Counting calories - my experience!

Before I start, let me clarify that this post is by no means a ready reckoner for weight loss or based on dietary research.  Nor is it an Ad for any fitness app. This is simply my experience with counting calories and weight management.

Recently I posted a survey on Instagram to find out how many people counted calories on an every day basis. More than 75% voted a No - not very surprising. Most think that it’s enough to just avoid junk food and that should be OK. I can’t completely agree to this for various reasons. It’s a very simplistic approach and will not work for people who lack discipline (read someone like me). Which  is why I thought it a good idea to pen down my experience with weight management through calorie counting. This is my story:

I have always had a battle with weight - I wouldn't say I have a very large appetite but I love to eat fried items and I just cannot resist food that I love. I can eat at any time of the day - even just after a rather heavy meal. Whether it's chips or cheesy nachos - I can never stop with one. And though I don't have a sweet tooth, I have a weakness for chocolates, and dark chocolate ice cream. And of course coffee - hot or cold! Quite obviously, with this kind of eating coupled with a sedentary lifestyle, accumulation of unwanted weight over the years was only natural. 

By the end of 2013, I realized that I could not go on like this forever and started to look for tips from the internet for weight loss. Any kind of dieting was out of question - I can never go on a diet. 3 solid meals a day was and still is a must. So I decided on eating less per meal and cutting out unnecessary junk. But this is easier said than done. Merely cutting down food without understanding the Nutritional information will not help. Besides, it is very easy to slip up and eat "just this one small cup of ice cream" or "just one extra poori"- these things add up!

So I decided to dig deeper and find a solution to this. I thought the best way to follow portion control of food was to count calories. This, I thought, was more scientific and I'd know exactly how much to eat. Many would argue on this point saying this is simply a superficial way of looking at it, but at that point I just wanted to go with my instinct. I read that the average calorie intake  should be around 1,800-2,000 kcal for a woman and ~2,500 for men. So if I had to lose any weight, I had to eat less than 1,800 kcal. When you eat lesser than you burn (over the course of the day), you tend to lose weight and I liked this approach of Calorie deficit. I discovered this App called myfitnesspal on the internet and installed it on my phone. 

Myfitnesspal has an exhaustive Database of different types of food and the calorie chart and nutrition info for each. I was delighted to see that it was not limited to only Continental/Asian food but also included Indian food - even things like Dosai, Jowar roti etc. It is so exhaustive that you would even find local brands like Thaayar dosai maavu, Mambalam Iyer, 777 etc in it. And if it doesn't, you can check the nutrition info in the packaging of the product and add to the app's database yourself.

By end December 2013, I started meticulously measuring my calorie intake by feeding whatever I ate into the app. The App lets you set a "Target weight" and helps you decide your Net Calorie intake to reach this target weight. The word "Net" is key here. It is important to note that it is not just about food, but also about exercise. So if you eat food worth 1,600 kcal but burn 200 kcal by walking for half hour, your net calorie count for the day is 1,400.

Till that point I would eat 4 of each in each meal - whether it is 4 slices of bread or 4 dosais or 4 chapatis. Sometimes if I was very hungry, I'd even eat five. I cut it down by half. It was incredibly difficult and I would get hunger pangs.... but trust me, once your stomach shrinks you'll get used to the quantity after a week or so. And that is what happened to me.

I set a daily goal of 1,200 calories (Net) and tried to stick to it. I would eat all three meals a day (but portion controlled), coffee with milk & sugar twice and made no other changes to the kind of food I was eating. Yes, I still had my cheese toasts and peanut butter sandwiches, chapati subzi, rice etc. I started walking everyday (something I wasn't doing earlier). This helped me maintain by net calorie goal. In fact I even ate ice cream and food loaded with cheese at restaurants at times. But I would compensate it by walking more. A 1,200 kcal a day diet is very difficult because even one single plain dosai is about 100 calories. A cup of sambar is about 150 kcal. A cup of coffee with milk and sugar is 120 kcal. One banana is about 80-100 kcal. If you keep adding the extras like pickle or a slice of cheese or oil for idli podi or walnuts -you get the drift - you will exceed the daily goal if you aren't careful. But with exercise, this was easily achievable. I would burn at least 400-500 kcal a day and my daily gross food goal became 1,600-1,700 kcal.

