Tarunika and her husband sit in front of me, looking a little baffled. She has come for a complete health checkup because she has just turned 40. When I last saw her during her second pregnancy at the age of 25, she weighed 61 kilos. Today she weighs 79 kilos and her BMI is 31. They are perplexed because both of them insist that she ‘hardly eats anything’ and don’t seem to understand where the extra weight came from.

The problem with weight gain is that it can be insidious and unexpected. If you are not careful about the calories you consume and balance them with the calories you expend, the weight can just pile on. Most people underestimate the number of calories that they are consuming. Many times the hidden calories come from the sugar in those extra cups of coffee and tea, that additional idli or rice, soft drinks, or snacks that are loaded with saturated fats and sugar. A sedentary life style combined with those hidden calories adds up to unwanted weight gain.

Indian women also have a tendency to believe that once they are married and have had children, they really need not worry about how they look. Remember, the fitness goals that you follow are entirely for yourself: your self-esteem is based largely on how healthy and fit you are.  

‘I hardly eat anything’!

I hear this cry of anguish everyday. The truth of the matter is this: if you eat an extra 250 calories every day (meaning 250 more than you utilise in physical work), you will gain 1 kilo every month. That is 12 kilos a year! If you eat an extra 125 calories every day (2 idlis), that's 5 kilos per year. If you eat an extra 50 calories per day (two and a half a teaspoons of sugar), that still works out to 2 ½ kilos per year.

One of the questions I ask when someone says that they ‘hardly eat’, is how many idlis they eat at a time. Invariably the answer is 4-5! Most people consider this ‘normal’ nowadays. To put it in perspective, most restaurants serve only two idlis in a plate. That is the actual serving portion for idlis. So the popular perception of what is a ‘normal’ quantity to be eaten has changed in people’s minds. Unfortunately the energy required to burn off these 5 idlis is 375 calories, which means strenuously working out for one and a half hours. And how many people actually do? This is how ‘hardly eating anything’ catches us unawares with unwanted kilos.