Battle of the bulge

It is more than a month since I blogged. I was busy… busy being lazy! Busy putting on some weight doing mostly nothing.

Talking about weight, I happened to see a news item that said Nauru is the country where 95% of the population is overweight or obese. Nauru is the world's smallest island nation, covering just 21 square kilometers. I also saw another news item that said India is one of the fattest Asian countries. That doesn't mean, for example, that the streets are wider in India, it means that the asses of the people walking down those streets are wider than the asses of the people in other Asian countries. Pardon my French… I am upset about this info since I am a health freak. Almost 65 per cent of adult urban Indians are either overweight or obese or have abdominal obesity. But now, it is expected that an additional 10 to 15 per cent people will be labelled overweight or obese because of a new BMI index set especially for we Indians.

Medical fraternity says that we Indians exhibit unique features of obesity —we have more visceral fat. Studies show if a person of same BMI of Indian origin and British origin are compared, the fat content is much higher in Indians. Being a resident of one of the fattest countries, I guess I should feel honored since we are number one at least in something. It just means it is a lot easier to find a McDonalds or KFC here than it is to find a store that sells health gadgets. In fact it is equally easy to find a store for the ‘plus’ sized.

Maybe Indian Tourism can come up with a new marketing slogan like "Hey, come to India and make yourself feel thin." And when we go to war in the future we'll just have our military comprising of all fat people to sit on the enemies’ military and that will be that. Simple.

I guess I shouldn't be calling people ‘fat’ because it's not politically correct. The correct term would be overweight or, better yet, rotundly challenged… euphemism of course! In fact we should call people like me who are short (I can hear all of you saying ‘but sweet’) vertically challenged.

Ok… now the eternal quest of some people is to attain the impossible- the reduction of weight. And the best method they adopt is to diet. It is much easier than exercising. At least that’s what they think!

Some simple rules on dieting:

1. If you eat something and no one sees you eat it, it has no calories. (I am sure there can be no invisible calories!)

2. If you drink a diet cola with a candy bar, the diet cola cancels out the calories in the candy bar. (Obviously one minus one is zero!)

3. When you eat with someone else, calories don't count if you do not eat more than they do. (And remember to choose someone who hogs!)

4. Food used for medicinal purposes NEVER counts, such as hot chocolate, alcohol and Cheesecake. (Even your doctor can not complain!)

5. Be surrounded by fat people, then you look thinner. (Remember the India Tourism slogan!)

6. Things licked off knives and spoons have no calories if you are in the process of preparing something. (My wife believes this dictum completely!)

7. Foods that have the same color have the same number of calories. (Examples: spinach and pistachio ice cream; mushrooms and diced potatoes.)

8. Anything consumed while standing has no calories. This is due to gravity and the density of the caloric mass. (Which is why I prefer buffet parties!)

9. Anything consumed from someone else's plate has no calories since the calories rightfully belong to the other person. (My wife thinks so when she grabs from my son’s plate and my son can vouch for this!)

10. I remembered having read somewhere that "stressed" spelled backwards is "desserts." So if you don’t regularly have desserts, you will be stressed!