Dinner timings, protein obsession, and therapy talk: The lifestyle debates that defined 2025

By 2025, lifestyle choices stopped being quiet, personal decisions and turned into daily debates at family gatherings and on social media. How late should you eat? Should you cut carbs or double down on protein? Is chasing balance wiser than chasing ambition? What was once considered routine now came with strong opinions, studies, counter-studies, and lived experiences that often contradicted one another.

The past year saw people questioning habits they had followed for decades. Dinner times shifted earlier as metabolic health entered everyday conversations. Weight loss advice splintered into competing camps, each claiming to be more ‘sustainable’ than the last.

Carbohydrates were both villainised and defended, while protein became a buzzword. At the same time, conversations moved beyond food, touching on how much ambition is healthy, whether minimalism is freeing or limiting, and if therapy should be a tool for crisis or a normal part of self-maintenance.

What made these debates particularly intense in 2025 was that they weren’t driven only by experts or trends, but by people trying to make sense of their own bodies, minds, and burnout.

One of the year’s most persistent arguments was about what we eat. Indian dietary patterns have long leaned heavily on carbohydrates, but many increasingly questioned whether this tradition still serves modern lifestyles.

According to nutrition coach Justin Gichaba, most people struggle with either overeating fats or carbs, which can lead to weight gain. “In regard to how I make sure to NOT overeat carbs, this is a simple rule I like to follow. Eat a ratio of carbs to protein at a 1.5:1 ratio. This means, for every 1.5 g of carbs you have, you must also have 1g of protein (sic),” noted Gichaba.

We also examined what happens to the body on high-protein regimens, where Dr Samrat Shah, consultant physician, Ruby Hall Clinic, Pune, flagged both benefits — such as improved satiety — and downsides, including digestive discomfort when fibre and carbs are sharply reduced.

The question of when to eat took on renewed importance in 2025, as more people began to finish their largest meal earlier in the evening.

Ashlesha Joshi, fitness dietician and nutritionist at Tone 30 Pilates, told indianexpress.com, “When we eat late at night, our body’s natural metabolic rhythm is disrupted. After sunset, our digestive efficiency gradually slows, and glucose tolerance decreases. So if someone consistently eats after 8 pm for several months, more of the energy from that meal is likely to be stored as fat rather than burned.”

Workplace culture and personal identity were another front in the year’s lifestyle debates. We reported on the rise of ‘career minimalism’, which is a conscious rejection of relentless hustle in favour of bounded ambition and psychological well-being.

Gurleen Baruah, existential analyst and organisational psychologist at That Culture Thing, mentioned, “A lot of this shift is simply the world changing. Especially after the pandemic, many young people saw how quickly ‘stable’ jobs disappeared, how companies laid off thousands overnight, and how unpredictable the economy has become.

Younger professionals, especially Gen Zers, are choosing defined workloads, diversifying how they invest their creative energy, and decoupling self-worth from corporate status.

One of the clearest shifts in 2025 was how openly mental health, once shrouded in stigma, became a mainstream topic among young Indians, especially Gen Z.

A vivid illustration of this change came from a viral moment when actor Ananya Panday pushed back against jokes about Gen Z being “too sensitive” and defended her generation’s emotional awareness on a talk show.

Psychologists pointed out something important: previous generations often prioritised endurance and suppression of emotions, but Gen Z has grown up with a language for feelings that older generations simply did not have.

Manasvi Azad, a counselling psychologist, mentioned, “When older generations dismiss these feelings, it shuts down meaningful conversation, like when Twinkle told Ananya that ‘everything is trauma’, reducing emotional literacy to exaggeration rather than recognising it as a genuine reflection.”

Experts explained that acknowledging emotions and stress doesn’t make someone weak. Studies show that emotional expression can lower stress, improve coping, and prevent burnout.