Indian foods for weight loss: 50 everyday foods, ranked by the numbers

Protein per 100 kcal tells you how much protein you buy with a given amount of energy. Fish, chicken, soya and moong sit near the top; rice, poha and most fruit sit near the bottom. That does not make rice a bad food. It makes it a food you measure, and pair with a protein that does the heavy lifting.

Fibre per 100 g shows which grains and pulses slow a meal down. Calories per 100 g, the energy density, shows which foods let you eat a big plate cheaply: a katori of lauki carries almost no energy, while a handful of cashews carries a lot. Every figure in the chart is the food's own row in IFCT 2017, and IFCT measured no fibre in milk, eggs, meat or fish, so those cells are blank rather than guessed.

Researchers went back through POUNDS Lost, a trial that put 345 adults on calorie-reduced diets for six months, and asked a simple question: what about the way people ate best predicted how much they lost? It was not the split of fat, protein and carbohydrate. It was fibre. The people who ate more of it lost more, and they were also the ones still following their diet.

You do not need to buy anything new. Kala chana has 25.2 g of fibre in 100 g and rajma 16.6 g, which is why a bowl of chole or rajma keeps you going till evening. Barley has 15.6 g and atta 11.4 g; white rice has 2.8 g. A guava or a pear eaten whole beats any glass of juice. One warning from experience: go up slowly over a week or two, and drink more water, or your stomach will complain.

Weigh them raw and the everyday grains are close cousins: rice, atta, jowar, ragi and barley all fall between about 310 and 360 kcal in 100 g. The real difference is fibre. Barley, atta, jowar and ragi carry three to six times what white rice does, and brown rice lands in the middle. In kitchen terms, one roti from 30 g of atta is 96 kcal and 3.2 g of protein, and a small katori of rice cooked from 40 g is 142 kcal and 3.2 g of protein.

So the question is less which grain and more how much, and what it sits beside. India's consensus guidance for Asian Indians asks for fewer and more complex carbohydrates with more fibre, and the ICMR-NIN guidelines pair cereals with pulses in about a 3:1 ratio. Two rotis or one measured katori of rice, with a full katori of dal, is that ratio on a steel plate. If you enjoy jowar or ragi rotis, rotate them in. They are good food. They are not magic.

Guava is the quiet champion: one medium guava is 48 kcal and 12.9 g of fibre. Papaya, watermelon and muskmelon are mostly water. Banana, mango and chikoo are sweeter, and still fine as one portion; a medium banana is 105 kcal, close to a roti. Where fruit goes wrong is the glass. A mango shake or a banana smoothie with sugar gives you the fruit's sugar, often plus more, and none of the chewing that tells your body it has eaten.

Remember the Penn State women from the vegetable section? The extra produce they ate was fruit as well as sabzi, and they felt less hungry for it. A portion or two a day works well, as the 4 o'clock snack in place of biscuits, or after lunch in place of mithai. Leave the skin on apples and guavas.

Some of what they lost was muscle. Eating less always takes a share of muscle along with the fat. A review from Washington University in St. Louis found two things that protect it: plenty of protein, and exercise, with strength training also keeping you strong. Trials that held calories steady and simply raised protein saw a little more fat lost and more lean mass kept. That is why protein foods head the chart, and why squats, a resistance band or a pair of dumbbells, two or three times a week, deserve a place beside the dal.

Our programme is built around exactly this. Its goal is "Lose up to 20% of your body weight — and keep your muscle". Results vary; your doctor decides what is right for you. It begins with a home blood test that a registered doctor goes through with you, because your sugar, thyroid, lipids and kidneys decide which of the foods on this page your plate should lean on.