It all started with Facebook

I remember once as a child, I was once taken to a posh restaurant in Park Street, Kolkata. It was a special family outing and the food was too good to waste. So, I ate and ate and ate. So much that I soon vomited all over the velvet sofa and teakwood table. Of course all traces of the remaining food were quickly snatched away from under my nose.

As if that wasn’t enough embarrassment for my poor parents, I soon started crying.

“Don’t cry, don’t feel ashamed, it’s ok” my mother said with her last ounce of patience.

 “I am not crying because I am ashamed. I am crying because I want to eat more” I shouted.

That was me. A complete foodie then and now. I thought about food when I woke up and when I went to sleep and my dreams were also quite often about food. I was addicted to watching Masterchef Australia, reading gourmet recipes in colourful cookbooks and trying out exotic culinary experiments during the weekends.

Added to my love for food was my fear of exercise. And being a mother only helped pile on the excess kilos.

But I pretended I didn’t care. I couldn’t give up my favourite food for a few less kgs.  And wasn’t I super busy managing home and office and kid and everything else in between? I just needed to eat to keep up my energy.

And well exercise, there was never enough time for that. Swimming, cycling, yoga and the gym were all like enemy alien forces to me. And the covers of the latest bestseller book stared at me too invitingly in my few moments of leisure. Even if I managed to get some time to walk, my feet invariably carried me to the supermarket or the chicken roll shop. So the walk ended in adding more calories than it reduced.

And then one not so fine day, after coming back from a holiday, I sat trying to upload some pictures on Facebook. And then I stared at the picture.

Who was that staring back at me? The fat face, trying to hide the bulging curves behind my kid? Was that how people saw me?

As I tried to search for pictures that didn’t feature me too prominently in it, it finally dawned on me.

I was not being a woman of substance by just adding more weight to my already bloated body. I needed to do something and do something fast before my daughter came and asked me one day in her innocent voice “Why are you so fat, Mummy?.”

At this point in my life, I weighed 73 kg. And all who knew me knew how much I loved food.

But over the last one year, I managed to drop 22 kg. And the best thing is I dropped this weight without even having to resort to any drastic measures. I never exercised for more than 40 minutes, gave up no other food except Coca Cola.

And I am still a foodie and still love watching and trying out Masterchef recipes.

All I did was took advice from a trained nutritionist, began eating at smaller intervals, and started going to the gym for 4-5 days a week.

Nothing happened overnight. It took more than a year for me to drop my years of excess baggage.

There is less of me now definitely more to me. Only someone who has been through this journey can understand the joy of throwing out clothes in XL size and buying clothes in S size (clothes I didn’t even dare to look at earlier).

It’s not difficult to lose weight. If I can, anyone can. And here are my learnings from my journey:

1.It’s not a sprint, it is more like a marathon; instead of having sudden, quick  targets like lose 5 kgs in 2 months or joining some latest new diet like African Mango or Banana diet, it is better to lose weight naturally in a healthy way; though it will obviously take much more time.

2. it’s not a goal which one can achieve and forget about. It is a lifestyle change. I love the gym now and can prepare plenty of yummy salads and healthy yet tasty recipes. Bottom-line: it’s not a punishment; one has to enjoy the journey and make it one’s lifestyle.

3. it’s all in the mind: Despite enjoying the journey, there are days when one would feel like having a brownie or a chicken roll. What I have learnt is it is ok to indulge once in a while rather than obsessing about every kg.  Like all foodies, I believe food is a religion, not just a mathematical count of calories. You see, its all in the mind; once the mind understands the goal, the body automatically follows.

So for every other foodie who might be wondering whether they can still love food and lose weight, I would say:

Go ahead and try; love your food, take it slow and speak to your mind often and long. After all, one has nothing to lose but weight.