Counting calories and tracking what I ate & exercised helped me in the following ways:

•  I was able to portion control my dietary intake
•  Since I was meticulously measuring what I ate, I would hesitate to take an extra bread or reach out for the chips because every single thing was being counted. I was very cautious of not exceeding my goal.
•  I started taking keen interest in exercise (even though it was only cardio), since that helped me be flexible with food. This in turn was very good for my exercise starved body.
•  Apart from mere calories, the app helped me track the overall nutritional intake. So I knew if I was getting enough proteins, iron and Vitamins in my diet and didn't go overboard on carbs, fat and sodium. This is important because one mustn't simply eat things that have no nutritional value just to lose weight.

And after a point it was no longer a simple exercise of counting calories - it was driving behavioral changes for the better! Of course there were cheat days (because there was a family function or I was going out with friends or whatever). But I was quite sincere in this on most days.

I was astounded by the results. In 3 months, I'd lost 8 kgs. You might consider it less, but for me it was a dream. 

In less than 3 months I went from looking like this:

to this: 

Mar 2014

And I owe this change 100% to my sticking to the daily calorie goal !! So yes guys, it works! All it needs is a little motivation and consistency.

After this I got a little more ambitious and decided to hit a gym. I chose Gold's Gym which was walkable distance from my house. I even paid up for personal training. I would go to gym 6 days a week - alternating between cardio (treadmill, cross-trainer etc) and intense strength and functional workouts with the personal trainer. Going to the gym was hard initially but once you get into a rhythm it's absolutely addictive. The strength workouts were super intense. I went to the gym for a little more than a year, and I lost only about 3 kgs in all this time, but I toned up tremendously. And though I went easy on my diet, I felt and looked much fitter than ever before. 

Me in 2015

However things went awry when I met with an accident in Sep'15 and I had to be operated for an ankle fracture. I was bed ridden for 2 months and I couldn't walk without a limp for months after. Gym was not an option at all since I had a ligament tear as well (which was left as it is to be healed on it's own). Ideally I should have started to go back to calorie counting (via myfitnesspal) but I was not in the right frame of mind. I put on weight again and tried to lose it on and off by cutting down food but I had neither the sincerity of 2014 nor the discipline. I have now joined a gym and I am not even regular. I only walk on a treadmill and do nothing else. 

A few weeks back, I decided to restart calorie counting with myfitnesspal once again. It isn't easy but I have been on it for 2 continuous weeks now. I hope I am as sincere and dedicated as the last time. So let's see how things go this time around! Wish me luck!!!

The almost ‘Accident’

Between the ages of 2.5 and 9, I lived in a delightful township within a tiny village called Aapakoodal deep in the south. The closest big city from there is Coimbatore (about 2 hours drive). Erode is about half an hour away. As a kid it was a fun place because one could go around the entire campus without any adult accompanying us. It was a very safe place and everyone knew everyone.

I’d just skip out of my house and go over to any one of my friend’s houses. Sometimes we’d even do night overs (something which I stopped after moving to the city). Looking back I am surprised I did night overs at that young an age. 

My school was located right outside the campus on the highway. My family had a driver working for us and he would drop and pick me up from school. Usually I would drop off a few of my friends as well.

This driver, Murugan, had the habit of chatting up with all the local shopkeepers outside the school in the evening when he’d come to pick me up.  So my friends and I usually waited for him to finish up his conversation before we left the place. 

One evening, as always, I walked to the car after school. My classmate Arthi accompanied me as I was going to be dropping her off at her house. Murugan was talking to the owner of the shop just outside the school. I would have been around 7 then. I noticed that Murugan was busy and I could try being the driver for once. I hopped onto the driver seat. Arthi  was in front of the car, play acting like she was wiping  the windshield from the outside. 

I was fiddling with the ignition and stepping on the gas pedals. Suddenly I felt the car lurch. I had started the car, but in just a nano second I turned off the ignition. Murugan’s heart almost leapt out of his body as he witnessed this. If I hadnt been alert enough I’d have mowed Arthi down and then possibly all other people behind her. Arthi and I giggled about it after that because at that age we didnt know the implications. Everytime I think of it now I go ‘Oh my God! 😱 What if..... ?’ 

