GM Diet

Gotten bored with my routine office schedule, I wanted to try something new. Hence went on a GM diet last week. It is a program crafted to lose 5-7 Kgs in a week. Have known a couple of friends who have tried this diet, some completed, few gave up. Wondered how I would fare.

Prior to the diet week, raided the Venkatagiri Sunday market for all sorts of vegetables and fruits. One small watermelon, one papaya, 3 mangoes, carrots, raddishes, cabbage, cauliflower, cucumber, beetroot, drumstick all to consume for a week!

Day One

... is an all fruits day (no bananas though) with lots of melon

During the start of the day, I figured out the way to the office gym and weighed myself (lets say X ;-)

Cut half a water melon, quarter papaya, slices of mango and ate every now and then through the morning and afternoon in an indistinguishable brunch. I had forgotten about the diet and was immersed in the CoD dashboard that I had to send by the end of day. For snack and dinner, I had a fruit plate each from the cafeteria.

Had a mild headache, caused more by CoD dashboard than by the diet. Slept peacefully!

Day Two

Woke up with dreams of steamed potato for breakfast. The diet said 'ONE' potato. I thought one would be too less for me. Hence boiled about 2.5 potatoes. Added a tinge of butter, salt and pepper to the potato pieces - never thought that could taste like heaven! And to my surprise, I couldnt even finish one potato. I was no longer hungry. I stuffed myself to finish that saying I will need carbohydrates for the day!

Packed the rest of the potatoes along with 1/2 cucumber, 4 carrots, 6 ladies fingers, 4 cauliflower pieces for lunch and snacks (after all they dont sell vegetables in the cafeteria)

Once I reached office, I ran to the gym to check weight - that was a X - 0.5 Kg! Wow is this thing working? Or this 0.5 is just a calibration error on that dabba machine?

Had more carrots, more cucumber and cauliflower pieces for dinner and went to sleep. But sleep seemed to have lost my address... And there was a dire need to eat something sweet... I controlled till 1 AM, finally when I gave up, went to the fridge and ate a piece of dairy milk that the better half had left as my share! Only then could I sleep well...

Day Three

Had the same urge for sugar as last night. Opened the day with another piece of dairy milk. After eating a quarter papaya and a few mango pieces for breakfast, had a spoon of the kesari that I made for him...

Its a fruits and vegetables day (no bananas no potatoes) today and the weighing machine already read X-1.5 Kg. Wow!!!

1/2 a cucumber, 4 carrots and a cup of cooked cabbage made lunch! Had fruits for snacks and fried ladies finger and cooked cabbage for dinner.

My sister had called and I was telling her how sincerely I was sticking to this GM diet. She says simply "Oh now I understand why vegetable prices and inflation are sky rocketing... Its all you...!!!"

Grrr

Day Four

Bananas and milk day (with soup)

Had a full cup of horlicks with milk and sugar! Gulped 2 bananas for breakfast, 2 for lunch and snacks, had a banana milkshake for snack again, one more banana for dinner and slept

Felt no urge for sugar that day though! Weight stayed at X-1.5 only... I knew somehow that it wont go further down.

Day Five

Rice and Tomatoes day (more water today)

No hunger, made a cup of tomato rice - ate half for lunch and half for dinner. Had a cup of vending machine chai at office... already got bored of the diet!

Day Six

Rice and vegetables day

Ate some soup, some rice and some vegetables on the sixth day... totally bored of the diet... I was not longing for food but was just plain BORED

Day Seven

Ditto as previous day

Learnings

What is the point of doing something when I dont learn anything? So, here it goes...

• I dont *need* as much food as I actually end up eating
• Clearly 4 trips to the vending machine and cafeteria per day is unwarranted
• I have understood, chai is my favourite (and the one I missed the most during this week)
• I have some amount of control still left in life!!!
• My 1.5Kg loss may be purely calibration error :D

Thank God I am in right BMI category and wont need any of these fancy diets in the near future..!

~*~ Bhars.

Are you ready?

Get rich Slowly is one of the blogs I read regularly. I know I can take a few ideas from there, sometime later. Most of the content being America centric, I will not be able to follow some of its articles - for example, living out of credit cards - I never use revolving credit (once I forgot to pay in time and it got revolved. From then on that is) None of my friends around use it to revolve. All of us promptly pay back. So, I dont really expect to understand someone getting into credit card debt. Talking about credit cards, I love their reward points. Recently I got a 5 knives set and stand from ICICI loyalty points - Being a killer cook myself (ahem ahem) I just love those knives. But ya I guess culturally our financial priorities are different.

That aside, I read this particular entry (actually all the 100 odd comments as well) and thought how true! I have myself known of people like this, who SAY they want something but actually DO nothing about it. Of course I myself sometimes do. I should remember these for life, should recall whenever I'm confused

• One just won't DO anything (that requires quite an amount of effort) until they actually WANT to - until they are READY!
  
• When words and actions conflict, judge by the action!
  

BTW, I am ready for the Indianized version of the famous GM Diet. Are you ready for something?

~*~ Bharsss

Trip to Chilkur

What is this Chilkur thing?

