After 13 years of marriage, it’s natural that physical attraction between husband and wife wanes. The same happened to me, although I swore to myself in the early years of my marriage that it wouldn't happen to us. A busy job, two kids in quick succession and life in general. A decade later, I was struggling to maintain a healthy life, let alone my ever-increasing waistline.
No one expects a working woman with a household to run to have time for fitness. Once I settled comfortably into middle age, the compliments stopped. My husband never once brought up the subject, and if I did he gently reassured me that he was as attracted to me as ever.
But within me, there was a rankling to go back to being the svelte woman I was in my wedding photos. I had a shelf full of clothes that I told myself I would fit into within a year. Two years later, my feeble efforts at fitness had not made a dent in the number of clothes that made it out of that shelf. I was seething with envy at fit friends on the inside, but I didn't know what to do.
ADVERTISEMENT
I was ready to donate all those lovely clothes and I almost did, till someone I happened to meet during an office trip offered me a way out. At one point during dinner, I recall saying, “I wish all the excess weight would simply flow off my frame without any exercise or diet.”
One of the women came up to me at the end of the evening and said, “If you are serious about losing weight, I might have a solution.” By nature, I am very suspicious of these ‘Lose Weight Now Ask Me How’ deals, but she was so self-assured that my curiosity was piqued. It didn't help that she was my age and had the kind of body I craved.
So I met her, and at the end of the hour-long meeting, I left with an unmarked paper bag that had two bottles of pills and a powdered mix. It contained two months supply of what she called a “miracle weight loss recipe”. That jargon should have been the first warning sign. The second should have been when she told me that I was to keep this a secret. The lure of being slim within a couple of months was too strong to give this up. I had also blown a considerable amount of money on this; how could I give up now?
ADVERTISEMENT
Within three weeks, I had visibly lost weight. People were complimenting me on my new-found waist and jaw line. I told them I was working out at home and dieting. My family got the same story. That’s when the stomach problems began: I had what I thought was a tummy bug for a month. Only when it got unbearable did I go to my doctor.
As expected, the doctor was appalled. He immediately ordered a battery of tests and all of them came back with the worst results possible. My thyroid, blood pressure, cholesterol and sugar levels — which had been carefully regulated earlier — were all over the place. In no uncertain terms, I was asked to choose between being alive and being skinny. My panicked family rallied around and made sure I got the treatment I required. Today, I am at a healthy weight for my age; the “magic recipe” was one for disaster, not weight loss. I might not have had any defined eating disorder, but the promise of an easy way to look “perfect” is hard to pass up even if it would most probably kill you.