September 16 and the story of Sathya

September 16. I recently came across an article about M.S. Subbulakshmi and from it I gleaned that she was born on this date.  This was the first time I learnt of her birth date and I looked up wikipedia to confirm it. It checked out. I sat in stunned silence as my thoughts transported me back to my CA Articleship days. A fellow intern called Sathya Narayanan used to be crazy about MS Subbulakshmi and pretty much worshipped her like he would a Goddess. So devoted to her was he that he would carry a picture of her along with his favourite deities whenever he would travel on out of town audit trips.

Sathya had a slightly sad personal story. He was not very well to do. His mother had  passed away the day he was born due to labour complications.  His father had  remarried and life with his step mother was .... well, not the best. Nevertheless he was an extremely cheerful guy and would always be joking around the office. Some of his jokes would turn macabre especially the day before exam results, when he'd laughingly say things like 'Tomorrow is Result day. If you hear of a young man being found dead on rail tracks, it'll probably be me' . Of course he'd laugh it off.

There was this one joke that he used to tell us very often. Apparently some fortune teller in a local share auto had read his palm and exclaimed 'This hand is not meant to be in India. It is meant to be in the USA'. What he meant was of course that he was destined to fly abroad soon. He came to office and repeated the fortune teller's words verbatim when one of the Audit partners quipped 'Paathu Sathya, indha kaiya mattum yaaravadhu vetti eduthutu po poraanga' (Watch out Sathya, someone might just hack your hand off and take it to the US). He found her joke so hilarious that he went around telling this to everyone and followed it up with a hearty laugh.

It was sometime around the second week of September that year, that I went on exam leave. My last audit before leave was at Vasan Publications (Ananda Vikatan, Jr Vikatan etc) and he had been my fellow audit assistant. He was to go on leave a few weeks after me. Around 13th September or so, I remembered he had borrowed my Cost Accountancy notes  and hadn't returned them. I rushed  to Vikatan office and collected them from him. Little did I know that this would be the last time I'd see him.

A few days after that, one morning, he had gone to the bus terminus near his house to catch a bus to work. As he was boarding the bus, while standing on the footboard (steps inside the bus), he noticed his sandal strap had come undone. He had bent down to adjust it. At the exact same time, the driver had taken a sharp left and Sathya lost his balance. He fell off the bus and his hand went right under the wheel and was severed. A lady who was watching all this fainted. With great difficulty he was extricated from under the bus. Though bleeding profusely and in great pain, he was still  alive. His family, for some reason, couldn't be contacted immediately. After some delay, the people at the bus terminus decided to rush him to the General Hospital (GH). Someone even brought his severed hand along in a plastic bag with the hope that it could be stitched back. When he reached GH, he had apparently pleaded with the doctor to save him. Unfortunately it was not meant to be. Due to delay in bringing him to the hospital he had lost a lot of blood. It was all very unfair. Though he had lost a hand he could have easily been saved had help reached him early. The hand that was supposed to be in the USA, died along with him that day.

When we all heard the news we were shocked and devastated. Could this really be true? Our Sathya dead? We were in total denial and disbelief.  With heavy hearts we rushed to his house in Nanganallur to pay our last  respects, still unable to believe that he was no more. The world had lost a bright and young soul and we, our good friend.

I came back to the present and read the article again. My eyes glazed over. September 16.  The day his Goddess was born. The day he left us all. 

Memories from a time gone by: My paati

It is now 5 years since my grandmother (mother's mother) passed away.  My earliest memory of her was when she used to cook paruppu saadham laced with flavourful home made ghee and feed my cousin and I, sometimes topping it with a ladle full of steaming tomato rasam. As we grew up she would spoil us with all her yummy dishes and I can still remember the masiyal and mendhi kozhambu that she used to cook to perfection. Not to mention her pickles which would be stored in huge jars and the juiciest of mangoes that she would offer us during summer holidays. She would constantly worry about her children and grandchildren and there wasn't anything she wouldn't do to keep us all healthy and safe. She was the kind who'd put everyone else's well-being in front of her's and never care much about herself. There is one incident that comes to my mind now.

