Fatboy slim - How I went from 93 to 69 in six months - Part I of II

Pasta doesn't make you fat. How much pasta you eat makes you fat. 

- Giada De Laurentiis

I was born fat and have always been, which was just fine and even healthy and cute until I turned ten or so. Puberty hit like a hurricane and brought a new set of rules. All of a sudden it was my fault I was chubby. 

- Beth Ditto

I found there was only one way to look thin: hang out with fat people. 

- Rodney Dangerfield

Singing is the love of my life, but I was ready to give it all up because I couldn't handle people talking about how fat I was. 

- Stevie Nicks

“Fat’ is usually the first insult a girl throws at another girl when she wants to hurt her. 

- J K Rowling

“I’m in good shape. That shape is round.
” 

― Jarod Kintz, This Book Has No Title

“Every fat person says it's not their fault, that they have gland trouble. You know which gland? The saliva gland. They can't push away from the table.” 

― Jesse Ventura

“I got fat, and I decided to do something about it, so I got fatter.” 

  ― Jarod Kintz

On a balmy summer evening in May 2015, I had gone to a "Basics"  garments shop in the City Center mall on R K Salai in Madras. I was looking to buy a pair of trousers. What I was wearing were size 36 extrapolated by a couple of inches courtesy the neighbourhood tailor. When I was searching for a pair under size 38, the store manager who was manning the store came right up to me and said, nonchalantly, "Sir please check under size 40. These will not fit you." Flummoxed, I looked into his face - he appeared very serious and did not bat an eyelid. Seriously?  Size 40? Man, isn't that supposed to be the size of the shirt I have to wear? Depressing. Very depressing. What could I do to slim?

When I landed in Bombay, I was 89 kilos. A month of guest house food and a couch potato existence added another three - four kilos to my body that was already bursting at the seams. 93 kilos. It was like a point of no return. You know, at all these garments sections in stores, there is a section called 'slim fit'. For some strange reason (or for perfectly understandable reasons) I used to hate these two words. Slim fit? God I am not even fitting into a normal fit, forget slim fit! Friends used to remark, in a lighter vein of course, that plus size stores have started opening in all cities, including Madras. I even noticed that these ads had started increasing in the newspapers. But what caused it all?

I was always a chubby boy, at school too. This started around the eighth standard, when I contracted asthma. I had to take myriad drugs, steroids and stuff which only made me plump by the day. I used to regularly go to Santosh Hospitals in Besant Nagar, Madras for a bottle of drips mixed with the medicine for asthma. But the flip side was that as long as the medicine was there in my body, I would be fine. Then it would have to be injected again. Life became only hospital, bottles and needles and I, plump and more plump due to the steroids. At one point, I was so plump that the nurses used to tell me that they are unable to find my veins to pierce the needle!

Due to the spiralling cost of treatment and the after effect on my body, I gave that up and visited various doctors. One doctor gave me a drug called "Dexona" (I still remember it vividly because it rhymes with a soap called "Rexona", once a famous soap. This soap is still available, but has lost out its fame to other brands) which was nothing but pure steroids. My weight galloped by ten kilos in four months. Due to a passing reference from a friend, I finally met a doctor who prescribed an Asthalin inhaler for me. Then, life became better inasmuch that though I was not losing weight, I was not gaining it either.

Being a chubby boy, I used to get by cheeks pinched by all and sundry, at home, school and where not. My neck was, well, non-existent. One had to browse under a mound of flesh to see that! 

A regular cycling routine to the ICAI and ICSI institutes for my classes and subsequent training at Kothari Petrochemicals Limited, Nungambakkam, Madras, whittled down my weigh to 65 kg. This was in 2002. Later I hit 74-75  kg in the next six years. Slightly chubby, but not fat.

The second coming to Madras changed all that. Too much stress on all fronts led to eating, binge eating. Plus, I love cooking and experimenting with new dishes. When I used to make a breakfast dish for my son, a pizza for example, automatically a slice would find its way to my mouth. Then whatever was left on his plate would also know where it was headed. The other issue is that I eat pretty fast. I can eat food in less than half the time the average human takes to finish it. So I did end up eating more. 

Food, lots of it. Lots of eating out. Junk food. Then asthma again. In a big way. I used up inhalers like deo sprays. When I had almost died and hit the ICU in February 2008 (not because of this, but dust and other reasons) in 2008. the doctor prescribed me an inhaler called Foracort. I found that over a period of time, Asthalin was not working on me and only Foracort would. The potency of the dosage increased from 100 to 200 to 400. But I kept growing, sideways, that is. Every other two three months, the trousers would get altered. So much so that the neighbourhood tailor was at one point of time surviving because of me. In fact, he used to come once a fortnight and ask, "Sir any pants to be altered?" What? Do you alter trousers every fortnight? God!

Wherever I went, social functions, office, no discussion would be complete without a comment on my weight. 

"You have put on so much!"

"Ëasy, go easy on the food"

"Do you binge on junk food?"" 

"Why dont you try salads?" 

"Replace rice with chapathis and you will notice the difference" 

"Yoga?" 

"Äre you telling me you cycle in the mornings and still you look like this?" 

"Consult a doctor, could be a thyroid issue"

"You head is looking like a watermelon!"

and the more common, "What happened?"

I used to come to office in a TVS Excel moped. Some colleagues even told me, jokingly, of course, with the small frame of the moped and my huge size, at a distance, I looked like a baby elephant doing tricks in a circus! 

But I continued. Increased stress levels only added to the weight. For every kilo I put on, it was like as if gravity was becoming stronger. More inhalers. The first thing I would insert into my pant pocket was a inhaler. The wallet came later. I had inhalers everywhere - one at my home, one in my car, one at my parents home, one in the two wheeler, one at office, where not!

All this took a toll on me. I started to dislike myself. Hate looking in the mirror. Perhaps even suffered from low self esteem. It does that to you. After the circus comment, I bought the heaviest scooter around - a 110 cc TVS Wego. A baby elephant on a Wego would look better, I thought. I could not get a heavy bike because of a ligament tear in my left leg. 

Then I tried diets. I remember doing the GM diet. The banana diet. The 'what not' diet! Nothing worked. In fact there is a post in this blog itself, http://e-kirukkalgal.blogspot.in/2008/11/ah-diets.html 

It was a point of no return. Then, in June 2015, Bombay - II happened.

(To continue)