Rujuta Diwekar - Women and the weight loss tamasha

Women and the
Weight Loss Tamasha

Praise for Rujutas debut book

Dont Lose Your Mind, Lose Your Weight

When did you last read a diet book by an Indian writer that was readable, funny, well-organised, sensible and persuasive, all at the same time? Told you both the rules and how to cheat intelligently, if you slipped up?

Anjali Puri, Outlook

Page by page, chapter by chapter Rujuta explains how practically everything we have accepted as the gospel truth when it comes to dieting is wrong And what works is the way Rujuta gets her point across. Totally candid, down to earth, bindaas This is a book grounded in a philosophy of life. A confluence as it were of all that Rujuta has learned (and is still learning) from her study of yoga, ayurveda, sports science and nutrition.

Rashmi Bansal

So, I ate every couple of hours. I drank intimidating quantities of water (Rujuta recommends five litres, though I never really accomplished that). I tried to follow the meal plan. Rujuta said Id feel results immediately. I hate to sound like one of those nauseatingly ecstatic TV advertisements, but she was right. I was so cheerful, energetic and bouncy that my friends found me positively irritating.

Shonali Muthalaly, Hindu

At the end of two months with a great many transgressions I lost almost six kilos. I am back to wearing long-forgotten pairs of jeans. My diet is now a conversation topic, and I hold forth on it like a veteran.

Bisakha De Sarkar, Telegraph

The good thing about Diwekar is that she connects immediately with her talk about simple foods and reaching out for what one can afford versus unattainable goals and expensive food.

Sulekha Nair, Financial Express

Not just a delightful read but is full of handy solutions on how to lose weight without giving up your favourite food.

DNA

[Is] fast winning a sisterhood of previously hungry women sick of their unsuccessful diets.

Femina

A book that challenges you to eat to lose weight, that too, without excluding carbs Inspiring.

New Woman

The new diet bible.

People

westland ltd
Venkat Towers, 165, P.H. Road, Maduravoyal, Chennai 600 095
No.38/10 (New No.5), Raghava Nagar, New Timber Yard Layout,
Bangalore 560 026
Survey No. A-9, II Floor, Moula Ali Industrial Area, Moula Ali,
Hyderabad 500 040
23/181, Anand Nagar, Nehru Road, Santacruz East, Mumbai 400 055
47, Brij Mohan Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110 002

First published by westland ltd 2010

Copyright Rujuta Diwekar 2010

All rights reserved

ISBN 978-93-80658-33-9

Typeset in Minion Pro by Ram Das Lal

A portion of the proceeds from the sale of this book go to Nirantar Trust.
We thank you for supporting this intiative with your purchase.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by the way of trade
or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, circulated, and no reproduction
in any form, in whole or in part (except for brief quotations in critical
articles or reviews) may be made without written permission of the
publishers

For you again, Bebo ...
For making eating fashionable

Contents

It was almost dark by the time we reached Demul, a village high above the Spiti river. As Tshering urged our car for the final climb, we looked up at the ridge and, silhouetted against the crimson sky, were women, heads and noses covered, backs erect, riding drunk men on handsome horses. I was sure I was hallucinating, blaming it on the altitude (4300m) and my tired body (we had been forced to walk an extra thirty kilometres after our four-day trek). I looked at GP and his keen eyes mirrored the same feelings.

So it was real, then. The annual horse race had just gotten over. The men had raced their horses on the ridge and around the Baleri top for good weather and good crop. Now the women were riding the drunken men back home. I had heard GP making some noises about Spiti being a genderless society, but I was not prepared for this display of stree shakti. Coming from urban/mainland India, this concept was as real as the Yeti to me.

As I struggled to come to terms with this unabashed display, another one was being played out for me in the kitchen of our homestay. The man of the house was busy making aloo momos for us while the woman wiped the plates clean, baby-talking to her three-month-old granddaughter and talking to us in a dialect we had never heard before. Strangely, she communicated. Communicated what I needed to learn: the power over leading ones life doesnt have to dilute femininity in any way.

This then forms the theme of this book: that mindless compliance should be questioned and if found baseless, let go off. Whether its some ideal weight or size, rituals or societal norms or role-play of a four-in-one mother, wife, daughter (in-law) and career-woman.

I wrote my first book because I got an offer to write, yes, but also because I felt that there was too much misinformation about weight loss floating around. Post the book, my inbox has been flooded with more horror stories (from a twentythree-year-old who surgically got her stomach strapped to control her appetite, to a devastated seventeen-year-old who got liposuction as her eighteenth birthday gift, and the most horrific one being of a thirty-six-year-old wanting to commit suicide because she couldnt lose the last five kilos even after starving herself for the last forty-two days) than I can handle and a lot of them are from women.

Honestly, I think eating right, working out, sleeping on time, cultivating healthy relationships the basic stuff should be part of our school curriculum, that way at least we will have some basic understanding about our bodies, keeping it fit, healthy and leading a fulfilling life.

I wrote this book because women I met, interacted and worked with often displayed a kind of helplessness. A helplessness over their lives, over the roles they had confined themselves to, the dreams and goals that they had buried long ago, over their hormones, over their body weight and even over the size of their jeans.

Women, however, are far from helpless; they are helpful, resourceful, compassionate, warm, loving and focused individuals. In my office, a married man almost never walks in alone for his appointment, he is always accompanied by his wife or daughter-in-law. They come to support him in his efforts to get fitter, leaner, stronger, healthier, and are willing to go all the way to ensure that no hurdles come in the way of his fitness. Married women, however, come alone; they plead helplessness over the ways of cooking and eating in the family, cite school timings or preferred meal timings when asked to make time to workout or advance dinner times. When it comes to the men or children in the family, their health, fitness and wellness, the women will change everything: meal timings, cooking styles, bedtimes, workouts, etc. When it comes to using the exact same resources for themselves, they cant, the same drivers of change are helpless.