Health. Food.

First of all, I’m not going to crib about my diet and talk about how much I love everything that’s sinful, including food. Let’s just take that as a given.

The point is, if there’s one thing in which I don’t want the twins to end up like me, it’s my attitude to food. I want them to grow up to have a balanced and healthy attitude to food. I want them to be unfussy eaters, who will try anything once, will like most things, will have stomachs lined with lead, will thrive on bland, homemade, stale food as much as on oily, spicy, toxic street food, and through it all will achieve a balanced diet with a good proportion of dal, carb, fruit ‘n’ veg, dairy and non-veg.

And, of course, I hope they will always enjoy cakes and ice creams, but will never be cursed with an insatiable sweet tooth.

Is that too much to ask???

While the twins were at home full time, we made sure they got only healthy food. Their milk, curd, butter, and cheese came out of a packet of some kind, as did bread and cornflakes, but just about everything else they ate was fresh. They got fresh fruit and vegetables and enjoyed most of it; and fresh meat and chicken as well. They got no soups or juices out of a packet. They got no chocolates, no sweet except for what I sometimes made at home, no biscuits, no chips, practically no packaged foods at all. I did give them frozen peas, but they never liked them, though they loved fresh peas. Smart kids.

(Of course, I must clarify, to quell those rising eyebrows, that when I say ‘fresh’ food, I mean the ingredients are fresh as opposed to frozen or preserved. The food they get cannot not always be described as fresh, but I do usually impose a 48-hour limit; anything cooked more than 48 hours ago lands up in the trash can. That would be me.)

So right up until they joined ‘big’ school this June, they rarely had access to junk food like biscuits, chips, soft drinks, chocolates, toffees and the like. In playschool, they sometimes got a chocolate, but it wasn’t very often, and, back then, sometimes I just grabbed it from them and distracted them for a few minutes and they’d forget all about it (after shedding a few indignant tears).

Now, of course, it’s a different story. If they get goodies at school, they usually eat them before I get there (smart kids), but if they still have them on hand, it’s not as if I can just take them away, distract the kids and they’ll forget all about them. Oh no!

For one thing, they have my number. They don’t trust me at all when it comes to chocolate – and with good reason; if only they knew how many of the chocolates intended for them have landed up in the dustbin (me)! Now, if I tell them to put their sweets in their bags, they protest loudly, and when they finally comply, they keep a sharp eye on their bags. The whole way home, a small part of their memories are dedicated to the stored chocolate. As soon as we reach home, they start to ransack their bags looking for their chocolate. At which point, I usually take it away from them and keep it on top of the microwave – within eyesight, but, mercifully, still out of their reach. The deal is that if they eat their lunch like good girls (without throwing their food around and generally driving me crazy), then they will get chocolate. They don’t yet know that they shouldn’t have to negotiate for something that’s rightfully theirs… But that day is not far off.

One day Tara was too sleepy to gracefully complete her lunch, so I put her to bed sans chocolate. Mrini, however, said to me assertively, “I don’t want sabzi, I don’t want chicken, I don’t want dahi, I want only chocolate.” So I gave her hers.

Three hours later, Tara woke from her afternoon nap, and, still groggy and rubbing her eyes with both fists, said to me, “Mama, I want my chocolate.”

Well, I gave it to her – with Mrini looking on and saying “Taya, ha-piece-ha-piece,” as sweetly as she could. I told Tara that Mrini had already had hers, but she promptly broke her chocolate in half and gave it to Mrini regardless. It’s absolutely heart-warming to see her do that without any hesitation or prompting… especially considering that Mrini rarely returns the favour.

So distracting them and hoping they’ll forget about it just won’t work any more.

Still, they do get quite a lot of chocolate in school some days. It kills their appetite for lunch, and I doubt it does their teeth any good. And I really don’t want them to develop as much of a sweet tooth as I have. I don’t know whether not getting a lot of sweet at this age actually helps to develop a sweet tooth, or whether being denied it helps to avoid getting a sweet tooth; but it just seems like in this respect less must be better. So whenever I can, I still surreptitiously reduce the quantity of sweet that they actually get. Very sneaky and mean of me, no doubt, but that’s what parenting is all about, isn’t it?

What I really started out writing about though, is, why do all school birthday treats have to be packaged foods? I know that not all parents have time to bake up a storm like I did – and it is a lot of work – but can’t you do something simple and homemade? Or else send fruit? Or something that’s not food?

I’m a great fan of eating out and even of eating packaged food, but for these tiny tots, I still feel that the less packaged foods they get, the better. At least with homemade stuff, you have a better idea of what’s gone in it and how much of what and whether it is likely to be allergenic or not; and also, you have better control over the hygiene conditions. But most importantly, it’s the only way to minimise kids’ exposure to chemicals like preservatives, flavouring agents, and the like. Shouldn’t we be thinking of that for at least a few years?

