Badan Pe Sitare Lapete Huye

@Laks09 : I will kick you out of the forum if you play such pranks here. Go and write in your QPQ, Cheeniya is a tolerant man but I will —

Ira: Arey, sunna, I have a mind-blowing strategy.

Laks: This forum is for body-building and body-blowing and not for mind, that too I doubt you have one.

Ira: No sweets, I need to reduce three kilos. The thing is — I am 52 kilos and need to bring it down to 49 kilos. Help me!

Laks: Help you?! You are a shady character. I don't believe you are even 52 kilos.

Ira: Here is the proof. Should I get it attested and upload again?



Laks: That's 52.7 and not 52. See, you are shady. You will hop one day and vanish another day. I cannot trust you.

Ira: Arey, three kilos ka sawaal hai. I will stick with you through thick and thin and sweat and muscle and fat.

Laks: Sure?

Ira: I give you my "honourable" word. I need to shed three kilos. I need to catch up reading. The best place is gym where I get to read while exercising. See, the trick?

Laks: I know all your tricks. You will start a "fitness" thread and talk about essays of Hendrik Willem van Loon.

Ira: Wait ...I don't know him..Should I go and read him now. Please ...Lakku ..be with me this time. PLEASE!

Laks: I will think about it. But, what's with the badan and sitare.

Ira: We start threads with titles like "Lose" and "Reduce", instead of losing and reducing weight, I lose motivation. So I have started with a spirited title "Badan Pe Sitare ..."

Laks: OK, I will think about that title also whether such titles are allowed here. In any case, squat put, don't ramble away too much, don't confuse people with cats and varjak paws and write less. Do you get me? Write sense and less.

Ira: I promise. I will track only fitness here and not veer away. But did you notice the Eastern Cougar is extinct now. I mean that cat was there and now not there. That's sad ...even though I am not too fond of cats ..I don't want them to vanish off ...still ...and this morning they were telling that dinosaurs were not extinct because of a comet but because of the Dark Matter. I mean ..Dark Matter caused an invisible rim of dense matter...that interacted with the ...

Laks: Shut up and exercise. Focus on "badan" and not sky and "sitare".

 

Day 1: Dinosaur, Little Crow, Rava Dosa

I sometimes wonder why I take up such mad challenges. On one hand I love food, on the other leg I wear skimpy short. How do I balance both? May be I should buy a dress size larger and tuck in extra jalebi. That is the only way to balance. Anyway, I hit the gym.

Man! They should ban some ladies in the gym. They come wearing nothing but a sports bra and leggings with their flat as a sheet tummies and sweat their fat out like it was as natural as a sneeze. I will get there, one day. So, I hit the elliptical and start reading about Aaron Burr and Amistad Trials and the Dakota conflict of the 1860s. Big Eagle, Little Crow, Sitting Bull, Standing Bull ..why do the chieftains have such evocative names ...rather why did we translate them into such lovely names ...hold on ...why am I reading history, atleast it is better than the dinosaurs.

I should catch up with fitness news. Voila! So I focus on the article which debunks the egg myth. Don't throw away the yolk. Albumen is protein but remember whole is larger than the constituents, so the protein in albumen is absorbed more in the body when you eat it with the yellow part. Wow! That is news! I recall the days I tossed away the yolk frightened that such yellow things will cause some jaundice or was it cholesterol.

The reading shows 200 calories. Burnt 200 calories. I thank Little Crow for giving me company and get off the elliptical and head home. First day of the challenge, I should give myself some credit, some celebration. Rava dosa! That's my day: lose 200 calories and gain 1000 calories. Not bad, eh.



Tomorrow is another day where I might be less restrained about my cravings.

 

Wait ...week and month yet to be made. Trust Ira. If I start now, I might reach my goal by summer. I know my undisciplined life. I will lose a kilo then put on a kilo then lose a kilo and enter into such recursive loop that will have no viable exit.

There you go! Race ...you are my lucky horse. How could I not have involved you in my madcap enterprises.

