My experience with a diet program!

Plagiarism is not restricted to our films and music. It extends to our web world too. I found this diet program here, only to later discover that it was a word-to-word lift from the famous General Motors (GM) diet program, only that the beef was replaced by bean sprouts - and this, without any acknowledgement or byline! (There is a contention that this diet might not have anything to do with the car manufacture).

Anyways, let’s start from the beginning. One fine morning I got this cosmic enlightenment that I had to reduce weight, somehow, someway. As I searched options, all got crossed off: exercise, I read on the net - suddenly, the entire body formed a union and went off on strike, hassled and agitated. Reduce carbs - this time the taste buds protested vehemently, “you can’t leave that kachori, can you?” they screamed at the top of their lungs, while simultaneously coaxing the eyes to land on that sumptuous new Pizza Hut offer card. Err, umm, ok - not that. But somehow there has to be a beginning. Eat less - and the stomach groaned like an over-stuffed but always supposedly under-fed giant. Ok, OK, keep silent. Lemme think of something else.

The poor brain, like the poor management of public sector banks in India, was left pretty alone and deprived and tried to find a middle-solution. It’s then that this site came into the picture. It’s only for a week. And it allows you to stuff yourself. Plus, it mentions only a mild exercise. So, it should be ok. The body relented. Agreement reached. And General Motors (GM) diet begun! Be it GM diet or Santro diet or Volkswagen - what’s in a name anyways, as the Bard said!

Doing the diet all alone would make the week seem longer than a year. So I roped in a colleague who had also been grumbling about his increasing weight. See, I said in my best salesman tone, it’s so easy. Fruits and vegetables and soups - damn easy, no? Goodness knows if I was convincing him or my own self. But thankfully he caught on the bait, and we embarked on the diet last Wednesday. Before that, on Tuesday, we scoured Big Bazar to get ourselves weighed so we could measure the result of our grand mission. (I even thought of taking a snap, so that we could have the ‘before’ and ‘after’ kind of thing documented, but dropped the idea since the promised 4 kgs less would hardly be visible on my mass). I weighed a whopping… err, let’s leave the figure aside, no? At least the machine didn’t break - and he was at a modest 69 kgs.

The elaborate preparation for the diet began.

First day - fruits. That’s easy; two days back I had started on a ‘fruit-dinner’ routine, and had purchased quite a lot of them. And by ‘lot’ I really mean a lot - a glibly-talking vendor had managed to sell me 5 kgs of kharbuja, I had eyed the two gigantic carrybags stuffed with those pale yellow rounds nervously. But then I didn’t want the vendor to know I am a novice in fruit-buying - male ego and all that!

Great - the diet mentions to have cantaloupes (google dada helped me to learn that kharbuja is indeed cantaloupe) and melons. Lunch would be an issue, but then the advantage of staying in a small town where office is not far from home came into the fore!

I’ll not go into the details of the GM diet’s each day - but we did daily look wistfully at the chai-wallah or the lassi-wallah whenever he visited the office. The latter was considerably shocked when I refused the first day - come on, you can’t resist lassi, can you, his eyes bore into me! Yes I can, my watery eyes silently replied. The taste bud threw up its arm in dismay and anger and frustration!

As the days progressed we realized it wasn’t all that easy. Vegetables, for example. Now where are the veggies when you need them? No carrots, no mooli (radish) available in this season. Cooking is hardly an option. And zucchini is virtually NO option- at least for me! For lunch we made the day for a cucumber-seller.

For dinner, we towered over the woefully slow hot-plate and cooked peas. Just half a tea spoon of oil …no no, even less than that. My friend and co-dieter screwed his eyes and looked at the teeny weeny oil drop floating miserably in its existential loneliness on the non-stick frying pan. You think you can cook in that, he remarked incredulously. Urmm, yeah and frankly my convinction fried alongwith the onions as they wrinkled up disdainfully. Still, I feel we managed well and the peas turned out pretty tasty. And healthy, as I said taking a bite-ful. No oil, no fats.

Aah, bliss, I prided - a smirk on my face! Bull, came a small voice - my legs, who had tired of standing in front of the slow hot-plate, said. Shit, completed the sweat glands who had been on over-drive. In my smugness I didn’t hear the bowels clap their hands and tell both that that’s exactly what they’ll stop soon!

The fifth day was for sprouts (even though I had a doubt on that, since NDTV Health mentioned that in the GM diet one shouldn’t replace beef with sprouts in this diet). Obviously, I had to begin early. Off I went to the grocers to buy moong-dal. One night I placed half-kg moong (or mung) dal in a bowl of water and set it over the fridge (which doubles as a table). The next morning I was horrified to see the dal puffed up, and falling all over the fridge - I hadn’ t realized (read googled) that moong puffs up considerably in volume. Used this method to make the sprouts. Turned out pretty well.

In the meantime, health and health consciousness, weight and weight loss kept the google busy on my laptop. This and this and a few other sites only managed to confuse, and by the end of it I was tired, exhausted and hungry and craving for - you guessed it - piping hot samosas and kachoris with a warm cuppa tea!

This site (Caloriesperhour.com) even gave a calorie counter. See, it’s all simple. You can calculate how much you are eating. And then calculate how much you are losing. With a flourish I hopped to my colleague’s desk to show my latest discovery. Yep, all well. A parantha gives you 360 calories, and a plain ol’ chapatti gives you…ummm…errr..273 calories. Ok, a problem there. If the difference is so less, why not devour a parantha, no? said my colleague. And I buried the site for ever!

One evening I sweated out for forty five minutes for the soup to get ready - if the weight loss had to happen, it would be more due to losing water than anything else, I mused. Plus, the power supply was so erratic (and the building’s back-up generator so short of fuel) that I was left both craving and sleepless!

On sixth day, we were upto our neck with sprouts and paneer and tomatoes, and when I mean upto the neck, I literally mean that because thanks to the Genaral Motors (GM) diet, all that fibre didn’t really sing “yeh dosti hum nahin todenge” with my stubborn intenstines and they upped in a huff and went off on strike. Ok, we are not letting go anything buddy, they protested in a devilish glee. And I winced in constipation!

Sixth day evening we decided to measure the effect. If it had to happen, it would have happened by now. Even the diet program mentions so. Off again to Big Bazaar. The same place. The same weighing scale. The lady there eyed us curiously.

It was the moment of truth. My heart beat fast. My excitement tingled on my skin. The eyes glowed in anticipation. I took off the shoes. And stepped first on the scale. Check it, I told the guy hovering around. He quoted the figure.

That?!

Check it again. Check the scale. Check your eyes (ok, I didn’t say that but I meant to) It can’t be! Only two kgs less. No way!

Now it was my friend’s turn. His heart beat fast. His excitement tingled on his skin. His eyes glowed in anticipaton. He took off his shoes. And he stepped on the scale. Check it, he told the guy.

70 kgs!

One kilo more than from what he started off!

We left the place, climbed the escalators and gorged on a burger and a sandwich and finished it off with a can of Amul Cool Kafe.

GM Diet, rest in peace! Amen!

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 12th, 2007 at 8:30 am and is filed under General, Humor, Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.