song of the road

I have got my hands on the Positivity CDs of Paul McKenna. They seem to be really good. I have listened to only the first two episodes twice before going to sleep. Already I am feeling so much better. I had been missing gym for so long. Today without any prior planning, I got up much earlier and went to gym. I am feeling happier and more enthusiastic about life. Ruby, Annie, please give it a try. He has a two CD pack for weight loss. I am going to get that next.

 About my last post, I am planning to get into weight training once more. Then I am trying to go for a healthier choice almost all the time. I am not beating myself up when I slip. Because I am going to count all the time when I don’t slip. I will lose slowly this way but I will stay guiltlessly happy in the process. Even if I can make good food choices in an average of 50% per day, I am going to be happy. Also I am planning to have more protein in food and more walking and stairs etc in my non-exercising part of the day. I will do some and miss some. Even though I have gained back all the weight I had lost, I now eat fruits absolutely every day and in fact have managed to love fruit. A year back that was unimaginable. So with all my slow progress etc, I am sure by next year I would have incorporated more healthy habits in my life.

On the life front, more or less all is calm. I missed out a really good job interview call by not checking my mails regularly. I have applied now. But I am not sure if I will get a call now. However I am going to start job hunting with more vigor. Just the fact that I am moving out of here, has healed me much. Hopefully Mr. McKenna would do the rest.

Hope you all doing fabulously well. Love and good thoughts for you.

I was reading this article in Prevention about why guys seem to lose weight so much more easily than we women do. I am just writing the main points here, in case you find them interesting –

• They don’t crave sweets. Apparently while women would turn to chocolate, potato or something cheesy, guys go for more protein like a roasted chicken breast. So if we too more protein heavy food, we will be more satiated and of course can drink water also helps.
• They don’t berate themselves when they screw up. They don’t aim for perfection and so they are less likely to fail. There’s this 80% rule: hit your weight loss goals 80% every single day you can. Some day – 120%, some 50%, some 20% - but make sure it averages to 80%.
• They go for weights with muscle. Well, women too should train with heavier weights as muscles help to lose weight faster.
• They don’t use food as a therapist. More importantly they get physical with anger. A guy who gets angry goes out and pounds nails. Of course major generalization, but the idea is to get moving when we are angry.
• They don’t give up things they like. This is where I found a great idea. I am not sure if it works or not. Apparently, Toronto based weight loss coach Mary Crawford lost more than 20 kilos on what she calls the enjoyable diet – a program she developed that allowed her to eat whatever she wanted, every day. The catch; she restricted herself to 800 calories every other day and didn’t diet on the alternate days. It solves the girly dilemma: I want it – lots of it – because I can’t have it.

What do you think? I am quite intrigued by this enjoyable diet idea. But calorie counting here is tough. I am thinking if I can mould it to my situation. Also I am thinking about buying a pedometer.

Love you ladies. : ) Keep well.

I would need to lose 22 lbs to go back to this.

Thank you all so very much. I do actually feel a lot more beautiful. I know I should not think so much about my weight. I don’t actually. Or I think so. Now that I have a little less busy few months ahead of me, I am planning to do some catch up.

I am right now trying to read up and find out if you do strength training to lose weight and have to stop for a while, do you gain back with a vengeance? That does sound like a myth. But maybe true. I need to pick up sustainable habits.

Round, the beetroot salad sounds divine. I am planning to look it up. The eggplant salad I made was simple. I cut one medium eggplant and one large capsicum in half inch size pieces. I sprayed a dish with some vegetable oil and started to grill these first. Then threw in corasely chopped onion (a medium one), a few pods of crushed garlic and a few green chillies finely chopped. After a while added a couple of large tomatoes corasely chopped. It all came out nice and a little juicy from the tomatoes. Had it with whole wheat bread.

I like the salad recipes in joy’s page. Planning to make some of them. I cannot really cut out carb completely. I love them way too much. Also fat is brain food. But planning to do so only at dinner. Not today though. I am thinking of planning something and buying groceries for it. Anyway good fun being back to gym. Hopefully nothing too much would happen and take me away again.

Lots of love to you all. I am planning to put more weight loss thoughts here. I want to focus on this a bit more for now. I need to be healthy and solvent for my children. Hope they are doing well, wherever they are.

gym again.. only today morning… did 45 mins of cardio… feeling a little sore and very nice… I realized that I have gained a neat 10 kgs from last November. All my weight loss earlier has been completely reversed and I have gone higher actually. Well… that’s done… If I can keep working out for a while, I will lose it again.. I will be more careful in maintaining this time… it hurt a little to see others to be so much slimmer in the gym… but anyway I am not going to think too much about that… a scale climbing down would be a lot of fun..