I know – they’re three years old, I should just let go. We do the best we can at home and I should just let go of what’s beyond my control. And I will. But, when they come home with three or four different bits of chocolate and a commercially made cup-cake each, I just wonder.

More About Swine Flu

Swine flu has been a hotly debated topic in our home in recent days. Amit thinks my attitude is too ‘practical’ – which, I suspect, means unsympathetic.

Actually that’s not my intention, or even my area of focus. My only point is that, from what I’ve seen of the newspapers’ reports on this matter, the media is being irresponsible, giving a sensationalised picture instead of a balanced picture, trying to portray a doomsday scenario. Relevant reassuring information is buried. All of this tends to create a panic response in the general public.

I think that perhaps yesterday and today there is a slight improvement in the coverage – at least a few less alarmist facts and sensible precautions are also mentioned. A couple of points were made to the effect that there’s no need to panic.

It is, no doubt, alarming and sad that the number of deaths is so excessively high in India. From what I gather, several patients were admitted to hospital in a critical condition and couldn’t be saved. I wish people would get admitted sooner. I’m not, for a moment, saying that if someone gets sick, they should take it lightly until they turn critical. I do think that, with swine flu around, anyone who has fever and so on should go to the doctor. But it’s also true that an excessive number of people being tested could lead to a delay in getting the test results, with potentially serious consequences.

Plus, if you really aren’t that unwell, do you seriously want to spend some hours standing in a queue of 300 potential cases of swine flu?

A couple of news items that I read today seemed to me worth quoting in support of whatever I’m trying to say.

According to WHO, there have been 1462 deaths globally (as of Tuesday) since the outbreak of swine flu in April. (Deccan Herald page 7)

A Hindu Op-Ed article by a host of doctors says, “The hysteria created by the media and the knee-jerk reaction from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, are not conducive to rational and well-informed management of the situation.
“Swine flu is not more lethal, for instance, than ordinary flu and dengue. There is thus no need for the panic response. It can be treated like any ordinary flu, unless there are complications that require hospitalisation.”

I’m not saying we shouldn’t be worried about swine flu. I’m saying, we can be equally worried about chicken pox, ordinary flu, gastroenteritis, chikungunya, dengue, and drought. It’s just one more thing to try to avoid – let’s not blow it out of proportion.

Live Report and Swine Flu

We’re getting close to two years since we brought the twins home. And boy, they have certainly blossomed in these two years! Apart from being mischief makers on par with Dennis the Menace, they’ve also bloomed physically. When we got them, they were at the lowest 5th percentile in terms of height and weight. They were already over a year old, so we could only hope that any physical, mental, or developmental delays due to malnutrition or the institutional environment wouldn’t be lasting.

When we took them for their annual check-up last weekend, we found, to our delight, that they’re now close to the middle of their weight range. In height, they’re still below average, but at least they’re somewhere around the 20th percentile. They might come up to average, slowly, or maybe they just have short genes. Anyway, they are generally healthy now, and have got a certificate from the doctor to this effect. I didn’t really need a doctor to tell me this – but we have to send this document to the Family Court every year unti they turn 18, as part of their Live Report – but it was nice to have it reaffirmed from a medical perspective.

————————–

I suppose what follows should, logically, be a separate post, but it seemed to me distantly related.
Swine flu is currently all the rage. It’s the number one topic for the newspapers and amongst all parents of school-going kids right now. The papers are doing their best to spread fear and chaos, as usual. Schools are agonising over whether or not to close, parents over whether or not to keep their kids at home, students over whether or not it’s hip to wear face masks. The government has been urging everyone who is even just thinking of coughing or sneezing to get tested for swine flu – without considering first how they are going to cope with the masses of people who come in demanding to be tested. Now that reality has hit them hard, they’re backtracking and saying, hey, hang on, don’t panic, just stay home and drink lots of fluid.

Maybe I’m stupid, callous, and cavalier, but… Don’t we need some common sense here? This is flu season. If you send everyone to be tested, you’re going to be so swamped, you’ll probably just miss the folks who might really have it, or get to them a couple of days later. Why not just tell people to go to the doctor? My understanding is, most cases of flu, even if it is swine flu, can be treated by rest, relaxation, plenty of fluid, and common sense. Only severe cases are cause for concern. The statistics show that, in most cases, the flu runs its course in a week, like any other flu. It is estimated to be fatal in less than 0.4% of cases, and then it is due to complications like pneumonia or pre-existing medical conditions. Don’t take my word for it – go do your own Google search (or any other search engine search, I suppose), and find out for yourself.

