You’ve switched to salads, replaced sugary drinks with diet soda, started snacking on nuts instead of biscuits, and made sure roti or rice features in every meal. Yet, the belly fat doesn’t seem to budge. If this sounds familiar, you may be overlooking the small, everyday habits that influence your overall calorie intake, metabolic health and ability to manage weight. Eating healthy is not just about choosing foods labelled as nutritious.
It also involves understanding portion sizes, meal composition, cooking methods and how consistently your lifestyle supports your health goals. In an interview with HT Lifestyle, Tanay Mandowara, nutrition and lifestyle medicine coach and metabolic health specialist, shared common habits worth re-evaluating if you’re trying to manage your weight and improve your metabolic health. The bigger concern is when diet beverages become part of a broader pattern of relying on intensely sweet flavours throughout the day. If you find yourself frequently craving sweet foods, examine your overall eating pattern, sleep and meal timing rather than blaming a single beverage. However, oil is calorie-dense, and repeated additions during cooking can significantly increase the energy content of a meal. A home-cooked meal can contain vegetables, pulses and whole grains and still become considerably more calorie-dense if generous amounts of oil are used for tempering, frying or preparing gravies. What to do instead: Measure oil while cooking, choose preparation methods such as grilling, steaming and roasting when appropriate, and be mindful of repeated servings of fried foods. Focus on consistency rather than attempting to remove all fats from your diet.
“ Cooking oils are often treated as a minor ingredient because they are used in small quantities,” highlighted Mandowara.
Because the base of the meal consists of vegetables, rather, the issue is that people may underestimate how much they are consuming. Creamy dressings, mayonnaise -based sauces, generous amounts of cheese, fried toppings and large portions of nuts can make a salad considerably more calorie-dense than expected. This does not make these ingredients inherently unhealthy.
A salad may appear to be the healthiest option on a restaurant menu, but its nutritional value depends on what goes into it, according to Mandowara.
