The biggest difference between Ayurveda and Allopathy is Aahar. Ayurveda considers Aahar (food) as medicine, whereas Allopathy’s MBBS curriculum does not even have a subject on food. Let’s talk about something that one in ten people reading this blog are suffering from – diabetes. Allopathy will talk about medicines and insulin, but not about patient compliance on reducing sugar intake. Ayurveda, in contrast, prescribes a dietary regimen, which not only asks you to leave sugar, but goes one step further – it also asks you to give up milk.

So how easy or difficult is it to change your diet to subtract two very key components in the Indian kitchen – milk and sugar. Let me make a disclosure at this time: my better half is a pathologist, but I have never ever got my sugar levels tested. In health, as in data sciences, less is better. Ignorance is bliss. Do I have diabetes? I don’t know. What I do, is that both my parents were diabetic.

Last week, I had my friend, Kamlesh Vyas, over for dinner. We wound up an early dinner, as Kamlesh had a flight back to Delhi, wondering what dessert should be. Kamlesh insisted on a banana. That got me curious – and I asked him about his sugar battles. He told me that his sugar demons have been defeated 6 years ago. Kamlesh, apart from being a partner at Deloitte, is also a trained Art of Living teacher, so there must have been some analytical and spiritual insights. Turns out that like with drugs, the way to go ahead is to withdraw gradually. Start with tea and coffee without sugar, then let go of chocolates, follow that up with sweets and desserts and finally say bye to biscuits and cakes.

Let’s start with chai. When I was a kid, my parents had a simple policy: chaiis only for grown-ups. Interestingly, I remember my grandmother telling me that in her younger days, no one drank chai. Companies like Brooke Bond, now Unilever, would go around handing out chai samples to get our population addicted. Took 21 years to grow up, on a tea free diet. Then joined Tata Motors. One high point of Tata Motors was the subsidised canteen food. Meals would cost 60 paise, and chai 5 paise. (You had to buy canteen coupons, because even in the nineties, the 5 paise coin was out of circulation.)  But old habits die hard. I worked 2 years at Tata Motors, and I remember using chai only for gargles when I had a sore throat.

I then moved to hostel life at IIM Calcutta. Even there, I stayed away from chai. My first job after campus was in sales at Marico, the folks who make Parachute coconut oil and Saffola. An important part of the job was meeting distributors. And part of the ritual was chai. The first few weeks of saying no, lead to an overdose of Thums Up. Then I gave up – chai seemed to be a healthier alternative than sugared water. Since those days of 1995, there have been ups and downs in my tea consumption – there have been one cuppa days – and times where I have been swigging a cup an hour. And there have also been months where I have not touched tea. 

Like any addiction, tackling withdrawal symptoms has been tough. So in a kind of inversion of the Kamlesh method, I have resolved that it is better to give up other things first, before I turn to tea. I have been experimenting with milk and sugar deletion in my diet – but not successfully. You look for sweets that have been made without milk –  jalebis, ladoos – and then the sugar addiction restarts. Filter coffee doesn’t really taste good without milk, the least you want to do is add some sugar to it. The battles continue.

Last week, I started my experiment of a pure fruit-sugar existence. Day 1 was tough. Gave in to temptation and had some rusk-biscuits which were parked on the fridge top. Day 2 was better. Ganpati time, and there were modaks and barfi lying in the fridge, but I realised that giving up sugar works better when you combine it with giving up milk. As I type this, the modaks are gone, but glad to share that I had no role in their depletion.

It’s been just 4 days since this Kamlesh inspired dietary change –  forgive me if I sound like VLCC now – I am already feeling healthier. I realised that in the correlation between eating and drowsiness, the causation was sugar. I have started waking up earlier – it’s 0430 hrs as I type this. My sleep hours have come down and I still wake up fresh and ahem – ready to type. Energy levels are high throughout the day. 

The challenges now are going to be mostly social. I went to my CA’s office yesterday – and said no to tea. Next time, I have been promised green tea, without sugar. Next day, I had to go to a friend’s breakfast birthday party. Carried a dozen bananas as a gift – so that while the friends munched on cake, I would have my banana – and eat it too! 

Turned out that I could stay away from sugar, but gave in to the temptation of cheese sandwiches – and once the no-milk clause had been violated, washed it down with low milk tea. Saving grace, it was without sugar. Managed to go through the rest of the day without milk and sugar. To celebrate this achievement, I decided to make salt ginger lemon grass tea for the missus. A 75 minute phone call to an old teacher, meant that the finishing touches to the chai came from the missus, lemon and ….. sugar. Looks like I will have to create a record of cheat days in my diary. And hope that their tribe decreases with time. Once I start averaging less than one cheat day a month, plan to start on  my next dietary deletion experiment, wheat. With its fast release sugars, wheat consumption makes it difficult for diabetics to manage blood sugar levels. But let me leave that for another blog.