Everyday Musings > Thin is King

I'm addicted to crispy chicken strips from KFC - Juicy, 100% all-white meat chicken breast, marinated and double-breaded in their special seasonings. Their poster says 0% Trans fat per serving. I have no idea what that means. But it feels like I can indulge with a little less guilt.

I look at all the food around us. Packaged popcorn and freeze dried soups and microwave meals and extra large cookies and then there's the surfeit of low fat, no fat and diet food to make up for how unhealthy all the rest of the things on the shelves are. I have a vague idea of what most of the calorie, energy mentions on a bag of chips or a Kellogs box really mean. And take it for granted that if they say zero fat or zero calorie that it really is so. But a friend told me that drinking normal milk is far healthier than drinking zero fat or skimmed milk. Another said that even diet coke has calories. Even diet coke. Hmph.

With the excess of this and that, and with me being the sole heir to my kitchen right now, I suddenly miss home food. And am amazed at how my mother managed to pack in all the essentials in our food every day. There was juice and fruit and boiled eggs in the morning, spinach and carrot and dal and roti and dahi for lunch and dinner. And it's always been like that – a simple Indian meal, devoid of diet talk, and perfectly healthy.

Everyone I meet and know is worried about fat. Worried about not exercising enough. It's become a social no-no to be overweight. 'Lose weight in 7 days!' says VLCC or Berkowitz, Nap uses power plates and attempts to melt fat as you lie down, gyms offer expensive yearly packages that would have previously made people shudder but now makes them rush to it.

But with all this available to us, why is that everyone's not as fit and thin as they desire? Gym statistics would be a testament of quitters - people who start, stop, start, stop and never come back.

Maybe it's what we're aiming for nowadays. What we say to ourselves. '15 kgs less'. 'I don't want to be fat.' 'I want to be thin'. 'I want six packs'. 'I want to be size zero'. Everything demotivating. And highly avoidable, because with a goal like size zero, unless you are size zero, there is no scope for happiness. The road to getting there is not desirable, the end result is. The same with a six pack.

What if we walked into our exercise regimes and worked out or walked or did yoga or kickboxing not repeating the words 'size zero' or 'six pack' but instead saying it's for 'health and vitality', to bring a 'spring in your step', to make the day seem more 'energetic'. Even one day of exercising will make us feel that way. And we've reached our goal effortlessly.Making us continue and make it part of our lifestyle instead of a short-term goal of fitting into your college jeans.

Because truly, the secret to a great body is not in how thin it can be, but in how full of life it is.