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Hungry I
Do you remember a time when you were so thin, that a slight breeze would have swept you off the face of the earth? Now, a number of moons later, not even a typhoon could lift you off your feet. Aditha Dissanayake suggests ways to cope
Whatever happened to that thin figure with the lean contours of a few years ago? Why do security guards take a second look at you when they check your Identity Card? Unable to see any similarities between the thin and hungry looking photo on your passport and the face in front of them, why do immigration officers at the airport ask, "Is this really you?"

Why do you constantly find yourself wanting to have food in your mouth? Even though you have just had lunch, why do you still yearn to nibble on a biscuit? Could it be that the chaotic existence of adulthood has made you seek solace in food?

Food and diet. Perhaps the most talked about four letter words in the world today. Take a look around you and you will realize that most people you know are on a diet, trying to combat obesity so much so that it has almost become an epidemic.

Everybody seems to be feeling that they have recklessly over-eaten and should therefore punish themselves for having so little self-control by living on water, a few boiled carrots and salad leaves. This is only one diet. There are other diets too, guaranteed to shed pounds. The fruit juice diet for instance, where you live entirely on orange or lemon juice for ten days, or the carbohydrate-only diet or the Atkins diet which insists on protein rich, low carbohydrate meals.

Or else it could be a diet programme like Fletcherism invented by Horace Fletcher in 1898. All you had to do was chew your food to a pulp or milky liquid until it practically swallows itself, never eat until hungry, enjoy every morsel, savouring the flavour until it is swallowed, and not eat when you had an unpleasant subject on your mind.

Or you can obey the rules set by Haresh Johari, who says, "never eat before sunrise or sunset, always eat only when the right nostril is operating, drink only when the left is operating, never eat facing south, and whenever possible laugh after meals."

In addition you can enlighten yourself by zealously reading all the tips given regularly in the newspapers about 'good food' (low fat, low calorie) and 'bad food'. The good food list includes water, lentils, brown bread, non-fat milk and everything else you abhor, while the bad food list with your favourite sweets in it stretches for miles and miles. But there are also foods like avocado or coconut oil which are classified as bad one day, but praised as healthy and nutritious the next.

But do dieting and weight-loss programmes work? Does it help you attain the lean contours you once had? No. According to the American Dietetic Association, “an estimated 90% of the dieters will regain lost weight after the diet is over." So, unless you wish to live only on orange juice for the rest of your life, the juice diet won't work. And, no one in the 21st century has the time to chew their food into a milky liquid as Fletcher suggested in the 19th century. Meanwhile, Johari does not explain how to find out when the right or the left nostril is operating. As for the Atkins diet, reports say Dr. Robert Atkins, who invented it, was obese and suffered from heart-problems when he died last year.

What then, is the answer? Give up dieting. Stop aspiring for the unattainable and accept yourself for what you are; a healthy, full grown adult. Do as the animals do; eat when you are hungry, stop when you feel fulfilled. Instead of trying to discipline yourself by refusing a piece of chocolate give way to self-gratification. Soothe yourself with permissiveness.

Once you realize you don't have to over-eat now, because you can eat again later, once you let your genes and appetite dictate your weight and once you free yourself from food obsessions, you might, you just might, lose an extra kilo or two. Chances are, when you free yourself from worrying about how what goes through your lips, might end up on your hips and begin to eat "on demand" exactly what and when you want, you will find peace with your food, which will free you from the stresses of fighting fat, which in turn will make you lose weight.

But, if all else fails, you can always take refuge in the wish, "God, if you can't make me skinny, make all my friends fat."

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