DIET

‘Look, first thing is you got to eat nutritious food…’ gazing at me he lamented wiping the run over milk from his chin to neck downwards after gulping it from the big earthen pot. Coal dark complexioned, hundred twenty kilogram weighed, and heavily built muscular bodied wrestler the owner of the nearby gym & a stable where I’d gone to help build my paper thin body.

Actually I was sick of my personality, it was my fault not others, how on earth somebody can ever get impressed with my forty three kilogram weighing five feet nine inches tall body? ‘the wrestler is right, if you don’t want to get flown away with a blow of wind do as he says’ my five kilogram heavier friend advised on seeking his “second opinion”. Even my mother decided to spend that extra to see her thin son becoming somewhat thick.

Two liters cow milk, directly taken from the stable itself, in the early morning instead of a cup of steaming tea with Parle biscuits. Then at seven thirty two hundred gram almonds soaked in cow milk last night with equal quantity of raisin. In the afternoon I was supposed to eat minimum of five rotis nicely smeared in cow ghee with home made butter & jaggery. In the afternoon two dozen ripend yellow banana with milk & sugar. Night half kilogram rice with one liter of lukewarm cow milk. Then I was supposed to sleep at eight, otherwise when I leave home that time to get back in well past midnight, in the night to get up four in the early morning, at which time my sweet dream would start otherwise. To digest the food I’ve eaten & to build muscle I was put directly under the wrestlers’ younger brother who was just five kilogram lighter than his big brother rest all the description matching with him. He’d put me to three hundred sit ups, two hundred pull ups & five miles running just for warm up sake. He had brighter plans so as to impress his big brother as how much his disciple has progressed & the trust he bestowed on him was not undue. As the big brother had caught him bellowing smoke with his thin friends behind that old temple one day & since then he was grossly upset with him. This was a nice opportunity for the younger brother to get into his good-books.

But, this was not going to happen! Wrestler brothers had chosen a totally wrong person in me. On second day of my exercise & excursion of five miles & diet had sent me to hospital. With my thighs badly swollen the precarious condition of back & inflated tummy as if balloon is filled with gas. As such my weight had increased to fifty three kilograms. I needed three days to get back to my normal weight & another three days to collect myself from the not so pleasant experience of gaining weight.

By the stroke of time the weight gaining experiment faded from my memory disc, I agent visited the nearby dietician. ‘Nobody takes note of me, see I’m so thin. Suggest me something so I might look little bit fleshy’. I narrated my state of mind on my state of physique. ‘The whole world is mad after shedding weight & bringing their bodies to shape, you are just nice as you are. Get back & enjoy eating whatever you fancy. Forget your weight!’ She almost ridiculed my purest wish of gaining weight.

‘They eat just as much they use it up, you know that?’ My wife was updating my knowledge on diet. She told me so many things that my views towards her GK totally changed; so far I was thinking myself better informed than her. Without having diabetes they have sugar free tea & coffee. Sweets strictly totally no no, no oil, no meat, no deep fries, no junk food, no spices as well. It was not easy to digest as an idea itself, I swear.

All of a sudden I found my wife eating cabbage, beet & radish to get filled stomach feeling. With whole fruits like oranges, grapes, watermelon not their juices even to get that extra benefit of fiber. Doing her daily exercise starting with three kilometer jogging to get her body more to shape. Daily checking up her intake of calories & weighing herself everyday just to cross check. And getting cautious of not taking any more calories than required. She surprisingly shunned her all time favorite dry-fruit ice cream too; forget about all those chocolates, pastries. She even started avoiding even uttering words called fats, calories, obesity etc. I was shocked at dining table that morning when I saw her taking her daily tea even without milk.

‘Do you know one thing’ she was looking at skies in her gym suit that morning when I just went up to terrace to see whether she was really exercising or just trying to fool me by giving me complex. She continued, ‘just imagine what a quantum of calories the sun god must be having daily, just seen how much he is emitting.


By

Vijay Yelmelwar