Healthy, wealthy & wise - I

After constantly remaining at 78 kg for more than 4 years, I joined MBA course where I crossed 90 kg for the first time in my life. My friends were worried and showed that often. I was rechristened – Ball. This was the best my friends could do to show their concern.

There is always a scapegoat that you find for the things that you don’t want to take credit (discredit) of. For my obesity, my scapegoat was my inheritance. I always blamed the inflated state of my physique to the fatter side my family. I also thought that God was unfair to me; that when I exercised (which was minimal by the way!), the effects were slow to show on my body, however, when I ate, the result was overly evident.

There is some reality in the above statements and my blames were not altogether incorrect or unreasonable. I WAS born in a “healthy” family and continued the legacy. However, now that the legacy has gone just a few extra steps ahead, I think I need to “deal” with it. When your parents weigh less than you do, there is a valid reason to feel insecure. Same is the case here. This was aptly shared by my friends during my convocation ceremony when my parents had come and looked thinner than me. What pain that was: felt great for my parents; felt horrible inside.

I am a regular visitor of the book-stores. I often saw books on health, but never paid any heed to that section. In fact, I felt there was no customer base for those kinds of books. Despite my extra kilos, I never gave second thoughts to diet or exercise. When I was in the 76-80 kg bracket, things were just fine. There was natural exercise in form of dancing, and occasional Yoga. Walking was also pretty regular. In short, there was easily-available time and the activities of interest included physical movement in abundance.

Went to the b-school, and BANG! There was no time. I was royally screwed in every walk of life: marks, grades and health. No physical activity. More time was spent in front of the laptop than sleeping, eating, exercise or chit-chat… combined. Couch-potato, which was a theory till then, became a reality. Restaurant were frequented often which was combined with a couple of mugs of beer. Beer is married to high caloried starters; the effect of which was an outstanding growth in the dimension of the waist and the numbers in kilos. This was accompanied by incessant visits to Mr. Bishu Da between 200 and 300 hours to devour the delicious aloo-cheese-anda parath, or cheese-fried-maggi, or double-anda-bread-bhurji, or (which was lowest on calorie meter) aloo-anda-paratha. All these were served with generous amount of butter of course.

So when I finally weighed myself and the needle crossed 90 (it was less than 95 kg!), I started thinking a little. Unfortunately, there is massive distance to cover between thinking and practicing. The thought-process went on for pretty long. Luckily for me, KanyaKumari happened. 15 days of disciplined life, combined with 150 minutes of yoga, shram-sanskar (voluntary work, which wasn’t voluntary though) and absence of anything remotely junk helped me reduce my fears to a great degree and weight to a smaller one. This was followed by irregular practice of yoga.

After coming to Mumbai, few new things happened that checked sudden shooting up of the weight. There were couple of kilo meters to walk daily to catch the bus, at a fairly fast pace; the wallet was usually light, which meant visiting the restaurants a little lesser; and fairly balanced lunch and dinner. This was sufficient to keep the weight constant at 90+ (95-), but not to keep one healthy (reduce weight).

I started thinking again. It had to be an out-of-the-box idea.

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