I remember this one particularly brutal Tuesday morning. It was peak startup craziness, a week when every meeting felt like a high-stakes poker game, and my brain just needed to be on. But I wasn't. I was staring at a half-eaten plate of dal and sabzi, having skipped the roti again, feeling like I was wading through quicksand. The traffic outside our Gurgaon office window seemed to move faster than my thoughts.
For months, I'd been convinced that the path to peak performance, both at the gym and in the office, lay in maxing out protein and ditching pretty much everything else, especially carbs. I'd read a few articles, heard a few gym bros talk, and it just sounded so… efficient. More dal, more paneer, more protein powder, less roti, less rice. I figured, I'm already eating mostly home-cooked Indian food, so it's easy to just tweak it, right? My wife would make a perfectly balanced meal, and I'd just pick out the roti like it was a carb-shaped enemy.
At first, I felt lighter, maybe even a bit sharper. But that feeling didn't last. Soon, my morning runs felt like pulling a loaded truck. My strength training sessions in the evening, after a long day of coding and calls, became a real drag. I’d try to push through, but my body just didn't want to cooperate. It wasn't just physical exhaustion either. The brain fog was the worst part. I'd be in a strategy meeting, trying to articulate a complex technical solution, and my words would just… vanish. It felt like my mental RAM was constantly running at 50% capacity, even after a decent night's sleep.
My wife, bless her, noticed it before I truly admitted it to myself. "You're so grumpy these days," she'd say, handing me a glass of buttermilk. "And you look tired all the time." I'd brush it off, muttering something about startup life, but deep down, I knew it wasn't just the late nights. Something was off with my fuel.
The breaking point was a sprint review meeting. We were debugging a critical production issue, and I just couldn't connect the dots. My team was looking at me, expecting answers, and all I could offer was a blank stare. That night, after everyone had left, I sat at my desk, feeling utterly defeated. It hit me then: this hyper-focused, low-carb, high-protein experiment wasn't making me a super CTO. It was making me a dull, sluggish version of myself.
The next morning, I cautiously added a small bowl of rice to my lunch. Then a full roti with dinner. It wasn't an overnight fix, of course, but within a few days, I started feeling… normal again. My energy levels stabilized. My brain felt clearer. The gym sessions slowly started getting better. It was such a simple, almost embarrassing realization: my body needed those carbs for energy, especially with the kind of demanding schedule I had.
It taught me a pretty big lesson about listening to my body, and not just blindly following a diet trend. Sometimes, in our rush to optimize everything, we miss the most basic truths. I later came across a really insightful breakdown of the research, explaining why balanced macros, not just high protein, are so crucial for overall health and performance, and it totally resonated with what I had experienced. You can find it at healthpartner.shrynshjn.com/blog/protein-vs-balanced-macros.
Now, my plate looks a lot more balanced. A proper roti or some rice, plenty of dal and sabzi, a side of curd. And guess what? I'm still getting plenty of protein. My brain is happy, my body is happy, and my wife isn't calling me grumpy anymore. Sometimes, the best hacks are just getting back to basics.
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