During my school days, my mother and I used to spend the weekends at my grandparent's place. There used to be a big library close by and I would pick up six to seven books each time.

Sometimes I would just not be able to put the book down and read until 1 or 2 at night. Since I used to share the bedroom with my mother or cousin, I was not allowed to keep the light on beyond a certain time and so I would take my book and continue reading in the living room. 

One such night ( I was about 12 or 13 then I suppose), as usual I was sitting in the living room close to the main door and reading a novel with great interest. I heard a sound and looked up from my book to see grandmother coming out of her bedroom. She stopped briefly to peer at me and then wordlessly proceeded towards the kitchen and I could hear her rummaging through some things.

I then saw her come out of the kitchen, walking towards me with her hands clenched. Her expression was odd - she had this determined look about her and she looked quite serious and strict. It was a bit funny for me and I just gave a short laugh and asked her why she looked so angry.

As soon as she heard my voice, her expression changed drastically. She looked relieved and laughed in embarrassment.

Then she told me "Oh It's you! I couldn't see you properly. I thought you were a burglar. I was going to put chilly powder on your eyes". So that's what she had been holding in her clenched hands - chilly powder!

I burst out laughing. She laughed as well and went back to bed.

When I look back and think about the incident now I am actually amazed. Here was a 73 year old lady who suspected that an intruder had barged inside the house in the middle of the night, and instead of waking up her husband or one of her daughters and putting them in danger, she was determined to take him out all on her own!! If he was going to harm anyone, let it be her and not her family. That must have been what was going on in her head. That was how she always was. She was one in a billion. Miss you, paati!

How Bipasha Basu became my inspiration!

When I was fresh out of college, I was keen on experimenting with my hair. I was tired of people telling me I have Jetblack hair. I mean everyone around me had black hair, but mine was the blackest.
I wanted to have it coloured but I was always skeptical about whether it would suit me. Indian tanned skin and all that, surely coloured hair might look weird. I mean of course Kareena Kapoor has coloured hair too, but then her skin tone is not comparable at all!
So i just mulled over it. Everytime I would go to the salon for a haircut, I would wistfully browse through their catalogue. Once when my friend and I were in a shop, this really loud mouthed woman walked in and we looked her way. She was a middleaged woman and had a shock of freshly dyed blonde hair. The combination of that and her deeply tanned skin gave a horrendous effect. I didn't want to end up looking like that and hence gave up my dreams of colouring my hair.  >>>>>>



Then one day I was looking at some pics in a magazine and I noticed that Bipasha Basu's hair was streaked brown. And it looked really cool on her!!! I was terribly excited because I have lighter skin tone than Bipasha Basu and surely if it looks good on her, it may not look so bad on me!!
And then I went and streaked my hair - you wont believe this - in blood red colour!! You'd think I was mad and I seriously wish I had a pic to show now, but it looked out of this world! Imagine streaks of red on jet black (i know my Tamil friends are thinking of something else now).. Immediately I was transformed into an international babe (or so I felt!). The first time was the best because I no longer had jet black hair during my subsequent visits to the salon. The red slowly turns into brown and stays for long.
I would have coloured my hair three times like this (once every year) and then i stopped because my hair  texture was getting spoilt. Also a stressful job has made half my hair fall down.  I guess the next time I would colour is when my hair turns grey!

Where is all the money going?

After putting it off for so many days , I finally set some time yesterday to dig through my bank transaction details. I took an extract of the last 5 months’ transactions (Oct 3 2012 – Mar 3 2013) in an excel sheet , beautified it a bit and pivoted it for easier analysis. To my utter shock, I noticed that my expenses in these last 5 months were pretty much the same as my income – meaning I was spending almost as much as I earned!


I painstakingly identified each expense and income put down notes against them (Of course it was much easier doing the income side, there was only one broad category: Salary). I then categorized these expenses in broader groups like Groceries, Food (includes any amount spent eating out), Clothes & Accessories, Books, Mobile bill, Internet bill, EMI, SIP etc.