In retrospect, it’s quite possible that Amit had swine flu week before last – he is always working with people who travel, or with people who interact with people who travel. He had fever, lethargy, sore throat etc. And it did go off after a week without any medication, but with plenty of rest (and good food – not sure of the medicinal quality of that, but it does the morale a world of good). His doctor didn’t think it was swine flu, but apparently it’s really difficult to distinguish flu from swine flu without the lab test. All the same, unless you develop the severe symptoms or you have pre-existing medical conditions, specially lung problems, it doesn’t seem to be something to get into a panic about. I don’t think panic helps – even if the newspapers delight in it.

As a result of the newspapers’ scare-mongering, even Amit, normally quite a logical and practical person, is worried now. Our girls have had a stuffed head, particularly at night, for the past couple of weeks or more. They don’t really have a cold, only a very mildly runny and blocked nose. No fever, no sneezing, practically no coughing, no apparent sore throat, and they seem to be in fine spirits in every way. So should we be worried about the runny nose? Could it be swine flu? Should we keep them at home? Should we get them tested?

If you believe all you read, the answers would be yes, yes, yes, yes. But I believe getting them tested for next to zero symptoms would be irresponsible and a misuse of scarce resources. Amit thinks we should at least take them to a doctor. I think we just did – though for their annual checkup, not for swine flu, specifically. The mildly stuffy nose was present then, no better and no worse than it is now, but the doctor didn’t even so much as comment on it and prescribe a decongestant, so is it really likely that two cases of swine flu just walked through her clinic and she didn’t notice?

I think getting people to be aware of the symptoms and encouraging people to go to the doctor if they have symptoms of flu is sensible. Getting people to just stay home if they are sick is sensible. Emphasizing the importance of washing hands frequently, with soap, is mandatory (and I don’t see enough of that message being sent). But closing schools, testing every single person who coughs twice in a day, wearing face masks all the time etc is just over the top. Starting a panic response to the situation right now doesn’t seem like a really good idea. If a sensible, educated, informed, and generally level-headed person like Amit can be scared into taking two obviously healthy kids to the doctor just because of ordinary stuffed noses; if, in other words, an ordinary parent can be made too scared to call a stuffed nose just a stuffed nose, then you are already succeeding in overwhelming common sense with panic. That’s not sensible.

At least, that’s the way I see it. But then, what would I know?

I Wish I Could Stop Breathing…

Oh, not for good… I am feeling a bit sorry for myself, but I’m not that far gone… yet…

It’s just this stupid cold (I mean flu) which Sup33 & Co didn’t give me.

I discovered only today that a cold is not the same as the flu (I always thought cold = flu = viral, but I am only partly right, it seems), and that what I have right now is the flu. Flu, says Wikipedia, is more severe than a cold, comes with fever on the side (not onion rings or fries), and is marked by a sudden onset, while a cold builds up gradually. Apparently both are viral though. So why the doctor has put me on antibiotics, I don’t know, but I suppose that’s what doctors do best.

On Thursday, when I took the girls to school, they seemed ok, so I decided to wait outside the class. For about 20 minutes, all was fine. Then Tara started to cry and the rest of the one-hour session was chaos. She refused to sit in class at all and would only be pacified by being allowed to play in the sandpit, which, apparently, was ok with the teachers. I was impressed with that. (Naturally, Mrini wouldn’t stay in class for more than 2 minutes without her beloved twin – no matter what enticements were offered.) So the rest of the session was spent somewhat sulkily in the sandpit, with only the last few minutes being spent back in the classroom.

On Friday morning, I was already coming down with the flu, and what’s more, I had to spend the entire school session in class with the kids, to prevent a fresh outburst of tears and dramatics.

Saturday passed in a haze, with Amit struggling to manage all the household tasks and prepare for an official trip abroad, while I whined and snoozed.

And now he’s gone. It’s Sunday, my household help (the paid ones) are off, and the kids are home all day. So I have to single-handedly bathe them, feed them, play with them, cook for them… All that fun stuff, you know.

And tomorrow is Monday and I have to drive them to school bright and early in the morning – apparently they have been shifted to 9-11 a.m. instead of 11-12 noon as it was so far. And I’m not to be allowed into the classroom “even if they cry”.

In case you think, by now, that this whole post is about how I’ve got the flu and how lousy that is, let me tell you, that isn’t what this is about at all. No, really. It’s about how I want to stop breathing for a while, and why.

See, what with my better half at the other end of the globe and the twins still trying to get used to school all over again, what I really don’t need right now is for either of them to come down with what I’ve got. Can’t I just imagine it: driving to school to deposit one wailing kid all alone in class while the other kid, sick, accompanies me on the drive both ways but doesn’t get to actually go anywhere. Not to mention all the fever, body ache and all that stuff that they will have to suffer. Not to mention that just as soon as one gets well the other will certainly fall ill.

