Diet saboteurs

Just when I'd have embarked on this crash-diet mode, saboteurs crash all my plans.

Undeterred determination… unflinching resolution... unswerving will… indomitable spirit… Well, these are some of the essential ingredients in the recipe for achieving stupendous things in life.

To me, that stupendous thing is shedding off two kilos of extra weight, which my body keeps gaining now n’ then.

It’s not that I don’t have adequate amount of aforesaid determination and other things. But, where I concede is in combating with diet saboteurs. For, just when I’d have embarked on this crash-diet mode, precisely at that phase, I find these saboteurs crashing all my plans of diet.

For instance, the time when you are shunning calorie-rich food, exactly then you get an invite from droves of friends and relatives to social events like house-warmings, baby showers, birthday bashes, festive get-togethers etc. You wonder why the heck all these string of events are slated around the same time, closely following one another, like the Olympic contenders in a race.

Much worse is that while squatted for that lavish lunch/dinner, just try saying ‘no’ to an oil-laden sabzi, or sugar-saturated sweet dish. Pat come the barbed words from the person sitting beside you – “ek din khane se kuch nahin hota”. This ek, ek ‘din’ adds up to how many ‘dins’, you muse.

Now, after a raft of social events, you finally resolve to go on a full-day fast, refraining from cramming down high-calorie foodstuffs. Lo! The same day, a childhood friend lands up, expressing her desire to treat you to a sumptuous spread of scrumptious delicacies, to celebrate her salary hike.

As luck would have it, the same evening spouse’s naval course-mate with family, flies down from Mumbai. You wonder again, of all times, why were they now engulfed by this sudden urge to descend down? So, treating them to a grand dinner entails a whit of stoking yourself up with those calorie-loaded food items, just to make them feel comfy. As reciprocation to your hospitality, you receive from your munificent guest a large sealed canister, containing tantalizing succulent rasagollas!

As though these aren’t enough, the next day while shopping, you see a person with a funky costume, walking on stilts, pompously promoting a pizza joint, persuading people to pig out on pizzas, served at slashed prices. And, when I zip back home, Phew! There are those ad pamphlets, announcing the arrival of new eatery in the vicinity, promising some palate-titillating cuisines. As I strive hard to stop the saliva slithering from sides of my mouth, I severely curse these diet saboteurs, who keep ganging up against me in scuttling my diet plans.

Nevertheless, undaunted by these, I too doggedly keep launching on my low-calorie diet journey. But I do know the journey is going to be an arduous one.