Almost every patient who sits down with me for the first time says some version of the same thing: "I know I should stop eating roti and rice." And almost every time, my answer is the same: no, you probably shouldn't, and here's why that approach hasn't worked for you before.
The all-or-nothing trap
Cutting out roti and rice completely sounds disciplined, but it usually backfires. It separates you from family meals, it's hard to sustain at weddings and dawats, and it sets up a cycle where "good" days are followed by "I already ruined it" days. Plans built this way tend to fail within weeks, and the weight that comes back often brings a bit more with it.
The patients I've seen lose 15, 20, even 25+ kg and keep it off didn't eliminate their staples. They changed how much, what's next to it, and when.
Why portion and pairing matter more than elimination
Here's something most people don't know: the same amount of rice or roti affects your blood sugar very differently depending on what you eat it with. In studies on South Asian meals, plain white rice produced a much higher glucose response than the identical portion of rice eaten together with chicken curry, and a plain chapati's glucose response dropped by roughly a third when eaten with curry instead of alone.1 Protein, fat, and fibre in the curry or daal slow down digestion and blunt the spike.
A high blood sugar spike after a meal doesn't just affect diabetics. It drives the insulin response that tells your body to store fat and makes you hungry again sooner. So the same plate of food, arranged differently, can be either "fattening" or genuinely sustainable.
Three rules that actually work
Vegetables or salad first, every meal
Not as a side thought, but as the largest portion on the plate. This alone changes the proportions of everything else without any "counting."
One portion of roti or rice, not a refill
One roti or one cup of cooked rice is a portion. A second helping is where most of the extra calories (and the glucose spike) come from.
Protein at every meal, including breakfast
Eggs, daal, paneer, chicken, fish, or yogurt. Protein keeps you fuller for longer and protects muscle mass while you lose fat. This matters because South Asians tend to have less muscle mass relative to body fat than other populations, even at the same weight.2
What a realistic day looks like
Breakfast might be two eggs with one slice of whole-wheat toast, or a small bowl of plain dahi with fruit. Lunch could be a generous serving of daal or sabzi, one roti, and a side salad. Dinner is often the heaviest meal in Pakistani households. Rather than removing rice from dinner, try halving the usual portion and doubling the vegetable or salad portion alongside it. The roti or rice is still there. It's just sharing the plate with more food that fills you up without the same glucose load.
When the scale doesn't move as fast as you'd like
Because of the South Asian tendency toward higher body fat at a given weight, the goal isn't always a dramatic number on the scale. Waist circumference, energy levels, and lab markers often improve before the scale "catches up," especially in the first few weeks.2,3 Sustainable fat loss, especially around the waist, tends to be gradual. A realistic pace is 0.5–1 kg a week. Patients who try to lose faster than that are usually the ones who end up back where they started a few months later.
If you've spent years going on and off diets that asked you to give up roti and rice, it might be worth trying a plan that doesn't. That's the starting point for almost every plan I build.
This article is general information, not a substitute for personalised medical nutrition therapy. For a plan built around your routine and your family's kitchen, book a consultation.
- Glycaemic responses of South Asian staple foods alone and combined with curried chicken as a mixed meal. PubMed 24661372.
- Sattar N, Gill JMR. Type 2 diabetes in migrant South Asians: mechanisms, mitigation, and management. Adiposity and BMI thresholds. PMC7531132.
- Ectopic fat distribution and adverse muscle composition in South Asians: findings from the UK Biobank. PMC12746269 / PubMed 41473010.