Nari and the weight loss tamasha

The title of this post is borrowed from a recent book I saw at the store. It was titled 'Women and the weight loss tamasha' and I thought a minor adaptation of the title will put things right in context.

By the BMI method of classification, I am obese. I have been obese for more than a year now. 8 kg is what separates me from normalcy and these 8 kg seem like a huge ask. Weight gain and weight loss depend on multiple factors. My own personal experience tells me that the factors that help me lose weight are: exercise, anxiety and diet control.

My battle with weight is something that was least expected. As a kid I was mildly chubby and I grew to be tall and slim. Before the onset of adolescence few would have expected that I would grow in weight this rapidly. Come adolescence, things changed. It was during a time when I really didn't spend too much time playing outside home. Academics was the main focus. I slept, ate, studied and slept again. My photographs taken in this phase of life tell me that I was very ugly looking.

Things changed when I started off in IIT, I lost 12 kg in the first semester. That is 12 kg in 4 months, 12 kg in 120 days meaning an average loss of 100 grams a day. Imagine hacking off a small 100 gram piece of flesh from your body every day! The factors that contributed to such a drastic fall were anxiety (driven largely by homesickness), exercise (cycling around in crazily humid Chennai after living in the cool, dry climate of Bangalore for most of my life) and diet control (lets just say the mess food wasn't all that great).

I have never been able to replicate such a feat again. There was a brief while in 2008 when I had a bout of typhoid because of which I lost a few kilos in 3 weeks. But the 12 kg loss in 2000 still stands as my personal best.

Subsequent to the first semester, my weight started showing a familiar pattern - gradual decline in the months I was in college followed by sharp spikes during the vacation months when I was home. I realized that I had become one of the types whose weight is never constant or within a small window.

When I started work in 2004, conditions were perfect for steady weight gain - home food, zero anxiety at work, coffee vending machine, McDonald's in the Forum mall etc. I think I did start a morning jogging routine but that was scrapped shortly after I started mugging for CAT.

It was only in a short window - between the CAT written test and the day the interview calls were announced that I religiously went to the gym and brought by weight back from a hair's breadth close to 100 kg. Soon after that, preparation for interviews and the subsequent spartan routine at IIMA took precedence over plans of weight loss.

When I resumed work (now in Bombay) in 2008, I wasn't exactly overweight. Lots of eating out was balanced by work related pressure and the tough life in Bombay. I perhaps had mild ups and downs but on an average hovered around the slightly overweight category.

Since then I have never really considered exercise or a fitness regimen. On marriage day, I apparently didn't seem overweight. Phew!

Moving to Chennai I thought would help me start reducing weight but this time, there was no anxiety and certainly no diet control. Jogging and gym never really took off (my excuse being that I'm growing old and hence will power is in short supply)

One of my relatives lost 15 kg in 3 months thanks to advice from a dietitian. I know this is true. But I also know the amount of hard work that has gone into keeping up with the diet prescribed by the dietitian. Imagine drinking tomato juice for lunch and avoiding pappadam etc.

Today I was told that another relative of mine has started off on a diet prescribed by this dietitian. I also got details about how the dietitian charges her clients. It is Rs 300 per kg, payable in advance. So if you want a diet package for lets say 10 kg, you need to cough up Rs 3,000 for her to give you a neat diet with exact instructions. She also changes the diet plan every week and emphases that the plan is sculpted according the need of the particular person. This reduces the chance of someone borrowing the diet plan from an earlier client.

I might not take the drastic step of seeking a dietitian's advice. I know I do not have the discipline to follow a diet or the ability to suspend my tongue's voice. But yes, given that I will be 30 in a year and a few months more, I really need to put an end to this tamasha.

Line of credit and the milkman

I got back to Mumbai after weeks outside. Thankfully the house was in order except for a bit of dust around. There wasn't much to eat apart from almonds, walnuts and some old boxes of sweets. It is a bit of a struggle without having food handily available. I am now completely dependent on my social network; someone has to suggest meeting up, someone has to suggest that the meeting up happen over food etc.

When I started writing on this blog, I had two main objectives: a) getting used to writing and writing well so that I may someday use these skills to write a book or something worthwhile, b) to 'educate' the world through my ideas and observations. The second one was a bit of a stretch. But at times I do certainly feel that people out there really aren't very keen observers. There are some patterns of thought and reason which everyone resorts to.

A system of thought can be legacy; something that is passed down through generations and is a part of one's culture. But logic? Logic cannot be something that is passed down. Logic has absolute existence. The existence of logic is almost tautological. It simply cannot not-exist.

People have very skewed notions of what is logical. The human mind is to blame for this. For all the talk about human beings being intelligent, there is still a long way to go. We are no where close to being objective in our thoughts and analysis.

Being non-objective is necessary and important. If as a race, we weren't non-objective, we wouldn't have poetry, differing opinions, ideologies, etc. But it is important for people to be objective where necessary. I would say necessary is not the right word. Humans can survive without being objective at all; but being so makes life a touch easier. What do I mean by being objective?

Before delving into that, I want to get one thing out of the way. I hadn't paid the milkman for milk I bought in the month of January. The outstanding amount was some 520 Rupees. So last night I heard the bell ring at an unearthly hour: some 10:30 odd. It was him demanding his money. How did he know that I get scared in the night, easily, alone? The matter is now sorted; I paid him the money this morning.

When you are objective, your thoughts are uncoloured by feelings. You examine evidence for what it is and your logic is absolute, singular and not coloured by what your culture or upbringing has taught you. You maintain hypotheses to be hypotheses till the point there is credible and objective evidence.

There are so many instances in life where I see people rationalizing non-objectively. These people also claim that their rationalization is logical and objective. This is because their system of logic and reason in non-objective. Or rather the hypotheses on which their system of logic rests haven't been tested enough.

Another pet peeve of mine is what I want to term 'perceptual knowledge'. Simply put this is like saying "I know something; I cannot share it with you. You will have to realize it for yourself" (sounds familiar, doesn't it?) I think perceptual knowledge has some basic flaws. Knowledge by definition (my definition at least) cannot be perception based. Knowledge has to exist outside the mind for it to be knowledge. Perceptions are mere perceptions and there is no credible way to ascertain their truth. Or even better, the truth value of a perception is something that doesn't make sense.

The other major flaw is that perceptions by nature are products of the human mind. And the human mind is not objective. Putting it in another way, perceptions are mere chemical balances in the human nervous systems. This chemical balance needn't be driven by knowledge.