So, I really, really don’t want them to get it. To the extent that I’m actually washing my hands with soap about 25 times a day, in the hope that that will help.

Actually, I don’t want to pass it on to anyone else in my inner circle either – not 8-month pregnant Shaba-aunty, not park friends (of either generation), not the twins’ school mates and teachers, not even, retrospectively, the traveling spouse who, if he gets fever, will probably be immediately isolated on suspicion of swine flu. None of this would be nice.

Which is why, while I don’t want to stop breathing for good or anything – it would be great if I could stop for just a few days till I get this virus out of my system. Oh and, while the breathing is suspended, please god, could you hold off on all that coughing, sneezing, and snuffling business too? Not too much to ask, is it? Thank you so much.

Chicken Pox!

Shaba-Aunty’s daughter, H, is down with chicken pox. She’s maybe 7 or 8 years old. She became symptomatic last Saturday, with high fever, vomiting, and of course, the pox itself. So naturally, this whole week, Shaba-Aunty has not been coming.

Shaba-Aunty became more than my “cleaning girl” in February, when I started working from home, and she started managing the kids in the mornings, while I worked. She dropped them to playschool, picked them up, gave them lunch, and put them to bed, apart from the usual domestic chores like washing dishes, putting out or picking up the clothes, sweeping, swabbing, dusting the house and so on. I’ve written about Shaba-Aunty’s immense value in my life in an earlier post. After two plus months of life with the enhanced Shaba-Aunty services, I’ve been sent back to the dark ages in the past one week and life has been pretty bleak indeed.

Right after breakfast, I’m deluged with house work. I don’t even attempt to do as thorough a job of cleaning the house as Shaba-Aunty does, but at least I have to make a modicum of effort to sweep most areas of the house. Then there’s always a mountain of dishes to wash, and all the rest of the housework. Meanwhile, there are the two pesky devils, demanding to be entertained and threatening to turn the house upside down unless I cooperate pronto.

Way back in the dark ages when Shaba-Aunty just did the house cleaning and buzzed off in less than an hour, I was used to handling the kids solo all day long. Besides, I wasn’t working then. Now, I’m ostensibly working – at least, I have been getting paid, so I should be working – but with two pesky devils and no Shaba-Aunty, I might as well attempt to climb Mount Everest without oxygen, so futile is any attempt to work while the kids are awake. Luckily, work has been going easy on me, so I manage to squeeze every inch out of the two hours when the kids sleep in the afternoon and make do with that… but it isn’t easy.

The simplest way to keep the kids occupied in these long, lonely days of no school and no Shaba-Aunty, has been to get them out of the house. I’ve taken them swimming three days this week, and it has them happily engaged and physically stretched, so that they eat well and go straight to sleep afterwards. Oh, and their swimming skills are improving too.

But all in all, it’s true what they say: once you get used to having household help, you can’t manage without them. I’m just waiting for poor H to get better so that Shaba-Aunty can relieve me from the drudgery of housework around the clock.

I asked her about vaccinations against chicken pox, she said that when H was small, the doctor told her that this one vaccination alone would set her back by Rs2,000, so they just didn’t do it. I wonder whether she regrets that decision now. At least her own health is not at risk, as she says she already went through her bout of chicken pox when she was young. Hopefully the girls won’t get it now… that would be a disaster.

Harmful Effects of Artificial Sweeteners

This article was forwarded to me via email. Since I generally abstain from forwarding emails, and since my blog stats tell me that I get an average of 30-odd page views a day (can that possibly be true?) I figure I might as well post this here, with all the usual disclaimers: I don’t know if this is true, or to what extent this might be true. Since I don’t use artificial sweeteners in any form, I don’t plan to investigate this, but if you do, you might want to. Or at least, keep this in mind.

“
SWEET POISON!
A MUST READ!
In October of 2001, my sister started getting very sick. She had stomach spasms and she was having a hard time getting around. Walking was a major chore.

It took everything she had just to get out of bed; she was in so much pain.

By March 2002, she had undergone several tissue and muscle biopsies and was on 24 various prescription medications.

The doctors could not determine what was wrong with her. She was in so much pain, and so sick she just knew she was dying.

She put her house, bank accounts, life insurance, etc., in her oldest daughter’s name, and made sure that her younger children were to be taken care of.

She also wanted her last hooray, so she planned a trip to Florida (basically in a wheelchair) for March 22nd.

On March 19 I called her to ask how her most recent tests went, and she said they didn’t find anything on the test, but they believe she had MS.

I recalled an article a friend of mine e-mailed to me and I asked my sister if she drank diet soda?

She told me that she did.

