I have a weighty issue… It’s my weight. It has been almost an exponential progression in the last few years. In college when almost all my friends were underweight I was the perfect weight for my height… Not a kilo more. Yet, I was referred to jokingly as ‘moti’. With a waist of 28″ the playful jibes didn’t matter to me… I knew I was tall enough to balance those ‘extra’ inches.
After college, happened a job in Gaming… In spite of it sounding exciting, it was actually a sedentary job that required endless hours in front of the PC with rarely a stretch of any muscles other than those in my fingers. Combined with a lack of exercise, my haphazard timings of meals played havoc with my body. Naturally, the waistline now measured 32″… That’s a four inch increase in 2 years.
My sedentary lifestyle continued with my later jobs. Food habits were equally bad… though there was no binging on unhealthy food. My body’s metabolism rate took a beating and since then it refuses to breakdown what little quantity of food I eat. That quantity has often been described as ‘chidiya ka khaana‘ (roughly translates to feeding portion of a sparrow)… But, it has not stopped my body from storing up all that as fat just in case it has to face a decade long famine.
Well, now I am on my 6th job that involves sitting on my bum all day and have completed roughly a decade of wheeling my office chair around a maximum of 180°… And NO… I am definitely not gonna tell you what my waist measures now! What really bothers me is that I have to lose over 30 kilos to be considered fit.
My fitness issue is complicated further by my tendency to spiral into depression for long periods of time… Sometimes spanning a year. These phases make me lethargic, more sluggish than I’d care to be. Add to that my general lazy demeanour and I have carved out for myself the perfect route to obesity. This becomes a vicious cycle… Every time I look in the mirror I find I hate what I see and that makes me sad. The only saving grace is, until now, depression hasn’t caused me to over-eat… But, it makes me sleep. Sleep a lot. And then there are hormone problems… That’s as tiresome as it gets!
Anyway, I have decided to take matters into my own hands… Be my own inspiration, my own motivator and crack the whip on my own bum! I may have found help coming from totally unexpected quarters… But, that’s another story… for another day.
So today I charted a diet plan for myself, nothing fancy, no flash, no miracles expected… A simple light diet that avoids heavy carbs like rice and potatoes and yet satisfies hunger. Now, motivating myself to exercise… That is an uphill task indeed. I am trying to find interesting alternatives to the gym which frankly, I abhor. Maybe Zumba! I haven’t figured out how yet but I know I have to sweat some of my weight off!
In the pursuit of that satisfying meal which is healthy and nutritious but does not insult my taste buds, I tried out something that came highly recommended by a health conscious friend (and by some magazines). It is this ‘supergrain’ quinoa. I tried it and it is easy to prepare and suits Indian cooking styles… So, I have replaced rice in my mostly South Indian menu with quinoa. I am liking it so far… But, the stuff is a little on the expensive side.
I made my first quinoa dish yesterday… Quinoa Pulao. The recipe is same as any simple pulao where the rice is substituted by quinoa.
© Surya Murali