I paid through my skin

I paid through my skin

I was obese and overweight but never bothered to lose weight. For, I suffered no pain or illness. I did make some halfhearted efforts to lose weight (such as cycling, walking and swimming), only to give them up after a few days. The idea of doing physical exercises early in the morning and cutting down food was innately distasteful.

Then at age 38, I got diabetes. That made me very serious about losing weight. I am a physician and was therefore more conscious of the complications of the disease: my kidneys might fail or my coronaries could get blocked. I decided to lose the extra fat forever. I took out a calorie chart and started reducing my food intake and began exercising. The desperation to lose weight made me increase the intensity and duration of exercises to a level where my knees started to pain. I lost around 15 kilogrammes (kg) in a year. But my orthopedic surgeon warned that excessive treadmill exercises could damage my knees. I had to reduce the intensity of exercises and find out alternative ways of shedding fat.
When everything failed I started using the widely-advertised abdominal exerciser. That bought no results; in fact I gained few kgs because I had cut down on exercising. I tried all herbal potions claiming to reduce weight the magical way. I had to skip meals and replace them by an herbal drink. One day I fainted and gave everything up.

After that, I slept on a magnetic bed, consumed high protein drinks, bought beads, took allopathic satiety pills, diuretics, and what not, but nothing could make me thin. I was losing the battle of the bulge. That made me very moody and depressed. And then one day, a fat loss center opened in my city. It advertised in newspapers claiming to reduce weight by machines, with no dieting or active exercises. Presto, I felt my prayers answered and walked into the center. I was shown the machines and was told that vibration and massages would cause all my excess fat to melt away. I joined up.

Of course I had to pay through my skin. But the facilities were excellent: I was in an air-conditioned room with vibratory belts around me. After the first session, my weight was recorded. Wow! I had reduced 400 grammes (gm). To shed this amount of fat in a day, I would have to go mountain climbing for three and a half hours or maybe walk 30 hours. I was told to reduce alcohol intake and reduce rice consumption at night. I had four or five sessions and every time I lost 300-500 gms. Then in one session I didn't lose any weight. That set me thinking. If the methods at the weight loss center were scientific, why did they not deliver the same results every time? If these machines are indeed as effective as claimed by those who ran the fat loss center, then why is the us -- where affordability is not an issue -- so full of fat people?

I then wrote down the process at the sessions. Firstly you go in, change into a gown (which weighs 600 gms), go to toilet, empty your bladder and your weight is taken. After the session you once again go to toilet and empty your bladder. Presto there is weight loss, because one forms 300-500 mililitres of urine in an hour depending on hydration. It dawned on me that the machines were gimmicks. Indeed I gained weight between the sessions. I laughed and thought that if a doctor could be fooled so easily, the general public would be all the more gullible. I read medicine and nutrition textbooks and found that the best and only way to lose weight and maintain that is through a balanced diet. Weight loss is a multi billion-dollar industry that exploits people's desperate desire to lose weight.

Vinay Jadhav is a doctor based in Aurangabad, Maharashtra 12jav.net12jav.net