As a matter of fact, she was getting ready to crack one open that moment..

I told her not to open it, and to stop drinking the diet soda! I e-mailed her the article my friend, a lawyer, had sent.

My sister called me within 32 hours after our phone conversation and told me she had stopped drinking the diet soda AND she could walk! The muscle spasms went away. She said she didn’t feel 100% but, she sure felt a lot better.

She told me she was going to her doctor with this article and would call me when she got home.

Well, she called me, and said her doctor was amazed!

He is going to call all of his MS patients to find out if they consumed artificial sweeteners of any kind.

In a nutshell, she was being poisoned by the Aspartame in the diet soda….and literally dying a slow and miserable death.

When she got to Florida March 22, all she had to take was one pill, and that was a pill for the Aspartame poisoning!
She is well on her way to a complete recovery.

And she is walking!
No wheelchair!

This article saved her life.

If it says ‘SUGAR FREE’ on the label;
DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT IT!

I have spent several days lecturing at the WORLD ENVIRONMENTAL CONFERENCE on ‘ASPARTAME,’ marketed as ‘Nutra Sweet,’ ‘Equal,’ and ‘Spoonful.’

In the keynote address by the EPA, it was announced that in the United States in 2001 there is an epidemic of multiple sclerosis and systemic lupus.
It was difficult to determine exactly what toxin was causing this to be rampant.

I stood up and said that I was there to lecture on exactly that subject..

I will explain why Aspartame is so dangerous:

When the temperature of this sweetener exceeds 86 degrees F, the wood alcohol in ASPARTAME converts to formaldehyde and then to formic acid, which in turn causes metabolic acidosis. Formic acid is the poison found in the sting of fire ants.
The methanol toxicity mimics, among other conditions, multiple sclerosis and systemic lupus.

Many people were being diagnosed in error.

Although multiple sclerosis is not a death sentence, Methanol toxicity is!

Systemic lupus has become almost as rampant as multiple sclerosis, especially with Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi drinkers.

The victim usually does not know that the Aspartame is the culprit. He or she continues its use; irritating the lupus to such a degree that it may become a life-threatening condition.

We have seen patients with systemic lupus become asymptotic, once taken off diet sodas.

In cases of those diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, most of the symptoms disappear. We’ve seen many cases where vision loss returned and hearing loss improved markedly.

This also applies to cases of tinnitus and fibromyalgia. During a lecture, I said, ‘If you are using ASPARTAME (Nutra Sweet, Equal, Spoonful, etc) and you suf fer from fibromyalgia symptoms, spasms, shooting, pains, numbness in your legs, cramps,
vertigo, dizziness, headaches, tinnitus,
joint pain, unexplainable depression, anxiety attacks, slurred speech, blurred vision, or memory loss you probably have ASPARTAME poisoning!’
People were jumping up during the lecture saying, ‘I have some of these symptoms. Is it reversible?’
Yes!
Yes!
Yes!

STOP drinking diet sodas and be alert for Aspartame on food labels!

Many products are fortified with it!

This is a serious problem.

Dr. Espart (one of my speakers) remarked that so many people seem to be symptomatic for MS and during his recent visit to a hospice; a nurse stated that six of her friends, who were heavy Diet Coke addicts, had all been diagnosed with MS. This is beyond coincidence!

Diet soda is NOT a diet product! It is a chemically altered, multiple SODIUM (salt) and ASPARTAME containing product that actually makes you crave carbohydrates.

It is far more likely to make you GAIN weight!

These products also contain formaldehyde, which stores in the fat cells, particularly in the hips and thighs. Formaldehyde is an absolute toxin and is used primarily to preserve ’tissue specimens.’

Many products we use every day contain this chemical but we SHOULD NOT store it IN our body!

Dr. H. J. Roberts stated in his lectures that once free of the ‘diet products’ and with no significant increase in exercise; his patients lost an average of 19 pounds over a trial period.

Aspartame is especially dangerous for diabetics.

We found that some physicians believed that they had a patient with retinopathy; in fact, they had symptoms caused by Aspartame.

The Aspartame drives the blood sugar out of control.

Thus, diabetics may suffer acute memory loss due to the fact that aspartic acid and phenylalanine are NEUROTOXIC when taken without the other amino acids necessary for a good balance.

Treating diabetes is all about BALANCE.
Especially with diabetics, the Aspartame passes the blood/brain barrier and it then deteriorates the neurons of the brain; causing various levels of brain damage, seizures,
Depression, Manic depression,
Panic attacks, Uncontrollable anger and rage.

Consumption of Aspartame causes these same symptoms in non-diabetics as well.

Documentation and observation also reveal that thousands of children diagnosed with ADD and ADHD have had complete turnarounds in their behavior when these chemicals have been removed from their diet.

