Daily Times

Have you ever tried to lose weight? The idea of shedding a few pounds and improving your sex appeal or staying healthy may dawn upon you as a curse, eventually leading to your alienation from family and friends. If you doubt my observation, which I know you do, then just try going out with them for a dinner yourself. Sitting in the restaurant, you will soon realise you are not one of them anymore; instead, you have become an impossible person with whom to enjoy the simple task of having a meal together. Not only that, you make them feel guilty for ordering a juicy, medium rare New York steak topped with blue cheese along with a loaded baked potato by constantly staring at it. You are miserable yourself in your 500 calorie allowance when you rummage through small pieces of boiled chicken in the salad bowl. Ugh!

According to a Gallup survey published in November 2013, one out of two US citizens is working on losing weight or would want to lose it, which means (in my dictionary) 51 percent of them are suffering from a ‘diet disorder’ or planning it.

It may also unfold as an obsession that takes over your soul and consumes all your energy. Under its spell, there is nothing else that you can focus on except the size of your meal, the amount of calories in it and its nutritional value. In your mind, you then compare it with your satiety level, its timing and your fondness for it before you decide to chow it down or pass it along. Not the best way to live your life, we already know that.

Notwithstanding the sacrifices made in the process, the bitter reality is that almost no one, in the long run, succeeds in keeping the weight down. Your struggle turns out to be a never ending vicious cycle that continues till you give in one day, surrendering to a big O’ slice of cheese pizza or a juicy hamburger. After that, for the first time in weeks, a fat smile runs across your face, a smile of internal delight that is much more radiant and joyful than the weak and bland smile of dieting. Guilty you may feel to have broken your vow, but who can disagree that a juicy hamburger tastes much better than a small, dry and tasteless cereal snack bar? One research says that 70 to 90 percent of people who lose weight, regain it over a period of time. Talk about futile effort!

Whether it is Atkins, modified Atkins, South Beach or big breakfast diet, almost every regime fails in the end. One study notes that only 20 percent of the people who start a diet plan are able to adhere to it by the end of three months. Some of them fail because they are not healthy to begin with and, after losing a few pounds, they regain all their weight. The others fail because they are impossible to follow for being too strict and out of touch with our dietary habits.

Despite the fact that the long-term health benefits of losing weight in reducing the incidence of diabetes, better control of blood pressure, improved outcomes in heart diseases and overall life expectancy have been confirmed, the obesity rate in the US is still more than 30 percent and it continues to rise. No doubt, there are many factors — from a sedentary lifestyle to genetic make up to socio economic status — which play a role in the outward growth of our belly, but we all agree that it is the calorie intake above everything else that will determine its girth.

However, our association with food is not simple. Food for many of us is not just a necessity to stay alive — it is life itself. It is a friend who we turn to when we are upset, an anti-depressant when we are let down, an anxiolytic when we are nervous; it is entertainment, a pleasure, a companion and a stress reliever. With our home recipes it connects us to our parents, with its ingredients it determines our ethnicity and with its content it identifies our religious background and heritage. It is also reflective of our social status, our education level, our understanding of life and maybe our commitment to stay alive.

When sick, we ask the doctor, “What should we eat to get better?” Or we may inquire, “What should I not eat to stay healthy?” As a child, our parents show their concern by making a chicken soup for us during illness and as adults we celebrate our happiness with a big party and lavish dinner. You can imagine: all of it is endangered when we start dieting. We try to defy ourselves, dissociate from our traditions and break away from our heritage. Without any preparation to resist the temptations, we dive into the ocean of a lifelong struggle, only to realise soon how hard it is to swim against the tide.

How long do you think anyone can resist it once one has committed to go on a diet? We are tempted by the seductive commercials of delicious products on television that keep playing over and over again, the attractive and welcoming restaurants that seem to be open all the time and the bold and inviting logos of the fast food chains that keep on doling out their coupons. Even at home on the dinner table, where everyone else is enjoying a full meal, we just sit with them miserable, looking at their food with contempt, choosing either to be healthy or happy.

The writer is a US-based freelance columnist. He tweets at @KaamranHashmi and can be reached at skamranhashmi@gmail.com