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No quick fixes
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There are so many ways to knock off those embarrassing pounds. But do they really work?
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PHOTO: ANU PUSHKARNA
EAT HEALTHY Fad diets can play havoc with one's immune system
If only I had fragile wrists, delicate shoulders and a sylph-like waist! That was the thought on my mind when a cabbie recently ignored me, assuming that my powerful arms could competently lift the heavy bags out of the car boot. That embarrassing minute, I decided to try my best to shed some of the highly superfluous lard. My resolve was strengthened by the fact that it's so "in" to be pathologically thin. Buying jeans, like I'm often forced to, in the politely termed unisex, a.k.a men's section, is an embarrassing admission of unfeminine dimensions!
But, I daresay I'm not alone — an alarming number of people want to lose weight and the great majority don't want to sweat it out. Like me. I feel exhausted just looking at others exercising. And so I optimistically joined the swelling ranks of the "No thank you, I'm on a diet" brigade.
Choices aplenty
Patience not being one of my virtues, it was a ridiculously easy choice between fad diets that promised to knock off 11 pounds in a single week, while others modestly assured the same over several soul-tormenting weeks of near starvation.
Or so I smugly thought when I imprudently opted for a no-carb diet — watermelons on day one, veggies on the second, and both on the third. And so on. But whoever got to the "so on"? Day one I felt very sad, and I already missed all my favourite foods. Day two was very bad, and I was hungry and irritable. Day three, I was dead tired and began hallucinating about "real food". Day four, I dumped the diet. Only to recklessly jump onto another highly recommended quickie — the soup and salad diet. The pictures accompanying the text certainly looked appetising — gleaming soup tureens and hand-tossed salad with real cheese.
To cut a long story short, it was a disaster — the soup was too watery, I was constantly ravenous and the salads made me sympathise deeply with rabbits. Great big dollops of mayonnaise or a generous helping of grated cheese would've helped, but mayo and cheese, like everything nice and tasty, was plain fat. Needless to say, my resolve to keep up with dieting was at its lowest ebb... until I read this tid-bit about the actress who grew attractively thin just by sipping endless glasses of fruit-juice (and nothing but) for a few days. But just as I was meditatively sipping my fourth orange juice du jour, the family wickedly laughed me out of it. Who knows, maybe it would've worked...
But I had my revenge on the pack of laughing hyenas, when I discovered the secret of the Greek Gods — olive oil! Just drizzle olive oil on the food, or so I surmised, and we'll put the models out of business. But alas, olives have a distinct smell, which isn't always masked by powerful Indian spices.
The family stoically braved the olive oiled sambar and silently wept over "funny smelling" vegetables; but they drew a line when it murdered dosa as they knew it. That, as you probably rightly guessed, put paid to my dream diets.
So, where did I go wrong? Apparently, as I learned later, I was foolish to opt for quick fixes. It probably does work, in the short run, but the body soon believes there is a famine, slows down metabolism and starts storing fat, while we are deluding ourselves that we're losing weight!) If that wasn't ironical enough, fad diets supposedly stress both the physical and mental health of the individual (See? It was the dieting that unhinged me!).
Scientists are also studying the negative effects of crash diets on the immune system. Low blood sugar levels are typically known to make one feel real sad, driving one to seek sugary solace from a packet of choco-chip cookies.
The real downside, however, is the inability to keep the lost weight at bay. It quickly piles back, this time as plain fat choosing the most embarrassing spots, tempting one to start all over again. No wonder, it's rightly called "yo-yo dieting."
APARNA KARTHIKEYAN
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