'On my way' ..is only a inch away from 'almost there' which is only a centimetre away from 'did it'. No one like you for me to sing and leapfrog along my fitness mania now. I must do it! Yes, I must.

All of the above? Then let me add, O jaane tamanna kidhar ja rahi ho.

I hope so. Legs crossed! I intend to post my daily updates and use this space as my fitness journal.

 

Day 2: Bernard Williams, Cabbage, Cramps

I realised how stiff my body has become. A day of exercise, followed by cramps. Twenty minutes on the treadmill today listening to Bernard Williams explain how philosophy of language is different from linguistic philosophy. Couldn’t they come up with different names to avoid confusion. Cabbage for dinner.

 

Day#3: Sweet potatoes, Electrolytes, Nozick

Purple sweet potato rich in antioxidants was the novelty of the week. Then came the electrolyte primer. What's with all the sports drinks? Do I need one for my sweat-less workout?



Thirty minutes elliptical workout thinking about the Experience/Pleasure Machine of Robert Nozick. Seriously? Is so much thought needed? I would enter into the matrix-simulated machine in a blink with setting that I am 49 kilos and avoid the bone-crunching workout.

 

Story of a Carbohydrate



Jedi Carb: Hey you, watch where you are going. Are you new?

Padawan Carb: Eh, yes, yes. I've just emerged from a potato. And you?

Jedi Carb: I've sprung from barley.

Padawan Carb: Why do we look different?

Jedi Carb: We are all made of carbon and hydrogen and oxygen. These elements form common monosaccharides: Glucose, fructose and galactose. These monosaccharides join up as disaccharides: sucrose (table sugar), lactose (milk sugar) and maltose (malt sugar). Then, there are polysaccharides (starch) which are chained monosaccharides and disaccharides. We are both polysaccharides.

Padawan Carb: Still, why do we look different?

Jedi Carb: The shape and count of our underlying monosaccharides determines our fate. You can be glucose + something, and I can be composed of fructose + something, and that grumpy carb over there arisen from galactose + something. We are different because our basic units are different.

Padawan Carb: I see. We carbohydrates are good guys and the sugars are the bad guys, right?

Jedi Carb: Don't be a racist. Sugars are also us. We are all a large family of polysaccharides. They are our cousins. We have poor and repetitive names like the characters from García Márquez's novels. Sugar can mean common table sugar, simple carbohydrate, naturally-occurring sugar or free sugar (externally added in food industry). A sugar can mean a lot of things. When anyone says sugar, ask them which sugar?

Padawan Carb: Then, why are humans lynching sugars as if they are not carbohydrates? If they are us, why are they not like us.

Jedi Carb: Sugar is any simple carbohydrate like fructose and glucose, but fructose is a rogue sugar, remember we both also have sweet-tasting fructose. And that table sugar is largely made up of this rogue simple sugar/simple carb.

Padawan Carb: How is fructose bad and not glucose? Hey, look, there is one coming this way.

Darth Vader Carb: You lads, don't you have any work? Waffling away.

Padawan Carb: Hey, I am a new carb. Just awakened from a Potato and this is my master from Barley. Are you that rogue sugar who destroys the good things that we benign carbs build for humans?

Darth Vader Carb: Watch your words, you rascal! I am clever. I rig the rules around digestion.

(All three slide in the gastro-intestinal tract and land in stomach)




Padawan Carb: Hey, where are we?

Jedi Carb: We are inside the stomach.

Padawan Carb: Who are these agents poking at me?

Jedi Carb: They are enzymes to disintegrate us into monosaccharides. Remember, we are poly- and this is where we will be broken down into mono-.

Padawan Carb: Why are you surrounding by different shaped and coloured enzymes?

Jedi Carb: I am an amylose (long chain) and you are a amylopectin (branched chain). Distinct enzymes work on us. Because you are a branched chain, you will be broken up readily by attaching to you from all angles. As I am a long chain, enzymes will cling to me from only the ends and slowly break me.