So called ‘behavior modification prescription drugs’ (Ritalin and others) are no longer needed.

Truth be told, they were never NEEDED in the first place!

Most of these children were being ‘poisoned’ on a daily basis with the very foods that were ‘better for them than sugar.’

It is also suspected that the Aspartame in thousands of pallets of Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi consumed by men and women fighting in the Gulf War, may be partially to blame for the well-known Gulf War Syndrome.

Dr. Roberts warns that it can cause birth defects, i.e. mental retardation, if taken at the time of conception and during early pregnancy.

Children are especially at risk for neurological disorders and should NEVER be given artificial sweeteners.

There are many different case histories to relate of children suffering grand mal seizures and other neurological disturbances talking about a plague of neurological diseases directly caused by the use of this dead ly poison.’

Herein lies the problem:

There were Congressional Hearings when Aspartame was included in 100 different products and strong objection was made concerning its use. Since this initial hearing, there have been two subsequent hearings, and still nothing has been done. The drug and chemical lobbies have very deep pockets.

Sadly, MONSANTO’S patent on Aspartame has EXPIRED! There are now over 5,000 products on the market that contain this deadly chemical and there will be thousands more introduced. Everybody wants a ‘piece of the Aspartame pie.’

I assure you that MONSANTO, the creator of Aspartame, knows how deadly it is..

And isn’t it ironic that MONSANTO funds, among others, the American Diabetes Association, the American Dietetic Association and the Conference of the American College of Physicians?

This has been recently exposed in the New York Times. These [organizations] cannot criticize any additives or convey their link to MONSANTO because they take money from the food industry and are required to endorse their products.

Senator Howard Metzenbaum wrote and presented a bill that would require label warnings on products containing Aspartame, especially regarding pregnant women, children and infants.

The bill would also institute independent studies on the known dangers and the problems existing in the general population regarding seizures, changes in brain chemistry, neurological changes and behavioral symptoms.

The bill was killed.

It is known that the powerful drug and chemical lobbies are responsible for this, letting loose the hounds of disease and death on an unsuspecting and uninformed public. Well, you’re informed now! “

The Dieting Saga

I started dieting in all earnestness almost four months ago. That’s a long time to sustain a diet, and I’ve naturally slipped back into my usual dieting mode – eating whatever I please and just hoping I somehow lose weight.

Only, this time, it seems to be working.

I hate it when I can’t understand why things happen, but this time, should I be complaining? Really? No, not really. Just wondering aloud.

I think a few things are working for me now, that have never worked the same way before. Due to being homebound, I’m eating homemade food at least 18-19 meals a week (considering 3 meals a day, which is the norm). While working, I used to eat in the office cafeteria at least a couple of times a week, and eat out on weekends quite a bit. And I used to snack on coffee and biscuits from time to time.

I still snack in the early evening hours, but I’m trying to snack less, and on less unhealthy foods. It helps that there’s very little access to unhealthy food, compared to the office environment, where you only have to stroll down to the cafeteria.

My caffeine intake has reduced dramatically of late – it was too closely associated with my nightmarish episode of gastroenteritis to seem very appetizing even now – and my lactose tolerance has improved noticeably, so that I’m now getting quite a regular inflow of dairy products. I’m not sure why that – or either of those, actually – should help me lose weight, though.

I was always one for skipping breakfast, but now I haven’t done that for months, maybe years. And because of that, and also because of the twins having to have their meals at more or less regular intervals, I’m eating my meals at very regular and sensible times during the day. So I’m usually not starved by mealtime, and I’m also not eating meals when I’m not hungry, just because it is mealtime. I think I used to do a lot of both of those when my eating hours were less regular.

And I have managed to switch from eating white rice at every opportunity to eating red rice as much as possible. I don’t like it much, but I’m surviving.

Plus, I’ve managed to keep up at least a modicum of exercise most days of the week, illnesses, travel, and other vagaries of life notwithstanding.

My biggest problem is, and has been for a very long time, perhaps has always been, that food is one of my best friends. If I’m bored, I want food; if I’m stressed, I want food; if I’m depressed, I want food; if I’m happy, I certainly want food – and drink; if I’m reading a book, I want food; if I’m watching TV, I want food; if I’m home alone, I want food; if I’m meeting friends, I want food. Food, in short, is a vital ingredient of every mood and every phase of life. And when I say “food” you know what kind of food I’m talking about, right? Yeah, all that kind of food.

Once you’re reduced to eating only homemade food – and only healthy homemade food at that (an important qualifier, considering that I’m quite capable of cooking up some extremely delicious and extremely unhealthy homemade food) – food no longer serves any of these functions. It’s just food – something to keep you from starving. In fact, once it’s healthy and homemade, I’m not even sure it qualifies as food any more, it’s just stuff, something to chew.

