Rejecting the lettuce life

Anuradha Roy shares her experience with fad diets…

Having been a relatively skinny kid throughout my teenage years, the stress of moving to Glasgow from India in 2011, alongside A Levels and the terrors of UCAS, brought about what most 19-year-olds dread – yes, I gained a lot of weight. After two years it was time to visit India in summer 2014 and I panicked. I wasn’t ready to be the awkward one shying away from photos or smiling uncomfortably when my family expressed considerable alarm about my love handles. So during Easter I pulled out all the stops and went into the health “freak” mentality with full speed – I’m talking eating just leaves for lunch, cardio at the gym every day, snacking on oat cakes that rendered my taste buds numb. My logic was “surely this is how women lose weight, we put ourselves through hell and drop a dress size or two in the process”.

I wasn’t ready to be the awkward one shying away from photos or smiling uncomfortably when my family expressed considerable alarm about my love handles.

Four weeks later, I was hardly any thinner but I was definitely feeling tired and grumpy. That’s when I turned to my best friend in such matters: Monsieur Internet and the world of food bloggers. After two weeks of extensive research (I am after all a social sciences girl at heart), I realised there are certain truths the media and world at large don’t tend to talk about when it comes to being healthy. Firstly, eating less does nothing for you in the long run – for me it came down to eating differently. I joyously resumed my love for meat, tweaking beef and bacon to turkey and chicken – snacking on nuts, raisins and yoghurt instead of cheesecake, and drinking water, no, chugging water. Secondly, you should workout according to what your body needs. For my pear shaped (ahem, large derriere) self it was more squats, lunges, burpees; less panting on the treadmill. Most importantly what I learnt from losing weight the right way is that it doesn’t happen overnight – changing your eating and lifestyle habits is probably one of the most challenging things to accomplish for drastic results. However after three months of my new more reasonable routine, it was very rewarding to return to India and receive compliments about how different I looked. It may take time and some personal research, but changing your body to be healthier really is possible and definitely worth working hard for.