Nothing new is happening… I am trying to do a small piece of embroidery… also doing sme cooking… yesterday I made something called “pizza paratha”.. It is flat bread with stuffing of aubergine, capsicum, tomato, onion and a little cheese… it was good fun… then the day before, I made grilled eggplant salad… that was very very good… I am planning to make that again… I am anyway eating a ton of fruits everyday, courtesy my mom… if a cannibal eats me now, I dare say my flesh would be sweet with a filling of assorted fruits :)… so I am planning (this one here is the operative word) to cut carb from my dinner and have some salads and soups… I should have fun cooking and eating that… don’t know if it would be feasible though…

This weight loss and gaining back is making me think about changes that I can sustain… cutting carbs from dinner.. sustainable?… what do you think? Let me see how I do… even if I fail eventually, I would still have eaten better for a while… I was reading about raw foodism a few days back… it is very interesting.. I dont think that is something that I can do at all… but in small doses it could be good…

Lots of love to you all…..

that is my brother and sister-in-law

The red monster on the extreme left is me. My mom is between me and my brother.

Well, the deed is done. I have resigned. I will be here till 31st August. Also I will work 2 days a week from home and the rest 3 days I would come to work. Feeling a little odd. I am scared, sad and also a little high. Don’t really know what the future holds. Brother sounded very supportive on phone. Hope staying with them will work out (By the way, I was so pleasantly surprised with your support on this staying together idea. I was expecting you to be skeptical. It is such an Indian concept and even I am scared a bit. I will work hard to let them have a lot of space but still.)

I told JB (my boss) that the failed relationship with R is the reason for my quitting. He said he had an inkiling but thought it wasn’t so serious. I guess I will tell my team mates too. Hopefully it would bring R down from his false Mr. Ideals image. I know it is a bit pathetic. but whatever. Very soon I would not think about him much and then will only remember the good times once in a very long while. Already I dont think much about him but his presence itself saps me out. JB was surprised and to his credit looked sad.

Thank you sooo much for the support and love. After seeing your comments, I did rethink a bit. I want motherhood more than a business right now. So catering - maybe later. I want to be a mom before I grow too old and even more self-centered.

Joy, thank you so much for the encouraging words. I will write to you for information and support. Also I will need all of your wisodm and support, as adopted or biological, I guess raising kids must be a lot same all over the world. I am quite scared.

Now that these two months are settled, I will start working on wrapping up the establishment from here. There is much to do. Meanwhile I will contact adoption agencies to get in touch with adoption support groups here. I am a little worried about how the administrative angles work for a child of a single mother with no father’s name available at all. I don’t know how evolved India is in this regard. I had the good luck and luxury of two life size and always there parents.

Writing it all down here settled much of the jitters. We had a hindi song starting with an apparently spanish phrase “que sera sera” which I think means “we will see what happens”. That’s what I think now. Though that attitude had got me here. But still I think it is okay to do what you think is the most right thing to do at that moment.

I was watching youtube a lot yesterday. I saw some weightloss inspiration videos. They are quite good really. I am going to pick the neglected weightloss front now. I am planning to watch these videos at times to encourage me. Do any of you post there? I would be too happy to see you. I need to fix my eat-whatever-you-want-as-much-as-you-can attitude and must must must exercise.

I hope all our hopes and dreams and aspirations come true and more than that let us all find happiness and peace. Lots of love to you all.

Well, the decision is made now. I am leaving the job. Still it will take some time. I am going to talk to my manager on Monday. I will either leave the regular way after a month of notice. Otherwise I can work for a couple of months from home till they get a replacement to reduce the revenue loss of the company. Like I draw a bigger salary than others in my team, likewise the earning through me is higher too. Still the company will not mind replacing me with a younger guy. That’s the way life works. I am quite hopeful; I will get an equally good job.

My brother came back from Ladakh yesterday afternoon. They had a whale of time. They went to a place called Khardungla pass. That’s world’s highest motor-able road. My brother rented a bike and drove up there. Another high point was the fact that he bought a sword. The blade is not sharpened of course. : ) But the sword has a beautiful walnut wood hilt and a cover. My sis-in-law reported that my brother can’t stop taking out his sword with a flourish again and again. She is thankful that it is unsharpened else all curtains would have been partially shredded by now. : )

