Life, lost and found

Now that December is here, I see people looking back at their New Year resolutions and the weight-loss plans they had made for 2025. It reminds me of a phase in my life four years ago, when I decided to lose the 10 kgs I had gained during my twin pregnancy.

Weight gain during maternity is considered normal, even harmless, but once my twins turned two, I made up my mind to shed it—and to leave no stone unturned.

Diet, exercise, cutting out every extra calorie, and adding anything that might help me lose weight became my new mantra. When I began counting calories and looked at the plate recommended for weight loss, I remembered my mother telling me during pregnancy that I wasn’t eating for one person but for three. In truth, I had eaten for six. Now, I had to eat for half a person.

Half my plate became salads and boiled vegetables. Chewing slowly through mountains of greens, I felt less like half a person and more like a sheep in a pasture.

I took up the rituals of exercise. I went from Angela Arnold’s gentle workouts to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ‘pump it up’ YouTube videos in the same week.

I realised that I was “poisoning” myself with milk and sugar, so I started drinking black coffee. I was ready to sacrifice anything that stood between me and weight loss. One day, I triumphantly offered a cup of black coffee from my new coffee maker to my father-in-law. He took a sip and promptly spluttered it out.  That said it all—but I endured the black coffee.

Soon, I was drinking three cups of green tea a day. It didn’t taste any better than black coffee, but I did it anyway. Around that time, I heard a Kannada song that went, “kudithale green tea pakkadamane aunty” (the aunty next-door drinks green tea). Drinking that bitter brew, I couldn’t help thinking how I had officially become that aunty after giving birth to three children.

The final nail in the coffin was chamomile tea. When I began having trouble sleeping, Google told me chamomile tea might help. The next day, I was sipping it dutifully.  Weeks later I finally read the box and discovered chamomile tea contains no actual tea. Zero. I had graduated from pakkadamane aunty to a sheep grazing on fancy chamomile flowers.  That was the day I said goodbye to all herbal teas and black coffee.

I made myself a cup of strong filter coffee—with milk and sugar. I savoured it, misty-eyed, and realised how much I had missed.

Whether I was an aunty or not, I wanted to live like a human being, not like a sheep. So filter coffee was back in my life. 

Four years later, I did shed those extra 10 kgs. But more importantly, I’m happy—I’m living like a human again.