In our 5th term in IIMA, we had a case study on Tirupati Balaji. It was an excellent situation to apply our learnings on the queuing theory. We had to solve a single server (God) multi-client (that too loooong winding queue of clientswaiting to get serviced) problem. While solving it, we learnt some more queuing theory, some stuff on perceived-vs-real waiting time, and had great fun in class explaining basic terms like 'Balaji', 'Dharshan' and 'Laddoo' to the foreign students who had come to the campus as part of the student exchange program. One of the closing points the professor (who had actually made the current queuing system for Tirupati) made was to create duplicate servers - or a copy of the same God in different places - for example in Chennai T Nagar, there is a replica of Tirupati Balaji located on the Venkatnarayana Road (I should mention that the queue in that replica temple is so long that we have to consider replica's replica these days)

Looks like long before the learned professors could come up with this concept, 'The' Balaji himself had come up with His own replica in Chilkur. You can read the base story of this place here. You can only ask Chilkur Balaji for some wish to be fullfilled, only after having taken 11 pradhakshanas (walk around the temple praying) around Him. I think this practice is to make sure you dont go to God asking for some of the impulse wishes to be fullfilled. It is believed that the God grants you the wish once you do this. After the wish gets fullfilled, you have to go to the God again and take 108 pradhakshanas to thank Him for the same.

The Activa Vrooooooooooooooooom

The better half had prayed and taken the initial 11 pradhakshanas there. With his wish fullfilled, he had to go back to complete the 108. With our new black activa (brag brag ;-) around, having a three day weekend got us thinking about a drive to Chilkur. From the local map that we had in our store room and from Google maps, this drive seemed straight forward. So we started on Sunday with the fuel tank filled to the brim (Oh yeah, its a _new_ bike na, I have to measure mileage)

Balaji must have told the Sun and Wind Gods that we were out on a drive. They both were so pleasant on us. Banjara Hills Road No. 12 seemed like Heaven on earth at 2 PM that day. We had thought given the temple is very famous, we would have milestones guiding all the way. He he he. When we reached Mehdipatnam, we knew we had no clue as to how to go. We gave up on all the mugged up map routes and asked a friendly cell-phone-cover seller how to go to Chilkur. He told us to catch a 288D. We smiled and said we were driving - he said 'Go straight'. Thats the first of the infinite number of 'Go straight's that we heard that day.

We had reached the outskirts of the city in a few minutes wondering if we were in the right route. Once in a while a share-auto driver confirmed us we were in the right road asking us to 'Go straight' further. A few times, we saw a 288D coming in the opposite direction and told ourselves we might be in the right road after all. A few other times, we saw a lone traveller walking(!) on the road and confirmed from him that we are in the right road. I kept cribbing to the better half next time he prays, he better pray to a God who is closer home. A lot of confusion, few wrong turns and drive backs brought us finally in front of the small temple in Chilkur.

The Temple

The better half told me that the last time he had come on a Sunday, it was very crowded and the dharshan queue went till the roads outside the temple. May be on this particular day, people were worried if it would rain and postponed their Chilkur plans - we had very manageable crowd there. I saw a lot of people taking their 108 pradhakshanas. I saw the temple's board read, 'Concentrate on the God, not on the number'. To make sure the counting is taken care of, there are printed cards kept there. Every time you cross a certain point, you can cross out the numbers on the card, to manage the count. I saw this temple did not have a hundi - they believe that they should not get money from devotees.

I realize my Bhakti has gone down over the years - more rationalization, more belief in 'I can', may be lesser failures hence the lesser need for God... I remain a probabilistic theist (check out Scotts explanation here ;-). Well I dont mind doing some calculations on our pradhakshanas. My guesstimate on the perimeter of the temple is about 60m. So our prarthana meants about a 6.5 Km walk! Isn't that cool :-)

Take aways

• If I had told the better half, 'Come on! Lets take a 6.5 Kms walk this Sunday afternoon', he would have just said 'pagal hogayi kya'. But through this prayer, not only did he walk the full length, but also put up with my lack of stamina many a time. Well its all about perspectives in life!!!
• The way as much as I figured it out, when you go from Mehdipatnam towards Chilkur, take the locate the second circle on the main road and take a left from there. There are signs all the way till the Artillery center, follow these signs - Always follow the main road. The Artillery center comes on your right. It is a big red building after which comes Tipu Dwar. Take a left there - the road opposite to Tipu Dwar. Then go straight following the main road, if need be confirming from shared autos or 288Ds till you reach Swaminarayan Gurukul - a big bright colored building that comes to your left. From there take the road that goes right. You will see a board for the first time saying something like 'Welcome to Chilkur', from here the road to the temple is pretty simple (go straight ;-) and there are signs wherever you need to take a turn.

Hope the directions were helpful. You can see the same directions explained differently here. In case you have a different route, let me know through comments.

Whether you choose to drive or not, you gotta visit Chilkur Balaji. Whether you visit Balaji or not, you gotta drive to Chilkur :-)

Take care...

~*~ Bharsss

Will power

I just read this article on New York Times. That is one of my favourite things-to-do when I am taking a break from my process-engineering work (BTW, thats what I do to earn my livelihood these days). Reading NYT for me, is to just look at the top 10 read / blogged items on the right side. I hardly read anything else, including the headlines. I get a well filtered content of the site, somehow in just these two clicks. Coming back to the article, it throws light on two things -

• Brain has only a limited amount of willpower
• Practice can improve willpower capacity

I guess these two will help me now to get out of my Everything-O-Mania. 'Whatever you do - give it your best' is what I have lived by all the while, trying to take up as many things as I can and trying to give as best I can. I tell myself all I have is one life, I have to do so much... Marriage has just added things to that list... like cooking, home design, etc.

Now that I understand a bit about how brain works, I am going to select ONE thing and focus! Let me see how it comes out...

~*~ Bharsss

P.S: The better half faces a puzzle everyday when he gets to office. Help him solve it?