So perhaps, another reason why this is working for me now when it hasn’t many times before, is that the kids are keeping me busy. Too busy to do much about getting to all that sort of food that isn’t stuff, the sort of food that used to be my best friend.

I suppose that’s a good thing.

But, if dieting deprives me of one of my best friends, food, you have to wonder: Why, exactly, am I doing this to myself?

Partly, of course, it’s simply so I can be slim and sexy; there’s that little blue dress I want to be able to fit into again. I want to look young, or at least, not old, as I approach 35 – and not being overweight has a lot to do with that. Plus, to a lesser degree, I want to be healthy; I enjoy tennis and trekking, and both of these activities are so much easier if you are the right weight, not carrying around several kilos extra.

So clichéd, isn’t it – wanting to look young and sexy and to be healthy?

But there’s more to it than that.

It has to do with my self-image – with how I see myself, what I see myself becoming, and what I’d like to be. As a stay-at-home mom who’s given up her job/career, I can see my world being centered around my kids to the exclusion of all else. This, in itself, is not a bad thing. But I don’t want to see myself turning into the kind of mom who only thinks of meals, servants, and the cost of groceries, and has no interests outside of home and hearth. The kind of person who never goes anywhere, never does anything, and never has anything to say for herself. That’s the kind of person who is usually way overweight, dresses sloppily, doesn’t spend time or money on herself and doesn’t really give a damn. Ok, that’s a stereotype, but it’s not a stereotype I want to fit into. Ever. Maybe that’s not a bad way to be, that woman might be happy, content… but that’s not who I want to be.

I have always seen myself as an energetic person with too many irons in the fire and always struggling a bit to keep them all going, but managing all right – apart from the occasional crisis. I’m the kind of person who is a little too padded to be slim, a little too dishevelled to be well-groomed, way too casual to be sexy, but way too busy to be fat. I think that’s the way I’ve always been, and that’s the way I’d like to be even as a mom, even as a stay-at-home mom. I don’t see being a SAHM as an excuse to be fat and lazy – I see it as a damn good reason not to be.

So, I’m determined: I’m going to lose weight, or die trying.

Earache

Making the mental shift from being irresponsible DINKs to responsible parents is much more difficult in some respects than I’d ever imagined.

As irresponsible DINKs, we never had much of a medicine cabinet at home. Perhaps a couple of ancient band-aids, some disinfectant, maybe some Crocin/Disprin (basically paracetamol) tablets and that was about it. We rarely fell ill, and when we did, we had the luxury of waiting it out, or of rushing off to the doctor or hospital at any time whatsoever. If one of us was out, the other could go alone, but we usually went along with each other. It wasn’t anything we had to think about or plan for.

With kids, it’s different. I learnt long ago to keep painkiller, fever, cough, diarrhea, and vomiting medicines handy, along with copious quantities of disinfectant and a good stock of band-aids. (Laxatives and suppositories were recently added to this stock.) Once a doctor recommends a general medicine for one of the girls, it goes into their medicine cabinet and remains part of my stock, as long as I know the dosage.

On the numerous occasions that Amit and I have had to visit a doctor since the advent of the kids, we have almost always gone alone. It’s the only practical way to do it. The other person stays home and holds fort. It requires a bit of coordination – specially if I’m the one visiting the doc – but it still doesn’t require too much thought.

Last night, I realized that we can’t go on this way at all.

It was 1.30 at night, it was raining, the kids were blissfully asleep, and I had an earache.

Rather, I had the mother of all earaches.

I’ve suffered a couple of really bad migraines in my life, some terrible menstrual cramps in my adolescent years, and a fractured leg which I walked on for a week (without painkillers) before going to a doctor. I’d love to say that the earache beat all of those prior pain experiences hands-down, but, because the memory of pain is always so much less than the pain itself, I’ll say just this much – it was way up there along with the worst of them. I had no idea that an ear could even hurt that much. It felt like the whole left side of my face was swollen and heavy and red and ready to burst, but, much to my mystification, there was absolutely no external manifestation of the pain. I remember that the evening I broke my leg, I kept it still and straight in bed, and I actually slept. Soundly, albeit with interruptions of sudden pain. But with the earache, not only did I not sleep, I couldn’t even let Amit sleep, poor fellow.

He raided the medical kit. But he found no painkillers! I’m generally against taking pills, especially painkillers, but if we’d had a brufen I’d have swallowed it and begged for more, it was that bad. I have no idea whether painkillers work with earaches, but if he had even offered me a digestive tablet and told me it was a painkiller, I’d have swallowed it. In the end, all we had was Crocin, so I swallowed that and waited. At that point, the pain was so bad, especially if I tried to lie down, that I was convinced I should go to hospital right away, even if I had to go alone. Or worse, even if I had to lug Amit and the kids along. The thought of waiting it out till morning, still a good 7 hours away, was completely intolerable.

