Nearly 6 weeks into my war_against_fat journey for good health, for those to-die-for abs and overall boost in energy. MY GOD! I am tired. I don’t know how so many of you have been doing it for so long and still have positive results and can stay super motivated.

Right now, (mentally) I am sinking into a pile of spicy pasta with a gooey chocolate layer at the bottom. But on the outside, I’m still as cheerful as can be. Every morning is a new battle in this ongoing war.

This war_against_fat is overdue since almost 12 years, or basically when my family began pointing out to me at the age of 15 that I am ‘becoming healthy’. It is the most polite way of saying ‘you are getting fat, if you don’t do something about it now, it is going to screw you over later’. Honestly, I wish they had used those harsher words more often and sat down and explained to me the consequences of being fat. Instead, this is what they did: 

- Restrict my food intake randomly and then feed me unnecessarily during the holiday season; calling it a once-in-a-while treat. Let me tell you this: I am Indian. We have at least 40 holidays of this sort in a year; not to mention we visit almost all extended family once a year as well. So these special occasions literally took place every 10 days!

- We all lived in denial about ME being on a diet. Because, you know, we don’t people to know we are only human and imperfect. At one point, I just began telling people I am not hungry but never ever admitted to anyone that I am on a healthy food lifestyle. I would carry my diet food in the car and eat 10 minutes before we reached our destination. That is how I was trained to never reveal that I am dieting. The word diet has a negative setback in the minds of people and for some reason no one is willing to help the other person.

- Boundaries. If I ever told a friend’s parents or some family member outside of the four walls of my house that I am trying to lose weight – they would NEVER, absolutely never respect that. In my opinion 2 things happened simultaneously to have this disrespect: the foremost being ‘you only come here sometimes – this fried pakoda won’t set you back’ and the second more devilish thought ‘omg, she will get fit and my daughter / son / xyz is not; I can’t let this happen – what if she turns out prettier than my child?’ I am serious. This is the thinking and mentality of pretty much everyone.

- Reasoning. My parents, family and well-wishers always told me that I must be slim and trim so that someone handsome and rich will want to marry me. This in return only angered me into over eating and sneaky eating after hours. Half the time I was not even hungry or in no need for those 1000 calorie midnight snacks. But the horrible reasoning, the lack of common sense in dieting really pissed me off. Sadly, we did not have that many online resources or the knowledge to do a quick google search and educate each other on why we are losing weight.

- Pretending things are alright: I cannot stress on this. I had to alter my life, my schedule to not let people know that I am trying to get healthy. I would eat my healthy snacks in the train on my way to school, or hold on to my hunger when we went for pizza and then go home, cry a little and eat the ‘diet’ food prepared. At many levels it is the society to blame – people immediately start mocking you when you are fat, their demotivation kills the spirit from within and I started avoiding social gatherings in total. I just had ‘headaches’, ‘assignments’ or began to join in the plans after eating from home and then pretend to have an espresso because its delicious. On the plus side, I saved up a lot of money to buy my midnight snacks- because my handsome husband would only find me between the hours of 8am – 10pm.

Obviously, I lost the bare minimum weight of 1 -2 kilos, pretended to go to the gym every 3 days but basically I put on 25 kilos in 10 years with yo-yo periods of weight loss. I went from being 65 kilos (5 kilo overweight) at the age of 15 to 90 kilos (25 kilos overweight) at 27.

This post is a rant, but more so an eye opener to the reality of the world we live in. We have stopped with correct reasoning, informed decisions and investing time and effort into our health. Instead; we disregard people’s willpower, mock them, shame them, break their resistance, disrespect their hopes and in general become blind to the underlying reason for healthy life choices. My pent up hate and annoyance towards the word DIET is so strong that its taking me longer than I would have; if I was given the right direction in 2005!