot.

It’s the little things in life that matter. So also in cooking, little things can make a big difference. When I studied nutrition, we were taught never to remove the lid of the rice when it is cooking, or even move the pot from one burner to another! Subtle tips and practices matter. They enhance the quality of your food as well as your health.

(Kavita Mukhi is a Mumbai-based eco-nutritionist and director of Conscious Food)