How to Lose Weight in Winter

Honesty upfront – The full title for this blog post is “How to Lose A LOT of Weight in Winter Doing Nothing that You’re not Already Doing” with the subtitle of “No pills, no diet, no (additional) exercise! Magic miraculous formula!” Yes, yes, but don’t get too excited (Side-note: If you did get excited, let me know because I need to de-friend you. Like I would write one of those demeaning, horrible articles that are virtually EVERYWHERE on the World Wide Web!) But I do have a magic formula that will make people come to you in hordes and tell you you’ve become a lot thinner. There will be a lot of wrist holding and comparing, you will be forced to stand profile so that the horde can make a show of examining your (real-life) waist and then say that the waist in question is non-existent or imaginary or whatever, the list will go on. Anyway, my formula is that *whispers* you have to already be that thin (Please note here that when I say “you have to be thin”, I am not arguing for a preferable body-type or anything, it’s only for the sake of this blog post); thin enough for the majority of Indians you know to want to feed you or at least express their desire to do so.

So far, Sterlagoist (proudly named in 2008 and I will not change it) has seen months of great activity and long periods of dormancy (the last two years were not my proudest as a blogger). My writing has been stuck – and was possibly slowly but inevitably turning into oil – in some translucent resin type thing (imagine a cartoon of dinosaur skeleton) under layers of rock and soil; I’d become a writer fossil – to call this a writer’s block would be just way too mild – and the translucent goop around me was a coagulant variety of the poisonous, carnivorous acid waters from the trippy island in Life of Pi that quickly corroded any blog post related idea that came out of my skeletonal bone head, before that idea could even dream of worming its way up through kilometres of rubble and breathe the beautiful polluted air of the world outside! ...I get lost in my fossil metaphor - *sigh* how I miss getting lost in metaphors, even the process of editing out large chunks of these metaphors for it become easier reading for you – you are welcome. But this one will have less cuts and bruises (yay for me :D I’ve been away a long time, let me have this one). Aaanyway, I felt that urge to blog again today – my father will be delighted. He’s been trying to locate this urge creating factory in my body for a long time, and tease, command, coerce, do-whatever-it-takes to get it to function again, unfortunately he wasn’t very successful. I too have been looking for it but it eludes everybody, like a spoilt brat who’s an expert at hiding. I also feel like making it more personal – if this trend continues, dear reader who might not me, you will get to know me (I’m Kalyani btw, Hi!)

Now that that ^ is out of the way, back to “How to Lose Weight in Winter”. I’m thin and I’ve mostly always been thin. I know people who’d be like “WHAAAAA! You were so chubby when you were younger!” True I have had my fair share of cheek pulling accompanied by strange sounds reserved for cheek-pulling, but that’s because I have awesome cheeks :D And those who hold fast to the chubby view are people whose memories are stuck in a time capsule that cannot nudge its way past the year 2000 (This is accurate, I have photographic evidence). So believe me when I tell you that I was built to live out my years as a small person. That being said, the past couple of years I have been at my most consistent weight – which unfortunately provokes involuntary head shaking and frowns in a lot of people – owing to beautiful exercise (read dance) that doesn’t let me keep fat.

If I don’t change my diet and my amount of dance is the same (it’s not the same same, though the hours I put in are constant, we’re always trying to grow, so we have to push push push. For this article, though, this point isn’t too relevant coz while this changes the shape of my body but it doesnt affect the mass (or mass+gravity) of it, I only mention it for full disclosure) and I’m definitely not taking any shady experimental pills – if you do take them, cease immediately! Like now! Flush it all down the toilet! – Then how is it that I get so significantly thinner, and by the end of the indulgent delicious months of winter, no less? The answer is buried in my sartorial eccentricities. I love the cold, but I hate being cold. When summer is considering moving out, I try to scream at it my approval by wearing sweaters (and warranting it-really-isn’t-that-cold comments from girls in tiny shorts and crop tops). Before Diwali – when people free their winter wardrobes from their stuffy forgotten-cupboard/under-bed confines – I’m already in full-blown-winter jackets. In January one can only see my eyes squinting through my glasses (FYI, it doesnt get too cold in Delhi. The coldest it gets is around 4 degrees Celsius) Finally, I hold on to my warm layers till it's absolutely not possible to take it anymore, and at that point, all the layers go off – almost every single thing! Right now, it’s really nice weather here. Last week I was in sweaters, this week I wear my summeriest clothes (literally shorts and crop tops) to wring out the last bits of coolness before Summer comes barging in to squish us under its devastatingly sweltering bottom.

In conclusion, how I lose a lot of weight in winter (when I really don’t) is by strategic removal of sweaters. Simple as that.

PS: I know everyone who tells me to eat more and ask about my tiny wrists are doing so because you care for me. Let me invite you to dinner – it’s not a good habit, but that’s when I eat the most and I can drive home my point – and I assure you, after that you won’t worry or you will immediately take me to a doctor because you’ll be convinced that I have a ginormous colony of tapeworm in my intestines that is stealing all my food. (If you go for the latter I will point out that Wikipedia says that tapeworms cause loss in appetite not disappearance of large quanitities of food) Whichever the case, I'll still love you guys J