Festive frenzy

I don’t particularly enjoy red meat and don’t eat it at all throughout the year (unless drinking mutton soup counts as eating red meat). But a red meat monster seems to take over me every Dashain time, and I find myself gorging on fried, braised, and even boiled mutton for days on end. And while I’m almost sickened by the thought of how much meat I have consumed at the end of each Dashain, the same story repeats itself every year.

This year has been no different, and Dashain hasn’t even started yet. I think I have already exceeded my own set quota of red meat for this year. This wouldn’t be so bad had I not been on a weight-losing spree for the past six months. I had managed to lose around seven kilos and when I stepped on the scale recently, I found that I had gained three kilos already, thanks to all the delicious mutton delicacies that have been prepared at home and homes of friends too. If things proceed this way, I will definitely be a big ball of fat by the time Dashain is over.

It doesn’t help that I’m back home once a year during Dashain and everybody in my family decides to call us for dinner and insist on overfeeding us. I’m not complaining because I love home cooked food and this is the only time of the year when I can do some guilt-free indulging. But can I really call if guilt-free when I seem to step on the scale the minute I come back home and find myself wondering if I should go on a fruit diet the next day?

Weight gain perhaps wouldn’t have been an issue with me if I hadn’t already once been on the fat side of the scale and been hugely criticized for it, by the very relatives who seem hell bent on making me look like my 80 kilos old self. Only I know the discipline and hard work losing weight entailed, and it’s not something I want to do again.

And for a once-fat person, it’s so easy to get into that viscous cycle of gaining and losing weight. From 51 kilos in 2016, I had gone up to 59 kilos by early 2017 and had just barely managed to bring my weight down to 52 kilos when it shot up to 55 kilos again as Dashain neared. And like I said already, it’s not even actually Dashain yet which gives me all the more reason to worry.

There seems to be nothing I can do to stop the inevitable weight gain though because this weekend we have friends to meet for lunch and two dinner parties lined up. I guess I’m just going to have to brave it and embrace it for the time being and then go on an extensive exercise and diet program once this feasting festive season is over.

But there is a trend that seems to be quite popular these days among young people. They tend to go on a fast for a few days before Dashain and then gorge on food during the entire period of the festival. A friend of mine is eating only apples and watermelon till Dashain. She has been doing this for a week already. Another relative has taken up the cauliflower diet.

Apparently, she has it for lunch, snacks, and dinner. She was ‘inspired’ by her colleague who is eating only on alternate days till Dashain. On the rest of the days, she is just drinking tea and hot water with lemon. She apparently suffers from dizzy spells at office but won’t give up on her plan to lose at least five kilos till Dashain. She gave herself two weeks to do this.

I’m not ready to do these things because when I was on my weight loss journey a few years back, slowly inching my way towards being normal sized from a three-in-one person, I realized that these kinds of gimmicks do more harm than good. Yes, you might lose weight if you keep at it for a while but you will also lose muscle mass and your strength and stamina too. Your skin also will lose its natural glow, and you will feel lethargic all the time.

My friend who is on the apple and watermelon diet confesses she feels tired all the time, even when she has just woken up in the morning. But she claims she likes what she sees in the bathroom mirror. Her cheeks have hollowed out a bit and her tummy doesn’t feel as big as it did a few days ago. If you were to ask me, I’d say she looks ill, like she’s just recovering for a severe bout of food poisoning or something.

However, she does say that she wouldn’t go to this extreme on a regular basis because the tiredness is something she can’t deal with. But she also says that it is a small price to pay instead of having to deal with all the mocking and ridiculing that will happen when she meets her relatives on tika day if she doesn’t lose some weight now.

A lot of people also seem to go on extreme diets to look good on that one day of Dashain when all their relatives will gather in one place and pass comments about one another. For the rest of the year, they will eat whatever they want to not caring one bit when their jeans size increases every time they go out shopping but when Dashain comes, they suddenly want to become slim in a few days time.

While going on cauliflower or cucumber diets might do the trick, as someone who has battled weight loss I can tell you that it’s not going to be a long-term solution. And you’ll be doing your body a lot of harm that way. You will easily put on weight when you suddenly shock your body with oily food during the five days or so of Dashain and become huger than your previous self. As a wise fitness enthusiast friend once told me, you have to love the body you are in and aim for slow changes rather than punishing it with reckless eating (or not eating, as is the case these days).