Don't tempt me, Please!

(Photo from cartoon stock - Just to express how I feel!)

Not being able to buy a pair of jeans in my size (read here) and a bad stomach infection gave me the motivation to join an exercise class.

Now I am not a person built for gyms. I don’t find any pleasure running on the treadmill, staring outside the window and looking at passing traffic.

I also don’t find much pleasure in looking at brawny gym instructors bursting out of their tee shirts.

There isn’t much pleasure if you may please in picking up weights and making funny faces at yourself in the gym mirror.

While I was flirting with the idea of how I could lose weight, I ended up joining a few gyms, yoga classes’ et al. None of which lasted long enough.

Last week the weighing machine gave me the jitters. I now know how people who fret about their weight feel. It’s not just about the fat; it’s so much more –

* All the clothes I have in my wardrobe that I will not fit into anymore.

* The numerous others I will see hanging on pretty shelves and I won’t be able to pick up.

* The way chocolate mousse will scream the letters FAT in big, bold letters each time I will look at it and drool.

* The way I will feel each time Kareena Kapoor will show up in a movie or a magazine with her bloody size zero figure.

Shocked and shaken, I have now enrolled myself in a group exercise class.

My legs and arms haven’t stopped aching since the past three days. But there are some perks –

* The class is full of 18 year olds with so much energy. I feel old but I also feel the need to be young.

* The gym has awesome showers (does that matter, yes!!!) There are even hair dryers in the showers, fancy that!

* Just below the gym is Chocolate Room with all those awesome chocolates and Bikaner wala with piping hot jalebis, what better test for my will power can I ask for?

I am two classes old and I already feel thinner (at least in my mind)

I pray for motivation and strength to get through this.

I pray to all the cup cakes and chocolate mousses in the world, don’t tempt me. Please.

Things that fit and things that dont!

Like every other person I know including the anorexic variety I too cannot sustain a ten minute conversation without talking about my or the other persons weight.
The conversation varies –

“How thin/fat (the expression of surprise is the same of course!) This top makes you look!”
“We shouldn’t eat this, look at the amount of cheese”
“I am going to start exercising tomorrow”
“OK, last time and then I’m on a diet”
“Look at her, how she can eat so much and be so thin!”
“I just haven’t found the right exercise for me”

Despite the same drab conversations day in and day out I have never really fretted about my weight. I just fantasize about how I used to look three years ago. I also earn enough to keep changing my wardrobe every six months. So I adapt.

Or so I thought.

Two years ago on New Years Eve in an expensive satin plunging neckline number I was congratulated on being pregnant. I thought empire necklines were for us, the ones who suddenly, out of the blue developed things called love handles.
Things that the boyfriend called something to hold and the friend called the onset of an era that has no return.
I didn’t know how to react to the drunk thirty something slob on calling me pregnant. I swore never to wear that dress again. Or anything that spelled empire line.

I was wrong of course, half of the clothes in my wardrobe are now empire line. The things called love handles have only increased and well, weren’t empire lines invented for fat pregnant women?

I was adapting. Changing and accepting till a couple of days back when I went to buy jeans.

Have I ever mentioned how difficult it is for Indian women to find a pair of jeans?
Do the jeans makers realize that Indian women are like amoeba? They change shape depending on age, clothes, time of the day and region (ever wondered why the north easterners are so bloody thin and us punjus are well…. Whatever!!)

So I browse through 15 shops on hill road and there is NOTHING in any one of those 15 stores that can fit a normal Indian woman.
The ones that are thin till the waist and then God just moved on to the next one and forgot to finish the remaining part.
What do these ones do???

I don’t know how to adapt anymore! People have started shying and calling me,-
‘Healthy and happy’ and started saying, “just don’t put on anymore weight, you’re perfect”.

I can’t change when the stores are flooded with skinny jeans meant for non existent anorexic women or very fat aunties who don’t have mirrors in their homes.

I can’t accept that I have crossed the thin line between thin and healthy. The very thin line that defines our daily lives, whether the day will be happy or sad, whether we will feel good or crappy.

Disappointed I sit in a rickshaw and go to linking road.
This street loves me. This street has shoe shops.
Shoes are loyal. They love me. They never make me feel crappy about eating that chocolate pastry.
They don’t want me to change, accept and adapt.
Shoes just fit.
Shoes let me indulge.
Shoes are my best friends; they are always there to tell me that despite what happens to my waist size, they will never change size.

And suddenly everything just seems better.

My experience with the GM diet

I need to fit into a dress next week.... i need to look thin ... everyday, i sleep with an alarm for 6.15 am and never end up waking and going for a walk.. and throughout the day i feel horrid about it...
So heres my plan for the next one and a half week .... I will get up at 7.30 (my usual time) and exercise a bit... evenings will be reserved for a walk ... (15 rounds of the building ...)
Food.... i feel hungry all day .... so i have decided to get on the GM diet ... at least i get to eat.
Day 1 is fruits - I dont usually eat breakfast so im surviving till now... had an orange at 11 am ... im in office and its lunch time the wonerful aromas of everyones food are all around me .... I am going to eat musk melon and water melon .. (they say you loose more weight if u eat melons on the first day) ...
I hope I can survive 7 days of not eating junk.

Day 2 - veges : had a splitting headache last evening... i have never been on a diet and thought i should give up... so i ate a mango watched a nice film - Americano ... they have shown spain in a beautiful way... i kind of related to that movie (with my ever wandering and searching soul)... i slept early... and like a baby ... and i woke up feeling awesome !!! very surprising since i was feeling like crap last evening, had a boiled potato for breakfast and believe me i have never enjoyed it that much ... have three boxes full of boiled veges for the day ... so far im feelnig great ... reminds me of that song ... i feel good .. la la la la la ..... :)