As expected, my biggest expense was the Housing Loan EMI, but my analysis revealed some really crazy facts. I was spending close to 10k a month just on clothes and accessories (including shoes and bags). And then there were so many one time expenses like New year bash bill, fees to Lawyer, Furniture etc. I was spending more than 5k a month on groceries alone . 6% of my expenses were for eating out . Mobile and internet expenses were actually not so much.

A lot of these expenses could have been easily avoided. For example I really didn’t need that 400 Rs. Blueberry Jam I hardly use because it turned out to be too sweet for my liking. Or those baubles I bought and stored away in my cupboard never to take them out. I can say that at least 20% of my expenses are for products/ services that are good to have but not really necessary. The positive side to this exercise is that while I realize that I just went overboard with my spending the last 5 months, I know that there are avenues to cut costs and with a little planning I can save money for more important things. I have even tried to create a monthly budget (which I hopefully stick to).

Guys, this takes about 1 hour to do. I highly recommend each of you to analyze your expenses this way. I am sure you’d be as surprised as well!!

A 'Hole'y story!!

So how many of you fashinable people are big on body piercings? Multiple earrings , nose ring, even tongue ring... I know lots of people who have pierced holes all over their ears and strut flashy looking earrings. An ex colleague had had his tongue pierced (though for the life of me, I don't know what good piercing of an unseen body part would do?)
I have pierced my ears 6 times !  But on the same spot .. how?  - you ask. Well, the story goes like this ..
Like any other traditional South Indian family, my parents had my ears pierced when I was a year old.
But of course me being the rebel even back then, refused to wear my earrings and the hole closed in. At Four, my mother decided she could not have a four year old with no earrings and we got my ears pierced at my dad's hospital. (I must be the only person to have had her ear pierced in an operation theatre). I was told my wails were heard two floors down.
Three years rolled by, and my ear lobes were free of earrings again. Some fellow in the family was getting married and my mom realized I could not wear the pretty "Jhimkis" she'd bought for me. A trip to the hospital was inevitable.
After this my mother had had enough and she ensured that I wore some earring or the other on a regular basis. Things seemed to finally settle down. I still hated wearing earrings, but family functions on a regular basis ensured that my ear lobe carried earrings.
After i completed my graduation, I relaxed a bit on the earring front. Bad Idea. A year later some cousin got married and I had to rush to a Jewellery shop to get a gun shot. The enthusiastic guy who was to give me the gun shot asked me where I wanted to pierce my ears suggesting crazy places like the top of my ears... When I told him I had to pierce my ears in just the lobe, he gave me a look of shock. I think it was his first time giving a shot to the lobe - poor guy!
The next few years were uneventful. No one bothered about my earrings (or the lack of it on my ears) until my Big day arrived. A week before my wedding, my mom and I were struggling to fit in a pair of beautiful earrings on my ears. Both of us accused each other and started a shouting match until finally my dad came to my rescue. This time I was given a numbness shot in my ear before the actual ear piercing. And so my marriage went off peacefully.

The last one was just a month after my wedding. Isnt that crazy? Even now I hate wearing earrings. I dont understand what people see in them? For me they are strictly for collecting and locking them away in cupboards.

How Americans show their anger

When I was in class 12, I had this crazy english teacher who also happened to be our school principal. She was one of those pompous know it all type who just loved to show off.

Apparently the previous summer she had visited her daughter in the US and so during class one day, she was trying to compare the attitude of Indians versus Americans when showing anger especially on the roads.

Displaying utter disgust at the way Indians shout and point fingers during traffic or near mishaps while driving, she said "Do you know what Americans do?? No shouting. No fights.They just show their middle finger and move on.".

Saying this she proudly displayed how it was done with a smug. Poor lady wasn't aware of what it actually meant.

30 students were left hanging their heads down to smother their giggles which were threatening to burst out as loud laughter!!

Increase in prices.. does it translate to better service?

With the advent of globalization everywhere, India too has jumped into the ‘high life’ bandwagon. People are no longer conservative about going out , spending their money at fancy restaurants, bars, shopping complexes etc. Swanky restaurants have taken advantage of this increased spending tendencies of people and have mushroomed all over the cities and quote, well, swankier prices. Agreed, inflation, purchasing power and high operating costs do substantiate the steep increase in prices, but has our service industry kept up with the pace? I doubt it very much.

