Soup, Salad, Walk and Exercise!

Today, I want to write here about one of the many “beauty enhancing” resolutions that I took at the beginning of this year.Technically; this is not a New Year resolution as I find myself committing to and dishonouring this one every few days. However, the first month of a new year was just another occasion to bring to fore all that I need to do and must do as per my wishlist for this year.

To spell it out, I had, in all earnestness, promised myself that I’d shed a few kilos from what I consider extra flab attached to my body. My goal was pretty realistic and I was pretty sure that I would be able to achieve it in a month or two’s time. And just so that I am more convinced to do this, I had made myself believe that it is not just external beauty that I am bothered about but this has also to do with testing my determination, removing clutter (be it in whatever form), being more disciplined in my eating habits and exercising rituals and generally, be more beautiful-inside out!!

In order to achieve this seemingly easy goal, I had carved out a very simple and doable action plan that I hoped to enjoy as well. I decided to use a combination of healthy eating and trendy exercising. So, off I went to the nearest mall and got myself a fancy “soup & salad” recipe booklet and also invested a couple of thousands in some smart sportswear and cool walking shoes. I had vowed to have soups & salads for dinner at least thrice a week and let go of the post dinner sweet indulgence. In addition to that, I had set myself a schedule of 5 rounds of evening brisk walk around my apartment complex , whenever I found time to do so ,followed by few minutes of “tummy tucking” exercises to the tune of matching music . It is a different thing that I am yet to find out what does “matching music” means in context of exercising!

So that was the action plan. Now for the results .Well, I must admit to myself that I was more tenacious than ever in sticking to my resolution. For the first few evenings of the year, I dressed up ,as is worthy of a fitness freak, and went for my walks regularly , despite the chilling winds and killer weather that threatened to parch and tear my face and pierce my soul! I even managed to drag myself out of bed early enough to squeeze in 15 minutes of exercises in my otherwise lazy routine .On the food front, I managed two soup recipes and two exotic salads on two different days (note: the emphasis here is on cooking and not dieting) and had them for dinner…only to be followed by late night snacking on sweets as I felt deprived of food and found myself unable to sleep in that pitiable situation.

As days passed by and we entered the second week of the year, I found my defences succumbing , my laziness calling and my taste buds craving for all that they were used to.
This triggered a process of analytical thinking and introspection and I thought to myself that there is no point to all this dieting and exercising if I am not happy about it from inside the depths of my heart. Of course, this was a very comforting realisation and I happily decided to get back to “ I don’t give a damn “ attitude to diets and figure and beauty et al .So the second week saw me making up for what I thought I had lost on in the first week of the year. I happily slept in till late, had “bed teas” and “bed breakfasts (that’s a creative term I think)” and binged on foods of the likes of cakes and chocolates and mithais and fries.

Come the third week of the year and I found myself restarting my blog in the form of a resolution. And I think Someone Up There Likes Me and wanted me to get back on track and re-resolve for the year. Thus, I got reminded of the “beauty enhancing “resolution and am glad to record here that yesterday, I had a healthy dinner and today I had my 15 mins of exercise and also …holding my own breath…managed to say No to a piece of some amazingly yummy looking chocolate cake .Small though this beginning is, I hope it leads to bigger things as I mentioned somewhere earlier in this blog. Also, I pray that never again should I be made to refuse chocolate in this life!!

P.S : Edited to Add : A friend just read this post and reminded me of something else that is umbilical to this beauty resolution. And so committed I was to that , that I forgot about it even in a blog post !! Well, I am referring to " Drinking minimum 6-8 glasses of water per day " . My current average is 3-4.