They say ‘be careful what you wish for’ for you never know when your wish might come true. But unfortunately, by the time I heard what they said, it was too late – the wish had already been made. Once upon a time, long, long ago, when we still woke up by chanting ‘karagre vasate lakshmi, karamadhye saraswati, karamule sthitao gauri, prabhate kar darshanam’ and not ‘karagre vasate whatsapp, karamadhye facebook, karamule sthitao instagram, prabhate mobile darshanam’, I weighed about 49 kilos. Umpteen chocolates and fattening food later, the scales stayed put at 49. I struggled crossing the 50 mark and no matter what I did, I couldn’t.
Well, I was reed thin and then I made the ‘wish’, that I now wish I had never made. I wished I’d put on a few kilos more so that I’d look a bit more, errr...how do you say it? Rounded? Curvy? Well chubby, maybe. And suddenly the wishes were horses and beggars were riding, and how! And what do I know, the scales not only tipped the 50 mark it kept going, and wouldn’t stop. The pointer was just about to touch 70, but I managed to get the needle to stop at 69.9. How? Ahem...well...I’d rather not say it here!
Damage already done, I needed some motivation to lose weight which was not until our trip to Munnar. That trip I must say was pretty ‘Moti-weight-ing’ and thus began a journey of a 1000 miles with a single elephant ride! They say, where there’s a will, there are relatives, no, I meant there’s a way, and groggily I found my way that went round or rather square in circles, (wait, is that even possible?) in the park near my house. Thirty minutes of walk, dripping in sweet sweat wasn’t doing much to the waistline, except making me sleep more in the afternoons.
Like a god-send, a friends group on FB started a new fitness group which I enthusiastically joined. To keep us motivated there was this diet and activity chart that we needed to fill out every day.
When I logged in, I had already had a tall glass of lemon juice in warm water with honey at 6am and then a tall glass of milk at 7am, followed by a bowl of oats at 9am, a bowl of salad at 10.30am and 3 phulkas with vegetable at 1pm. I filled in my entry and skimmed through what the others had filled in. Lunch: 1 phulka, said one entry. How does one survive on 1 phulka? I mean, that’s like two bites, right? But maybe that was the trick to losing weight. I made a mental note to eat just one phulka at night. But the mere thought of starving at night was making me hungry again, and it wasn’t even an hour since my last meal. I gulped down water to make the hunger go away, but it wouldn’t go away. My kids don’t listen to me these days, why would hunger? Well, after wondering what to eat next, I settled with a bowl of cornflakes without any milk. Maybe I’d keep munching on it as I worked I thought. It was gone before I could spell c-o-r-n-f-l-a-k-e-s. A couple of hours later, the tummy was grumbling again. Walnuts went in, followed by a bowl of papaya, and green tea, and by the time it was 5pm, I thought I would die of hunger. I was too embarrassed to log in and fill up the rest of the diet sheet.
Why was I indefinitely hungry? Was I possessed by the food monster? As I marched back into the kitchen, my eyes fell on the pressure cooker, and like Archimedes, I suddenly knew the answer to my question – Rice, eureka! I am so accustomed to rice that nothing else feels like lunch. I can eat rice in the morning and stay full until dinner time. Skipping rice was my nemesis. The brain never registered that I had had my meal.
Giving in to the temptation, I quietly open the lid and poured some steaming rice into my plate with a generous helping of tangy, spicy, rasam, a miserly dollop of ghee and some fried potato palya (vegetable) on the side. Heaven! One whiff of the food on my plate and half my hunger was already gone. As I mixed the rice and rasam, I felt the rice make gentle love to my fingers and then proceed to pleasure my mouth. As the rasam-rice touched my tongue, it almost felt orgasmic. I closed my eyes, yielding to the pleasure, letting the food satiate my hunger. (What? Literally guys!) Needless to add, I wasn’t hungry again until dinner and I could manage with a single phulka at night.
At this rate, however, I doubt I’ll be able to lose any weight. And if I manage to do that, I’ll be back with a ‘The journey from fat to fit’ post or else this might be the precursor to a post titled, ‘And this why I never managed to lose weight.’
So long, Ciao!
