On the road to obesity
Author :
Balaji Srinivasan
Blog :Misadventure
Date: 2/23/2012 6:45:00 AM
I stepped on the weighing machine nonchalantly. Not that I wanted to check my weight but it was one of those impulsive acts that you do only because you could do. The weighing machine hesitated for a moment like a doctor about give bad news to a patient. Sure enough, it gave me bad news. The number on the machine hit me like a sack of bricks. It read 179 pounds(81.4kg). I was taken aback, not so much because I had gained so much weight as the fact that it had happened so quickly. I weighed 163 pounds only seven weeks ago. I'd have thought it humanly impossible to gain 16 pounds in seven weeks.
Interestingly, there was no indication of prosperity in my anatomy. I fit comfortably into my light blue jean(unwashed for over a year. I like my jean dirty but we'll save that story for another day) that's been with me for four years. My t-shirt size is small. No perceptible growth in midriff. No MRF Tyre around my waist. I would have said it could be due to my rippling biceps if it didn't remind me of rotten grapes. There was only one way this was possible: this machine was a bloody liar.
I don't believe in the saying 'what you see is what you want', mainly because my manager's cabin is not far my place and I see him often, but there is some truth in that. In the next two days I saw as many as four weighing machines in various places but my solitary moment with a machine came only on the third day. I got on it gingerly and tightly closed my eyes as if that was going to help. I opened one eye and peered at the display with trepidation. And this machine turned out to be a bloody liar too.
I swallowed my pride and set out to find what could have caused this abrupt boom. I quickly put under the scanner of my mental eye every so-called high-calorie food that made its way to my tummy recently. Twelve scoops of delicious strawberry ice-cream I had greedily devoured in a buffet lunch sprang to my mind first. I shrugged it off at once. Ice-cream could never do me harm. I grew up on a healthy diet of ice-cream. For the records, between my friends, I hold the record for maximum number of scoops at one go at 23 - I was compelled to stop at that - and I didn't so much as catch a cold that time. Strike off ice-cream.
The next usual suspect was chocolate. But chocolate couldn't have stabbed me on the back because I haven't had much lately. Three boxes of assorted European chocolates (you've got to love your flatmates who don't take chocolates. Bless their diet.), a bagful of tiny, round Lindt Lindor and about a dozen assorted bar chocolates are all I bit into this past week. That's not much, is it? I've had way more than that. Besides, I love chocolates way too much to blame them. My team mates in previous projects would vouch for the extra-ordinary speed at which chocolates disappear into my mouth. If chocolate-eating was an event in Olympics, India could have been assured of a gold.
Next comes sweets. When I mentioned 12 scoops of ice-cream, I should have mentioned that I had half of them with gulab jamuns. :P That could have hardly contributed to my weight. I'll tell you why: I'm an addicted coffee drinker (or rather was until I moved to Toronto) who drinks at least 8 cups of coffee everyday and I add at least two spoons of sugar. So a quick trip to my calculator tells me that I used to have at least 16 spoons of sugar daily. If sugar heavily contributed to my weight, I'd have a tummy the size of Spain now. If that couldn't wreak havoc, what's half a dozen gulab jamun?
I know for a fact that these won't not conspire against me. For a brief period, I went without having sweets, ice-cream and chocolates and took to eating healthy(yuck!) food. I gained so much weight in that time and I had to quit that silly diet and resort to treating myself to a lavish amount of chocolates and ice-cream to get back in shape. Sure weekend cricket and occasional tennis helped too, but I will give a lion's share of credit to chocolates and ice-cream.
Now I am at my wit's end. It could be the mayonnaise sauce but I'd rather starve to death that eat a sandwich without mayonnaise. Perhaps Sambhar rice laced with ghee doesn't help, but hey, my unconventional ideas notwithstanding, I'm an Iyer and ghee is as much a part of my identity as curd rice is. Pizza, burger and the lure of Coke, which for some mysterious reasons always on discount sale, is too strong to resist. I am on the road to (apparently invisible) obesity and if I don't do anything soon I'd be far down that road. I feel so desolated. I should treat myself to chocolate Haagen-Dazs to cheer me up.
P.S: On second thoughts, I should have written a post on healthy foods I have. I could have summed up in just one word: nothing.