Weight(y) issue

Recently I travelled to India to spend two weeks with my parents and now most of my clothes don’t fit. The downside of Mom’s cooking!

Now I’ve started doing Surya Namaskar in the evenings too, after coming back from work. I know at least one person who obtained her size 0 figure with SN. Kareena Kapoor! Of course she does 50 rounds and I can barely reach 10. My aim is a modest 24, equivalent to 1 hr’s rigorous workout.

One can never be too rich or too thin, but I’ll be happy to remain size 16. Since I eat sensibly, dieting would mean starving myself, which is a no-no. So the only other way is to sweat it out.

I wish I could rope in a fitness trainer or resort to body-sculpting or whatever. Anything that GUARANTEES weight loss. Isn’t it surprising that the rich stand a better chance of staying thin, a fact Monica Ali’s protagonist in Brick Lane observes in the context of the UK. But isn’t that generally true?

Since when did we start obsessing with body weight? As a teenager I never found it to be an issue, whereas my 15-year-old daughter is sooooo conscious. I suspect it started with the expansion of the electronic media, the images of anorexic celebs constantly reminding us how fat we are, and therefore how ugly.

But there is one place in the world where fat women rule the roost. It’s Mauritania, in Africa! I had watched the interview of a young Mauritanian woman on Oprah a year or so before. Apparently, among the white Moor Arab population obesity equals to sexy and young girls are sometimes force-fed to gain weight.
I know, I know…sounds like heaven.