There was nothing else I could do, so I tried steam inhalation. It must have helped, or the Crocin must have kicked in, because the pain abated enough that I could stop moaning. I could even carry on a sane conversation. A while later, it was bearable enough so that I could lie down, and when I did, thankfully, I slept.

So after all that, when I finally went to the doctor in the afternoon, do you know what he said? “There’s too much wax in your ear, I can’t see anything, use these drops three times a day and come back after five days.”

Five days!? No treatment for five whole days!?

Small Acts of Parental Love… And Torture

There are lots of things a parent does in everyday life, which bear testimony to their love for their children. A few examples: dealing with poop and puke and everything inbetween; showing patience in the face of tantrums, illness, general unreasonableness, and everything inbetween; acting chauffeur, butler, cook, and many things inbetween… and more!

But I don’t know if any one rather common act of a parent speaks more of love than this: steam inhalation.

So, your kid/s has a cold. You give the drops and syrups and whatnot, you wrap them up warmly and feed them soup and orange juice or whatever. That’s easy. But that’s not all. You have to give them steam. You have to get a kettle full of boiling water and place it in close proximity to the said sick child and keep the said sick child in close proximity to the said kettle of boiling water for several minutes. And ideally, you do this thrice a day for several days.

Up until this time around, my kids didn’t object to this treatment too much. I’d set an electric kettle on a low table, put a chair next to it, drape a large bedsheet over the whole lot, and get under the sheet with one child on each knee. Before the heat built up, I’d have them engrossed in songs, fairy tales, or other random mommy-babble. They’d sit and listen till they fell asleep or I ran out of inspiration. Amit once even video-taped the whole sequence – from the outside, all you see is a voluminous, tent-like bedsheet with strange sounds emanating from it – it was bizarre. But hilarious.

But, alas, children grow up. And change. And in this particular respect, that change has taken the shape of an aversion to the talking-bedsheet treatment. Tara, actually, still doesn’t mind it too much. As I usually subject them to this treatment just before afternoon naptimes and end of day bedtimes, she’s too sleepy to do anything other than drowse on my shoulder. Mrini, on the other hand…

Wails.

And wails.

And wails.

And goes on wailing right until the end of the session.

See, I think my kids are the cutest, the bestest, the adorable-est… the usual, you know? But when they start wailing… (insert gnashing of teeth and pulling out of hair sounds here)

I mean, it’s not as if I enjoy the steam treatment. Whether I have a cold or not (but especially if not), probably the thing I least want to do is spend ten minutes babbling under a bedsheet while getting cooked pink like a tomato. And believe me, it does absolutely NO good to my hair. This blasted steam treatment is a headache to set up (gathering up sheet, chair, low table, electric kettle and rigging up the latter so as to be inaccessible to the kids, and then gathering up the kids…), a headache to administer, and is thoroughly detrimental to our electricity bill to boot (to say nothing of the environment in general).

Yet, in the interests of good health, it must be done. I hate it. She hates it. It doesn’t seem to be doing either of us any damned good. But it must be done.

So – in my limited experience, this has to be one of the most difficult everyday-kinda demands on parental affection. And to think that she’s probably going to hold this against me for the rest of her life. I can just see it now – an adult (or adolescent) Mrini turning on me in tears and saying: “You! You used to truss me up and steam me when I was just a baby! How could you!?”

And that’s a good question.

Gastro

Being down with gastroenteritis is not fun. Of course, you already knew this. I’m only telling you this because I just experienced this first hand. The kids had not even recovered from their stomach bug when I went down with a dramatic episode of vomiting and diarrhoea on Monday night. And when I say I went down with it, I mean I really, really went down with it.

By the time I finally went to the doctor on Thursday morning, I hadn’t eaten for three days. How I was still functioning, I don’t know, but I could only stay upright if I didn’t eat. Even a few bites of generally wholesome food was guaranteed to put me on the throne for the next several hours.

Night times were interrupted by mission-critical rushes to the bathroom and suddenly I could appreciate more clearly than ever before the full advantage of keeping the twins bare-bottomed instead of wasting vital seconds pulling down pants.

And the fever came and went and came again.

Amit took almost the entire week off, but compensated for that by working overtime on his automobile research and purchase program.

And there were oh-so-many cars to test-drive – more than I had energy for.

And I still had my income tax return to complete and file!

While the twins tried their best to bite, hit, pull and push each other out of existence.

All I can say is, thank god and Alexander Fleming for antibiotics. Where would we be without them?