We also had a chat about my leaving the job. He is okay with it. He wants us to come down to Mumbai and live with them. My mom is a little shy about joining them right now. So he has been asked to think about it and discuss with T thoroughly before deciding. Joint families work here. My brother is keen because he would be less worried with us in front of his eyes. Plus he will get to eat mom’s cooking and most of his domestic chores will come to me. But that will work better for us too. We have some inherited money from dad. That money was made in stock market. My brother is quite good in trading too. If we take off most of his domestic load, then he would get time to concentrate really on that money. And I will get half without doing anything. : ) Also T is no great shakes in house work. So mom’s being there would relieve her no end too. But let’s see if it works out. T’s parents are a little weird. They can’t see their daughter’s well being too. They behaved badly and sulked through out my brother’s wedding. We ignored them. Some of the guests were a bit puzzled. Anyway we were not bothered. But my mom is a little worried about them keying up T. But very thankfully my mom seems to have genuinely liked T. They went along very well the day T was here after her wedding. My mom is not going to do anything which bothers my brother. Plus she says now that T is any way in our family, there is no point in sulking or holding a grudge.

Round was asking about my adoption plans. The plans are so far only plans. My mom and brother have agreed completely. My mom was a little apprehensive earlier but she has come around now. I will need to make a will so that my bro and sis-is-law would take care of my kids if I die. I will of course buy hefty life insurance as soon as I have kids. I am planning to adopt siblings as the agencies don’t want to separate them. So most likely one or both the kids would be slightly older. My mom wants Bengali kids whereas any Indian kid would do for me. We would see about that. I read that for the troubled kids, agencies prefer single moms. Let’s see how it works out. I would love to have a kid or two. It is scary as anything too. I don’t know if I am responsible enough. But I will try hard and will love them very very much. Also I need to work out how all future paper work would work out as they won’t have anything as a father’s name. Hopefully by next year, I would be a mom. That sounded a bit unreal. : )

Today my mom and I were having a longish chat. We were just day dreaming about having a small catering business which we could run from home. To begin with we could deliver dinner to bachelors. Then we could expand and hire helpers and cooks. I am quite sure I can deliver better food than most of the guys in business. Then to further the dream, I was thinking of coming to the States or Paris to learn the business and then have a niche catering outfit for small ladies parties or small theme corporate parties etc. I can love having such a business. Maybe I will work in one such business in Mumbai for free for a month to see if it is my cup of tea. It could be real fulfilling to have my own business. But then all my free time would disappear which bothers me not a little. If I can stick to it for a few years, I will get a few trustworthy guys who would be able to run the business without me for a week or two too. If I really feel like studying and moving onto big time, I can sell the business too. : ) Okay, enough dreaming!! : ) Let me see if I can swing a month in a catering kitchen to see the business from close quarters.
On that entrepreneur dream, bye for today and lots of love to you lovely friends.
Pipe dream

I have decided to let this job go, even though I don’t have a new job. I think some time away will heal me fully. I work on getting well again and again and once I go to work all that drains away. I am planning to talk to my manager and see how the notice and everything works out. I am scared. Let’s see how it goes.

Thing are happening and not too. My brother’s marriage is over. It went very well. Two of my aunts came down on the occasion and it was a lot of fun. We ended up doing more traditional stuff than we planned to. I am yet to get the photographs from the firm we rented for the occasion. I will post a few photos once I get them.  

On my front, again a strange apathy is setting on. Things are actually better though. With all my depression and everything, I pulled off organizing my brother’s marriage. Then I am back to work. Though one full week is yet to pass when I came to work all days of the week. Last week I had a small road accident. I was traveling by auto rickshaw (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto_rickshaw) and it overturned while trying to save an oncoming foolish car. Thankfully neither the driver nor I had any major injuries. My glasses broke and in the process I had many shallow cuts on my face and some more cuts and bruises on my hands and legs. I actually got off very lightly without any broken bones or glass pieces in my eyes. I actually am quite lucky. 

Though R and I hardly talk except for work, he has a dementor like effect on me. : ) Anyway, I am more convinced about starting the process of adoption by end of this year. So I must act responsible and can’t think of leaving this job without another one. I am getting better at a very slow rate but getting there nevertheless. 

Can you believe I read “Charlie and the chocolate factory” and Matilda only now? They are such awesome books. I am reading Chronicles of the Narnia now. Also I am planning to cook more often to feel better. Ms. Close, I just watched “Jodha-Akbar” a few days back.  Remember you were planning to watch it with A. I was thinking of you then. : )  I just need to get on being happy. On the health front, apart from eating a lot of fruits and a bit of cottage cheese instead of fried snacks in the evening, nothing else is happening. Well, I am going to join the Yoga class in office as soon as my elbow wound heals. 

Hope you all are doing well. Even when I am not here, I always remember you. You all are a part of life and mind and heart now. Lots of love.