Building a Type 2-Friendly Thali
Reviewed by CDE Mehandi Sharma · Updated
The simplest way to change how you eat is to change the proportions on your plate rather than the food on it.
The widely taught version works like this. Half your plate is non-starchy vegetables. A quarter is protein. The remaining quarter is carbohydrate — ideally one with some fibre in it.
Translated into an Indian thali, that means the sabzi becomes the biggest thing on the plate, not the smallest. Dal, curd, paneer, egg, fish or chicken fill the protein quarter. And the rice or roti sits in the last quarter, which for most people means noticeably less of it than they are used to.
Nothing gets banned. The change is in volume, and the volume comes from vegetables instead of from the staple.
Two practical points. Dal is doing double duty here — it brings protein and carbohydrate, so it counts on both sides. And if you are not taking insulin, this plate approach may be all you need — see do you need to count carbohydrates? before taking on anything more.
Start with one meal a day. Rebalancing dinner alone is a real change, and it is far more likely to survive than a plan that rewrites every meal at once.