Yesterday I chanced to dine with one of my associates along with her young daughter. While we were ordering the meal, this young girl was absolutely not willing to eat anything. When her mother insisted a lot, she ordered some sandwich and that too she left it half eaten saying she is done. I asked smilingly if she has already eaten her meals or she did not like the sandwich of that place. Her mother replied, “no yaar, she is again on diet”! “Diet!!! But why and what’s her age???”, she looked perfectly alright to me, in fact I found her to be slimmer than average teen age girls of her age. I think she was hardly 14-15 years old. The gal who was on her fancy mobile by now gave a glance to her mother and walked away and then that lady heaved an exasperated sigh saying her daughter and her friend circle is crazily obsessed with slim figure, size zero, dieting and what nots! Even if some of the gals are perfectly alright including her daughter but still they are perpetually on diet. Their success parameter is to get fitted into tops and t-shirts from kid’s section of apparel stores and if someday they can’t fit and if they have to end up buying clothes from the section meant for their age then it’s nothing less than a disaster! Those days get followed by weeks of dieting and survival on juices and soups. Her daughter hardly eats one meal a day as she is always afraid that she will put on weight!!!
I was sort of shocked. Not that I am not aware of craziness for hourglass figure and picture perfect look amongst youngsters but dieting at that age and for no good reason left me amazed! If you ask me, that gal really needed to put on some weight and here she was surviving on juices and soups. One quick flash back at what I was doing at her age and all I could think of was board exams and my braided look! In our times, in fact our mothers used to force us with all nutritious and home cooked food so that we can have good health and concentrate more on studies. Size Zero and hourglass figure were unheard kind of terms. Well, I know time has changed a lot but so much? It’s not that I am myself not conscious about my weight or dieting etc but then I don’t think I have ever been obsessed about the same. To me a healthy body is more important than a thin body, a fit figure is more important than a slim figure and it’s ok to sometimes have those few extra kgs for the sake of ice-cream or chocolates :-). After all I don’t need to walk the ramp tomorrow and I know that those can be shed if I put in some healthy effort like exercise and walk. Who doesn’t want to have a model like figure but starving oneself to achieve that or dieting in an unhealthy way is nothing less than madness. There are many ways to maintain that “oh so perfect body” but guess most of us esp. teenage girls are just not willing to put in those effort. And this gal is just another example of soooo many people around me who speak nothing but DIETING and WEIGHT LOSS! Aren’t we obsessed with these two terms now? Probably Fashion ka hai yeh Jalwa… 🙂
Nautankey
Did u spy upon me? 😛 just last week i tr the grueling GM Diet, could not keep it on for 7days and left it on the 2nd after I could not manage to stand :).Was planning a post on it.
We are pretty obsessed with it but then i think we should have some proper age limit for starting up these things
tanya edwards
My name is Tanya Edwards and I wanted to share my weight loss story with you. I.m no medical guru or anything like that. I.m just a mom who figured out a system that works better than all the famous diets you tried (you know, the ones that didn.t work?). Hopefully my story can inspire you to try my method and lose some weight!
See how it can change your life like it did mine. Come and read the REAL story.
http://www.tanyasweightloss.com
Prasad
eeekkkkssssss!!!! the one word i dont lik in english! —Diet!
tht was supposed to be in captian’s tone 😀
Kanupriya Sindhu Ramrakhyani
@ Nautankey: Et tu Naut??? :-)…Don’t try such ridiculous stuffs, its pretty difficult for Indians to go on GM diet i guess 😀
@ Prasad: LOL…Good Good…lets do an anti-dieting campaign
@ Tanya: Hi, thanks for dropping by. Would definitely read your story.
Arun
Ah ask me! Wifey is permanently on dieting 🙁 and resultantly I also have to survive on salads and soups sometimes.
Iya
Absolutely obsessed…call it the TV effect or the race to be the best looking, somehow approaches have taken precedence over intellect.. Sad but true..
Kanupriya Sindhu Ramrakhyani
@ Arun: Wait till I mail your comment to your wifey 😛
@ Iya: Agree…everybody wanna look absolutely picture perfect these days 🙂
Sindhu :)
I used to think I should get slim too! Having been called fat/bloated/balloon and all those terms… it is still somewher at the back of my mind that I AM FAT
Very difficult to get out of that situation.
But I have learnt now to take it in my stride. And I also realised that I am not really that fat either!
So toss the dieting out of the window! 😀 I think its more important to enjoy life today with the right food rather than starve to get a stick figure!
Nautankey
GM is possible but shud not have too much physical activities…as luck wud have had it i had a punctured tyre that day and had to push the bike 🙁
and an award faar you 🙂 http://nautankey.blogspot.com/2008/12/thinking-out-loud.html
Kanupriya Sindhu Ramrakhyani
@ Nautankey: Award for me??? Oh wooowww! Thank you 😀
@ Sindhu: Absolutely correct! Let’s enjoy all the good food around 🙂
Abhishek
I have seen my cousin doing the same. She is anorexic and still survives on tea for days at stretch!
It’s ridiculous considering she is so frail and almost always is drowsy (atleast at home!)
Really…what has happened to these girls.
Kanupriya Sindhu Ramrakhyani
@ Abhishek: Not only this is ridiculous rather its so unhealthy!