Take the restaurant industry for example. If you have dined elsewhere in the world, you would certainly agree that there is a  large gap in service levels between Indian restaurants and restaurants in another country. Look at programs such as Master chef or Top Chef. The amount of preparation in running a restaurant is absolutely mind blowing. The fact that judges rate the contestant on presentation and service just goes to show that times have changed and good food is a package and not just all about taste. One contestant even got thrown out because she didn’t take care to learn about the guests and she served shrimp to a pregnant woman! While this is a bit extreme, I think restaurants in our country should take serious action to step up to International service standards.

The other day I had gone to a restaurant in a 4 star hotel. I spotted a cockroach on the table and called the waiter. I was already quite speechless but was totally stunned when I saw the guy pick up a paper napkin, squash it in front of me and clear it away. And he just walked away without even apologizing! This when a plate of cheese toast costs 400-500 bucks . Why? We shell out a high price to get good food and service in return. What is the point in charging atrocious rates when you can’t keep up the standards? What is the difference between you and a roadside vendor?

Another example is when I ordered  potato wedges and got something else instead. When I questioned about it, the waiter picked it up without apologizing and did not even ask what I wanted!! A third example is when me (a strict vegetarian) had dined with a group of people at a restaurant and one of them ordered Mutton biryani. While serving , the waiter spilt some biryani on my pudina parantha. I explained that I am a vegetarian and I do not eat meat and can he please replace my paranthas? Instead he gave me back the same parantha’s after brushing  the rice off them. I expected them to respect and be sensitive to my religious and culinary sentiments and provide me fresh food, if not for anything else, at least for the price I pay. No! They wouldn’t do that.  Utterly appalling attitude!! I refused to eat it and asked them to serve me some different dish instead.

And this is just the restaurant industry. I can go on and on about various other industries. Attitude of serving staff is pathetic in almost 90% of the places.

Unless we, the people of our country put our foot down and refuse to accept substandard products/ service, our country will forever only be “Developing”, never “Developed”.

Hall Ticket Miracle

This happened in the summer I was to appear for my CA Foundation Examination . I had to submit some forms in order to receive my Hall Ticket from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India. I duly filled up all the forms (Form A, Form B, Form C, Form D .. the list was endless), stuck 2 passport size photographs, got it attested by my periappa (who is a chartered accountant) and submitted them at the institute. After submission I realized that one of the forms got missed out and was still with me. I panicked and checked with the institute if they would accept it . I even took my father along to convince them . The Institute refused to accept it saying all the applications already submitted are on their way to New Delhi and they cannot accept one single form. I had to purchase another application and do the whole process again. Some days later I got a speed post from New Delhi which informed me that my application (the first one) was incomplete and to please mail the missing form. I did so. Eventually I received 2 hall tickets with different exam centres. I announced to my parents that I shall use the second hall ticket as the first one seemed very unlucky thus far. I kept the second hall ticket safely in my study table drawer and didn’t bother about the first one. Few weeks later, it was the day before my first exam. My father and I decided to visit the exam centre that morning so as to familiarize ourselves with the route (so we would not get lost and take a long circuitous route the day of the exam) . That evening as I was readying my exam kit (pens, pencils, erasers etc) , I went over to my study table drawer to take out my hall ticket. Imagine to my shock the drawer wouldn’t open. It was stuck!! I panicked!! All of us in my house struggled for over 2 hours to open the drawer in vain. There was no way I could write the exam without the hall ticket and it was too late to apply for a duplicate hall ticket … I was in tears.. Everyone at home were throwing a fit and accusing each other for what happened… Suddenly someone remembered about the till now forgotten first hall ticket. Dejectedly I admitted I had no idea where it was as I’d carelessly cast it away when it had arrived claiming it was unlucky. But my ever dependable mother said she had safely put it away in her cupboard. I was overjoyed!! I just couldn’t believe my luck!! It isn’t everday we receive 2 hall tickets for the same examination. Had I not got 2 hall tickets, I would not have been able to write my exam.. all my classes and effort would have gone waste and I might have just dropped the course altogether due to frustration. What happened that day was a miracle according to me!! I remember thinking after that incident.. “There is a God .. !!! “