its about shape not size.....really???

Life is so unfair! You are happily skipping your way through it when one fine day, suddenly you notice yourself looking a little ‘healthy’!!! Us Indians know of course that ‘healthy’ when used to describe a person is really not the positive term you think it is. It is entirely negative!!! It is in fact the polite way for all the auntyjis to tell you that you are faaaat!!!Or else they will say ‘ab achhi lag rahi ho!!!’…..ohh boy that’s a killer for sure!!! It means you have put on at least ten kilos and need to take drastic measures like concealing yourself in the attic for the rest of your life!

It’s unfair and it has a nasty sense of humor too! It inflicts this curse on women desperately trying to hang on to their thirties…..their body suddenly starts to play mind games with them. First the weight creeps up like a stealthy stalker…you notice it when it first makes its appearance in your photos. Wait!! is that the beginning of a double chin??? No wayyyy!!!!Next the jeans become way too snug but no come on it doesn’t mean we are getting fat….the fit wasn’t too great anyway you think and are so happy when Levis says ‘it all about shape not size’!! Hats off to the creator of that one line, that guy knows more about women than they know about themselves. What a rip off! So we are clinging to straws but only just!

Still all is not lost. You haven’t ever had a problem losing extra weight so you put on a smug smile and cut your meals. You wait for the kilos to shed. And you wait some more……. All of a sudden the same diet that worked wonders for you refuses to come out of its hibernation. You add a couple of more exercises to your routine, play your gut out at badminton, pay up the membership fees at at least two gyms…you jog…you run…you wheeze and yet the weighing scale grins triumphant. Not an ounce is lost.

If that isn’t enough the only topic at dinners is weight loss and whether so and so is looking bottom heavy or stick thin. For heavens sake is it necessary to discuss things like this while you are reaching for a plate? Its little solace of course that the thin ones get flack too. They are alternatively too thin, looking haggard and have lost their glow. Fat lot of good the darned glow is doing me I say!! Aah it’s a cruel world out there….every morsel sticks in your throat as your inbuilt calorie meter ticks and whirs!!! Add to the fact that your buddy and gym partner is giving you a glare which would melt the arctic ice, as you reach for that piece of cake. So you try munching on carrot sticks that taste like sawdust instead and look on enviously at the lucky devils with magical metabolism which lets them eat what they will. I mean how unfair is it that there are women out there who eat like a horse, haven’t heard of exercise and are slim sylph-like??

You swing between I-don’t-care-I-love-my-shape to….. please-somebody-stop-me!! You collect all the diets possible…..the GM, the Atkins, the cabbage soup, the juice diet….you name it and you have it. You gulp down soups by the buckets, eat every completely tasteless health food on this earth, try to live on water and fresh air but to what end? You end up a crabby, ill-tempered version of your former self! You wage a losing battle against your appetite which seems determined to best you. And you are left wondering why is it that we have made massive leaps on all fronts, progressed technologically, invented gadgets which have made our lives better……yet there is nothing to help us get back in shape. And for all of you who want to pipe up at this point to mention the miracle drinks, shakes, sauna belts…..get a life people!. Is it too much to ask for better tasting food that doesn’t pile on the pounds. Imagine a negative calorie cheeseburger for example……it burns your calories while you eat it!!!Or a dieter’s chocolate fudge? Somebody just tell me why oh why can’t health food taste like chocolate cake??