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Struggles of the airborne
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MetroPlus hunts for tips on how lightweights can stay anchored safely to the ground
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Both categories go for workouts, those who want to gain weight and those who want to lose weight.
THERE'S BIG money in being fat. For some people anyway. Renee Zellweger, for instance, is allegedly being paid $225,000 for every kilo she puts on for the sequel of Bridget Jones Diary. She'd already put on 20 pounds to balloon from a svelte Texan actor to a plump, middle-aged Brit in the first part of the movie. Twenty pounds — that's a lot of Happy Meals, but, "it's really just math," she says: "I've been eating lots of really fattening food. I read that I'd been eating doughnuts, but they're not really my thing." Instead, the first of a four-course breakfast was four slices of toast and cream cheese. And that's just the first part of the first meal of every calorie-loaded day.
From the outside, being thin seems like a one-way ticket to foodie haven. All the cheeseburgers and kaju burfi's your tummy could dream of... no waking up early after a scrumptious dinner to work out and dissolve the calories... no pointed jokes just when you've begun tucking into a lavish meal... But being thin, we discovered, is apparently just as hard as being fat. There are the same rigmaroles of wonder cures, magic potions and "in-just-one-month..." promises. And worse, no sympathisers.
Few takers
Looking at Bangalore's gyms and health centres, it looks like Twiggies are few and far between, and even if they do exist they're not going overboard to chub up. Trainers and experts had to really scratch their heads to locate those who came by wanting to gain weight. "We have some 130 people coming in everyday of which only about five to eight want to gain weight," says Khasherdene Tsogdorj, a trainer at Affinity Gym in Sadashivnagar. "We advise them to come on alternate days and work out between 40 minutes to an hour. Overweight people work out much more... between one-and-a-half to two hours and come in every day. Certain exercises like cardio-vascular and stretching are the same in both groups, but overweight people have more repeats." The gym tries to get underweight people to build up stamina, she says, making them do light workouts for one to two weeks before beginning basic workouts.
Dr. Nanda Hegde, Ayush Therapeutic Centre: `A holistic approach is needed to gain weight.'
The stats for Figurine Fitness gym show that out of between 400-500 people coming in every month, only about 35 want to gain weight. Trainer Santhosh Kumar says: "There's no single way to gain weight. We need to first find out their case history by observing for one-and-a-half to two months to find out what's causing this. They might need a little protein supplement or some cardio-vascular to balance endocrine levels; it's basically just trial-and-error methods."
Most thin people are happy being that way, he says, adding that it's actually harder to get people to put on weight than to lose it. Most people who come asking to put on weight have a high basal metabolic rate (burning up calories quickly) and the body doesn't assimilate the food they eat.
How could gaining weight be hard? Binge on ice cream and chocolate truffles and happily watch the weighing machine needle swing right. But fitness trainers would blanch. Anjali from The Zone says: "You can never just indiscriminately say yes to food. This won't help in the long run." And so the small percentage of girls (the guys make a larger percentage, though both are low) who want to gain weight with her, talk to the nutritionist who works in conjunction with their training plan to monitor eating habits.
But whether it's girls or guys wanting to gain weight, their numbers are minimal. Trainers pause, think, and then smile before declaring low percentages who want to gain weight. The Zone: "a very low percentage." Talwalkar's, Ulsoor: "Less than 100 out of an 800 total." Aquazone at The Park: "None at all."
Anjali Sareen, trainer, The Zone: `It's not just about stuffing your face.'
At VLCC, the 20 per cent of their clientele wanting to gain weight are mostly girls; "More than half of this 20 per cent are girls who are about to get married," says Anita Faria, zonal sales head. Putting on weight is generally just part of the requirement, she explains. The girls usually want a complete package: acquiring some curves, getting toned, fixing damaged hair, and nails... the works. And so to put on the flab, VLCC employs doctors, psychiatrists, nutritionists, and trainers to devote their skills to the Twiggy in question.
Ayurveda has its own solutions. Vishi Bansal of the Ayush Ayurvedic Science Centre explains that body weight is one of the characteristics of body type and low weight is a characteristic of vata prakriti. "This happens irrespective of how much or how little food you eat," she says. At the therapy centre, Nanda Hegde recommends a diet to increase the carbohydrate levels, and frequency of meals. "Just eat every time you're hungry," she says. Full body massages with medicated oils using herbs with nourishing properties are given to bring down the vata and to relax patients, who are usually hyperactive. Medicines with jaggery, ghee, and herbs regulate the digestion.
Magic potions
That might sound like a lethal concoction, but it gives the usual get-fat-potion (bananas whipped in creamy milk) a run for its money. And it may be more exciting than the other promise of fat: the previous day's glutinous rice. Surely more healthy than deep fried double burgers.
More bitter are the comments carelessly thrown around. "People don't understand that it doesn't matter whether you're fat or thin, you still feel bad if there are comments made about your weight," says Shaloo Singh. "They would apologise to a fat person while commenting on their weight, but never realise that a thin person could also be hurt by such comments." She's been through her fair share of banana shake remedies, including some she refuses to mention, generally made by people whose opinion was never asked for in the first place. She's about five kilos under the average weight for her height and says she began trying valiantly to gain the kilos after people convinced her she was thin. "It gets on your mind when people keep talking about your weight," she says, but now at the gym, she's realised that being fit is more important than societal notions about who's the right weight.
Clearly, every human being has a "comfortable" weight, which is not the same as his or her recommended weight. Until we all accept this, not just for ourselves, but for everybody else as well, a few of us will be forced into special programmes, not because we wish to achieve something positive, out of choice, but as a reaction to unrelenting (and unthinking) social pressure. So shouldn't you throw all those dry fruit laddoos and ghee-soaked dosas out of the window and leave the mind and body in peace!
H.G.
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