Dieting and all that

So I have a love relationship with food. I enjoy food, I love trying new things, I love my little visits to restaurants... particularly with my friends...so its all a part of my lifestyle now...

the side effect of that is that I am now a whopping 81 kgs! Now the dream that I had that I would be a sexy 40 year old slowly vanished away into thin air... till the inevitable happened one day... I was embarrassed to get out of my house looking the way I did...... my skirt would not hold up and constantly I was afraid that I was looking like an ogre... and that tipped the scales for me...something snapped inside me... I immediately got onto a diet programme, paid money, invested in exercise clothes etc... the whole works.... lets call it the WAH TAJ moment!

now I have experience going on a diet like this... about 8-9 years back I went on a very strict diet... and a very healthy one at that ... and lost 17 kgs in a year...can you imagine!!! all I would do was to go to office, eat my diet food (which was a lot btw but the right kind of lot) and then exercise... somedays I would exercise morn and evening... and I loved it!! I was fitter, more confident and more importantly I saw myself differently.. finally I had become the size that I always dreamt of in life... and I could wear what I wanted.. I could tuck in my shirts, wear lovely sarees, wear dresses etc... and nobody would have a wrong word to say... I was complimented by everyone I met... and those who didn't I knew were complimenting me inside their heads.. .in short I felt I had arrived in the being the best that you can be...

then over a period of time I lost the time.. I went away for 6 months... I made new friends.. had to eat out a lot.. while travelling I could not exercise at all.... and then I started seeing how friends started behaving with me... everywhere I went they would peer into my plate to see what I was eating... and commenting on the same...oh you eat only so much? and then they would stuff oily food and sweet things on my face and say "eat!"...as if they are putin and I am one of the Russian prisoners... and if I refuse they would make an unpleasant eye roll or worse, ask me to justify it... this used to happen more frequently my old buddies... who have seen me in my eating full days... they probably could not fathom how I have become this control monster.....not controlling them but controlling myself.... and then they would all comment about how I have become a joke cos of my dieting... and that I am no fun to be with now since I don't eat... and when I ask so "am I all about eating"..they would be like no, but eating was a large part of it"....while you might say that I could have just ignored all of this.. at some level you feel compelled to loosen up... these are your friends.. and their ffeedback to you really matters... and if they say that you want to make sure that you don't appear too stiffy... so next time you indulge them and have a cup cake along with them... and you remember the good times you had... I remember at one point, I had ice cream after 3 years! and I could not even recognize what it was cos I had not had that for such a long time... and over a period of the next8 years I put on the 17 kgs I lost...

that is until the Wah Taj moment..... now I am back on a very strict and regimented diet..... and I do have a lot more social engagements than before... one is, I honestly love going out.. and I also invest more time in socializing now... and I love it... but what I discovered was that dieting and socializing is a potent mix... you cant mix both.... so last night I had a small altercation where a friend ordered prawns, pork etc.. and was surprised when I didn't eat it...and commented "now all this will go waste!"... and I blew up... I was like I am not a trash can that you stuff food into.. you order if you want to but dont expect me to finish off the plate for you... and then we finally agreed not to order like before...

but that brought to the fore how uncooperative society is... its almost like everybody wants you to fail.... they derive some pleasure in making sure you fail for that one second when you take that bite out of ice cream or out of the pastry.... and then they go back to their lives knowing nobody has done better than them.... mind you these are the people who will immediately point out the tyres in your stomach when you are fat.. and also gleefully admit... ah there is someone who is worse than me..

so this is me giving notice to all in my life... I need to get on with the programme of losing weight... 15 kgs in total..a little support will go a long way... I want you in my life... but not with food accompanying you all the time... so please desist from making our relationship about food.... if it is then you need a new friend....I need to take care of myself and feel good about myself.. and you need to know how important it is for me to do this... so please be considerate ...







 

Law School Days

One of the most endearing qualities about law school is the ability to make friends of anyone...what do you get when you put 17 year olds in an isolated building with miles of nothingness around you? you bond with each other and become life long friends...ofcourse we didn't know it then... that we were all a part of a large cosmic event in our lives ....

anyways one of the most endearing stories from my law school days is that of my hostel life....and that of my exams .... We had a system where you could do "repeats" if you didn't clear the exams first time round... and in my first trimester of first year I was saddled with a repeat in my Torts class...I had had a run-in with my professor as a result of which I was flunked by him... yes yes, in life you have to suck up to people... but that still meant I was distraught over getting a repeat... but I was not alone in this... My friends J (lets call her that) also had a repeat... and was equally distraught...she and I cried over the phone for hours... saying how disappointed we were in ourselves....and how we could not let our parents down...and ourselves down...in between tears we decided to dedicate ourselves to bettering ourselves in school and studying hard... and to motivate ourselves we said we should choose a role model.... someone like our friends Toto... she has fun and is good at studies... we would try to emulate her going forward... she would be our role model and guide...

with most repeaters, you are required to undertake that exam about a week before the trimester starts... and J and I landed up in our hostel room... a dark dingy room where al the girls had left behind their belongings... we had beds to sleep but not entirely comfortable...and to top it all we had no electricity... so we had to study under candle light (and not necessarily of the Lincoln way)... J and I landed up in our hostel room despondent that we had brought this fate on us... and thinking next trimester onwards we would be better off like our role model Toto...

And then guess who turns up next morning in our dorm??? Toto... and she had got not one but 2 repeats... unlike us who got only one repeat...so there it was our role model who we had held in such high esteem and pedestal was now a repeater like us!!!

3 of us laboured  through the electricity free nights and did clear our exams... and it was one of thebest friendships we developed...