Padawan Carb: Should I wait for you? Why is that Darth Carb rushing off whistling without being probed by these enzymes.

Jedi Carb: That is what he meant by rigging the digestion. He is heady in fructose, the bad sugar, the bad simple carb which does not need much breaking up, and he will race away into the blood.

Padawan Carb: I am still confused. What are these stickers calorie and glycemic index (GI) on us? The calorie reads the same but glycemic index reads different.

Jedi Carb: All carbohydrates release four calories of energy per gram. You, me and even that Darth release the same energy per gram. But we differ in our GI. The GI is a measure of how quickly we enter the blood after ingestion. Darth has the highest GI, because there is not much to break him so he is swift to join the blood. I take more time to break hence my GI is low. Foods low in GI are indicative of good carbs. Recall, time it takes between ingestion and absorption into blood depends on many factors alongside our form, fold: branched or linear, easy or challenging to break. A good carb has a low GI which slowly releases the energy. Haste is bad!

Padawan Carb: I am still confused. Why does duration matter? Why is Darth Carb bad and Jedi Carb good if once we enter the blood we all release four calories. Does it matter when we enter the blood?

Jedi Carb: It matters. Empty vessels make more noise. Darth, the fructose has no great function once he swims in the blood. He disrupts insulin, the hormone which facilitates our entry into cell; leptin, the hormone secreted by fat cells to signal that our host has enough reserve of fat and should stop eating; ghrelin, the hormone which signals hunger to our host. Fructose in bad sugar/bad carb wreaks havoc on all these hormones and by the time we glucose enter the blood, the damage is already done. He is our cousin but a restless cousin who ravages a family union. So, when humans eat less fructose, they eat less a type of monosaccharide, from the carbohydrate family, which impedes the metabolic hormones.

Padawan Carb: Does our Darth cousin have any redeeming qualities?

Jedi Carb: Eat fructose when for a quick burst of energy release. Have you not heard of the folk tip: Tuck a spoonful of table sugar when you are feeling weak to release instant calories to supply energy to the fatigued cells.

Padawan Carb: I am fully broken up. Time for me to be expelled from the gastro-intestinal tract and meet a cell and lend my stored energy to it. Will see you soon. Any last advice?

Jedi: Remember carb is you is glucose is mono- is fructose is sugar is carb. We are all fundamentally the same organic molecules but different in how we behave because of how we are joined and shaped.

Padawan: I will remember that. We are all good in moderation but cruel in excess and hapless in deficit.

 

Shan-iye! That is like jaaniye, or something like hurray! In a good way .. look who is here kind of smile-iye!

I ace in monologues. I can talk to myself about me!

Aha, the crinkly dates!

You would recoil at me if I were to reveal my poor knowledge on nutrition. Therefore, I decided to listen to a course on nutrition and selected Nutrition Made Clear by Roberta Anding.

The mocked-up conversation between Star Wars characters is my regurgitation of what I have learnt from lecture#6: Not All Carbohydrates are created equal. You know me. I cannot write anything solemn even on dire topics. Jedi and Padawan meme is an eternal monologue in my jaunty mind.

Good tip on dates.

I learnt in the third or fourth episode in the same series about bile and liver and cholesterol and how eating oats disrupts the recycle of cholesterol by expunging cholesterol from the body whilst lowering the cholesterol from blood. I was aghast! Seriously?! I passed my academic biology without such useful information. I am not shy to admit that my biology knowledge is only passable and marked only for exams by scratching frog's anatomy and human feet. Hence, the desire to learn for the sake of proper learning this time. I intend to finish the course by the end of the month.

You know, Shan, fundamental understanding is vital in life. I never courted fundamental knowledge like atom or carbon or bone or calories. But, now, when I read up such low-hanging texts, I realize my schooling was dry and unproductive.

You called forth date fruit, I could at least have digressed to transit or romantic date but, no, never, I relapse to the dated and dry syllabus in schools. Enough drone from me.