Let me start by saying that I am a 40+ guy—my age not IQ—just to be clear… and no, I’m not giving out my age because I’m looking for a slim-waisted girl with wheatish complexion and homely values. I’m telling you my age in order that you understand my plight. So, I’m 46 years old to be precise, it’s a wonderful age… well, almost! It’s an age when you can finally afford to buy designer clothes but don’t—because they won’t fit you. It’s an age when you can eat at fancy restaurants but don’t—it affects your health. And it’s an age where, when you go ‘drinking’ with your friends, your food bill is thrice your alcohol bill! It’s also an age when your BMR slows down—where BMR stands for Basal Metabolic Rate and not Body Market Rate, which by the way also falls down as you cross 40. I’ve inherited a lot from my father. Besides my sharp Sindhi business acumen, thick bushy eyebrows and heavy thighs, I’ve also inherited high blood pressure from my dad, that too at an early age. I first discovered I had high BP when I went to donate blood [yes, we Sindhis do occasionally donate—a very rare phenomenon indeed!] around 15 years ago. Three years ago, I also inherited the other second silent killer—Diabetes—but this time from my mum. How did I realise I had diabetes? Well, it was boredom. One day, I was sitting at home, bored, when I saw on the side table was lying my mum’s blood glucose testing kit. I decided to poke my finger and when I did, the readings were alarming! At that time, I weighed close to 94kg and had reconciled myself to that fact that this was it! This was my life and this was my body! Eat, drink and party! Or rather, eat, drink and party—as long as you exercise. And exercise I did—played squash twice a week, hit the gym twice a week and ran the Mumbai Half Marathon once a year. But I ate like a dog; actually, my dog ate less than I did. So, my weight remained more or less constant.
Visit to the path lab
But coming back to the poking story, the high scores on the testing kit increased my blood pressure. So that same week I underwent a ‘Complete Body Executive Health Checkup’ [the bigger the name of the test, the more expensive it is]. Here, I would like to share an important feedback to the owners of these pathological labs—please, please give us a disposable cutlery set + disposable plastic gloves along with the container to collect the samples you need. It will make our life much simpler and less disgusting.
Later, I went to my family doctor with the reports and he became teary eyed looking at them—no, not because the results were bad but because his name was not mentioned in the ‘Referred by Dr.’ column. He had just lost a hefty commission from the path lab.
Anyway, the results were very clear: I had two slow and silent killers inside my body [and one not so silent one on the outside—my wife]. I was finished! My well-meaning doc told me the only way to stop this was to lose weight and the best way to do so was to go to a ‘Dietitian’. Oh! How I cringed at the word. I had been to dieticians earlier on several occasions and I truly believed that they were sent on our planet by Satan just to torment us. They starve you, make you exercise and still find fault with you. And yes, they do make you lose weight right from day one—by emptying your wallet.
My new diet
Fortunately, I found a dietitian close to my house. Her first question to me was: do you eat non-veg? And when I replied in the affirmative, she made a face that made me feel like a voracious cannibal who had just eaten half of Mumbai. No wonder every dietitian I have met has been a vegetarian or worse, a vegan. After all, no sane non-veg eating individual would ever become a dietitian—we all love our food very much!
Non-veg diet notwithstanding, my dietitian promised me that I would lose around one kilo of weight per week if I followed the diet to the ‘T’ and exercised one hour daily. I was skeptical, but decided to give it my best shot. And guess what—it worked! I lost 14kg in around 14 weeks and overall lost 22kg! One thing that changed for me was that I finally began to enjoy exercising.
The new me
I am enjoying the new me because I’ve been getting a lot of compliments. Having moved from a size XXL to size M, waist size from 39 to 32, I can see my man-hood by just looking down [it’s not a pretty sight anyway]. Most of the tires around my waist too have disappeared. So have my man-boobs. I have discovered new bones in my body and best of all; the blood sugar level in my body is back to normal.
Sorry mum and dad—I rejected your inheritance!
This was first published in the May 2014 issue of Complete Wellbeing.
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