When Fat Cells Eat Up Your Grey Cells...

...you become an idiot.

And I, dear friends, am an idiot. Of the biggest kind (a certain pun intended...) Carry on gentlefolk, to read my story of how I allowed myself to be absolutely and thoroughly bemuddled into joining a weight-loss centre.

I got a VLCC gift voucher as a gift from a credit card company.

Now, everybody knows how much I crib about my weight...and why not? I am fifteen kgs overweight. I was never slim and trim, but I was never such a hot-air balloon like figure either. It's one of my major causes for depression. (Yes, I do suffer from depression...there! I've said it out loud and I feel strangely lighter...but the battle with the little demons that surround me, leave me feeling tired, unhappy and soul-less. {I can't believe I've just admitted all that!})

But as I was saying before I started rambling, I am overweight and I have tried to do things about it before. I started going for walks soon after the YO was born, and everybody said that the results were showing. And then, I just stopped. The only available time on my hands was the evenings, but that time is heavy traffic-time for me...chasing after the kids, sometimes dropping & picking the EO and my friend's sons from karate class, feeding my boys, putting them to bed...I felt very rushed. I know it's not a good excuse, but it's the truth.

Next, I joined a gym for a month. I didn't even go regularly, but in twenty-one days I lost three kilos! That should have been incentive enough for me to keep going, but I didn't, because the gym timings were in the morning and that meant I had to go after dropping the EO off to school and before picking him up. That meant, the being away from home during the only exclusive time I had with my YO. And I thought bonding with my teeny-tiny babe was more important than those then 10 extra kilos.

But now that the YO has started school, I have been toying with the idea of going back to the gym. And then this voucher fell into my lap. It gave me a 30% discount on slimming or beauty packages, plus Rs. 5,000/- worth of treatments free. Never one to pass up a freebie and considering that this was also going to help carve a slim-waisted figure out of a lumpy mass of fat and flesh, and also not to ignore the fact that there's a VLCC centre just half-a-kilometer away from home, I decided to drop in.

The lady, sales rep, centre manager or what-have-you, knew her spiel backwards. And even though I am not a naive bumpkin and went in there knowing that to avail of those beautifully-worded freebies I'd have to shell out some amount from my pocket, I never imagined that I would be thwacked in the face with the astronomical figure of Rs. 40,000/-!! This, Ms. VLCC claimed, was how much it would cost me to lose a measly five kgs (hah!) and to tighten my tum-tum and thighs (that had me really interested) in x-amount of sittings. I shook my head politely and said that thanks, but no thanks I would just take the weight-loss package that guaranteed to have me 5 kgs lighter in time for Christmas.

But Ms. VLCC was not to be outdone. She carried on trying to convince me to go for ten sittings, instead of 20, for the thigh and tummy toning thingamajig. That still meant Rs. 20,000/-. Her well-toned upper arms, which she purposely flaunted in that sleeveless kurta, obviously worn to woo desperadoes like me who craved for an unflappable pair, seemed to mock me. My resolve was weakening, I could tell, but to my credit, I sat firm.

Finally, a last ditch effort by Ms. VLCC....and I caved. The thought of slimmer thighs and being able to fit into a pair of jeans that didn't have an elastic waist-band to accommodate a growing person inside of me, was just too good to pass up.

Yes. I am indeed walking around with a post-it stuck to my forehead, loudly proclaiming me to be a "SUCKER!!!"

And thus starts the story of how I allowed myself to be bamboozled into joining a weight-loss and slimming centre. Just so that I could get some freebies. And hopefully feel lighter around my 'problem areas'.

And I must say, it's already working. My bank balance is already feeling lighter by several thousands of rupees! And so is the inside of my head...those grey cells must really be dwindling in number!