How can one live without food? How can one live with healthy yet tasteless food? These questions have always been a never ending puzzle which never failed to perplex me! But I wasn’t going to give up!
Easy tweaks
“30 saal ke baad hi pata chalta hai ki khud ko paani puri pasand hai ki bhelpuri” (Only after thirty years of age, you actually understand whether you like panipuri or bhelpuri). These were words of my trainer Sameer Sharma. After my husband’s demise, my daughter and I moved in with my parents. At the time, my father was posted in Lucknow. Since my daughter was a toddler, I was mostly working from home at the time.
Sameer was of the opinion that you can never last long with the foods you don’t like. So, instead of an unrealistic diet, he preferred making a few tweaks like less oil, more fruits, more vegetables, less chapatis and rice, which were more sustainable. For him, exercise was an important part of dieting. However, he did not impose any particular exercise on me. I could do what I liked. So, sometimes, it was kickboxing, the other times it was running or jumping or yoga. In a span of 6 months, I lost a lot of kilos not just because I was exercising and eating right but also because I had resolved to stay happy. Whenever, I felt sad or upset, I preferred to go for a walk or a run instead of seeking solace in food.
Back to Work
After a while, I came back to Jaipur with my parents. Since my daughter had started going to school, it was time for me to join full time work. I was slimmer and fitter thanks to the workouts and diets. But all that changed once I joined the 9-5 grind. I was forever plonked on a chair and my exercise whittled down to an occasional walk. The kilos came back before I could even realize the problem.
Enter the intermittent
At the time, intermittent fasting had become the new talk of the town. Every one I met said that they had lost kilos of weight just by fasting every day. I decided to try it because the needle on the weighing machine was not showing any signs of relenting. I also enrolled for yoga which meant that I had to get up at 4 am for my yoga classes. The hour was all about surya namaskar and various other asanas. Needless to say, at the end of session, I felt as if I had been put through a washing machine with a never-ending wash cycle.
My trainer was a young girl named Khushboo. Every day, when the alarm rang at 4 am, my mind started creating all kinds of excuses which never existed. Though I am an early riser, getting up in the morning became a chore. There were days when I used to call Khushboo and tell her not to come because I wasn’t feeling well. Most of the times, she saw through my excuse and came despite my pleas. However, there were times when I pretended that I was really unwell (all those groans on the phone) and she gave me an off. On those days, I couldn’t sleep despite the off because I felt great at outwitting my trainer!
My diet was all about oats, eggs and dal- a medley of protein rich foods. I wasn’t allowed to eat the usual chapati, rice and vegetables. Once in two weeks, I was allowed a cheat day at lunch. After a month of struggle, when people started complimenting me on my weight loss, I actually started feeling good about exercising.
When I asked Khushboo about it she said, “It takes time for the body to understand that the exercise is a good experience. When you start losing weight, the body starts secreting dopamine, the hormone responsible for feeling good. It is at that time that you start enjoying the process. However, that does not happen as quickly as it happens when you consume something tasty or watch a good show because for most of us, exercise is not fun, it is hard work.’
Yes indeed. Hard work it was! Doing all those Surya Namaskars was more than hard work and I tried hard to enjoy the exercise.
Then, there was intermittent fasting. 8 hours of eating and 16 hours of fasting! One day, I heard Akshay Kumar talk about how he doesn’t have anything after sundown and I was inspired! I thought if he could do it, so could I. What I didn’t realize was that he was Akshay Kumar, with a bevy of chefs, dieticians and exercise gurus at his beck and call and I had one maid who was a different case altogether! Anyways, I decided to have my last meal (mostly eggs) at 6 pm and then my next meal at 10 am in the morning. Initially, I felt like raiding the fridge every night. The only thing that stopped me from committing that prime was the pain I used to experience while doing yoga!
Romance with water
During these days, I actually started liking water. Though people swear by hot water, I could not even phantom the idea of drinking hot water especially in the hot months of summer. So, I drank cool (not cold) water by the litre. At times, I even pretended that I was drinking a soft drink by pouring the water into a nice crystal glass and sipping it like one would sip a cold drink! I realized that made it even more delicious! I discovered that drinking more water actually aided my weight loss because on the days I drank more water, I would lose weight!
The Pandemic Looms
Life was going on well. I had managed to lose some kilos and I thought this time I would ace the race when the pandemic struck! I was again stranded on the island of ‘wanna lose weight’. In the absence of my maid, Swiggy and Zomato (they have a lot of healthy options), the only option was to don the apron and start cooking! The initial days of the pandemic were filled with recipes from the internet and home grown experiments. Yoga at 4 am in the morning became a thing of the past because I had to wash the dishes, clean the kitchen before I went to sleep in the night. I could hardly fast because everytime I cooked something, I had to taste it to check the salt. However, when something was well cooked, that tasting became sampling and eventually I had a bite or two of the dish.
Initially, my daughter was an enthusiastic assistant but afterwards, the great Indian kitchen became too much to handle. I still lost a lot of kilos because I had to clean, mop and cook.
The Present Day
I did manage to sustain the post pandemic weight loss but I now believe in eating everything strategically. One of my dieticians, Anshu Kapoor used to say, “You need to know what you like or dislike. Dieting should never be about eating your dislikes because you will never be able to happily sustain it.” So, like Buddha’s middle path, I have discovered the middle path in dieting. The age old ‘eat everything but in moderation’ principle. In my eight hour window, I eat healthy and tasty food which makes me feel full and happy. So far, the kilos have stayed away!
This article by Shailaza was published in Rashtradoot Newspaper’s Arbit Section on 27 September 2021.
My Fat Loss Journey 