AI cooking?

“No don’t get the fried stuff” “why?” “because we don’t want it” “but last time you saw the chips packet you guys hammered it down and finished it. You guys eat it.” “ya, exactly. We eat it. Doesn’t mean we want it. We don’t want it. We don’t want to eat it and so please don’t get it home. Right now we are enjoying eating home cooked food and good food through the day. We will eat fruits. Whatever. But please don’t get the fried stuff.”

Jasmine is the ever care giver. She sees what her babies eat and takes that as the cue to what they really want to eat. For years her strategy isnot to really ask us. We always give the wrong answers, she contends. She sees how we react and then she figures. By now she knows under which circumstances Jispa will eat more food. She knows that when she serves hot rotis I eat a few more. Which is a problem. I don’t want to eat more. I eat more because she is making them. It’s a circular thing.

Nothing worries Jasmine more than seeing an empty bowl of food after dinner. “Oh. You want more, should I make something.” “NO.. I don’t want more. I was just trying to finish the food you made. I thought instead of throwing it, since its less, I thought I will eat it and finish it.” So now when I finish the bowl I make it a point to first ask everyone if someone wants and state that I don’t want and then with the mandatory disclaimers, I finish the bowl. I don’t want it, its extra but still I am having it. Then it works.

While writing this, I realised an interesting problem of artificial intelligence. Hmmm. This is the same problem that Ai would face while decoding human behaviour. AI is very similar to Jasmine. It seeks to capture exhibited behaviour and response to stimuli. It doesn’t ask the consumer what he/she wants. Its simply sees behaviour / stimuli and adjusts accordingly.  This way it understands you better than what you do of yourself.

This is the hallowed promise of AI. But in this is also the curse of AI. It will seek only exhibited behaviour and not consider motivation behind the behaviour. This could be the achilles heel of the Ai as we implement it. While doing one AI project, I realised that one of the problems that AI had was that basis behaviour we would give out stimuli and basis the stimuli we would see further behaviour. This seemed to me a self-fulfilling prophesy. The whole problem would be that if we are stuck in a behaviour and stimuli that is of our doing – we will miss if there is a behaviour outside of the proverbial well. That’s why I insisted on inserting trojans - Randomly generated stimuli even if it against the data of the behaviour. This way we would also be able to catch a random trend starting. So just because a type of behaviour was not seen so far doesn’t mean it doesn’t get captured.

It’s a bit tricky to understand. To simplify – the AI may start seeing that every time Jasmine makes hot roti, they eat more. So, it churns out more and more hot rotis not knowing that possibly sometimes or every once in a while, Jasmine should churn out Hot Rice to see what happens. Are bored of hot rotis or a new trend towards brown rice is coming in that the AI doesn’t catch as the current data continues to show upticks. It’s what I would call a ‘staying in the well’ syndrome.

The other thing I realise while writing this blog is that the AI must consider human motivation for behaviour. So, while I am eating more rotis, is it that I really want to eat more just because they are hot. May be a deeper insight into the behaviour of me eating more can be taken in. Possibly I love eating rotis but more importantly I want Jasmine to eat along with me. I don’t mind eating a roti less. Understanding this is a crucial dimension for AI going forward.

Simply blindly following correlation over causation will only take you this far. You easily find yourself on top of the curve that has flattened and leave you with no growth opportunity. Combination of trojans and insights and research can add into the mix so as to code for growth that is break through instead of just paying lip service to ‘I have implemented AI’.

Most CEO’s do not understand this and simply expect an AI engine to ingest more variables. They like saying we have AI and that we have ingested 5000 points of data. It sounds very good and it a good lie to perpetrate but it’s just that – a lie. AI would need some serious soul searching on behalf of the coders and marketing nut cases to make it work. I shudder to think of what would happen over a period as I exited my previous company where I created this juggernaut.

Sometimes I feel like a physicist who cracks the code for energy is dismayed to see it being used for weapons of mass destruction. I create an AI engine to see the top use it for random things. They just don’t understand it. Then I connect it to a mass communication system only to see that they will use it to think through wrong conclusions and send wrong communication to a wrong audience and overdo to kill it. Entropy is real.

So coming back – Jasmine is enjoying the fact that during this lock down she is able to feed us hot rotis and we are fighting back by stating upfront exactly how many we will eat. This way its in control. And both win. Plus I sit to eat a little late – I keep telling her that I will sit only delaying it enough so that when she done making my hot rotis I will have at the table eating her dinner with me.

I really care about talking to her more than I care about getting fatter. Wouldn’t you agree?

love yourself (with a purpose)

I used to look down on foodies. I saw them as fat food junkies who were lazy and ate anything without really appreciating the food or worse still, appreciating food and nothing else. they lived to eat and their entertainment was only what you could eat. the archetype of the fat foodie was in my head and i had a healthy disdain for their kind. For me food was simple, put in your tummy as fast as possible and run forward. More cheese and fat was good as long as you could burn it. I for the hell of it, could never understand why people would like to spend their time and money to search for interesting places to eat and get ‘foodertained’.

My tryst with food I think started later in life, I think around five six years ago. From 2004 to 2008, my job involved some bit of traveling and I enjoyed the luxuries of flying the country and staying in five star hotels. I couldn't care less about going out and experiencing the city. For me it was a simple thing of getting to the hotel, ordering dine in and filling the bath tub and sinking in with the luxuries that are on offer. When the 2008 crash happened, traveling was the first to go out form the window along with five star stays. It was at that time that I realized that I had travelled but not really seen anything in any city. The big one I remember very clearly was when I was in Kolkata and my hotel was next door to the Kolkata zoo, I simply stayed put and never ventured next door. So when travel stopped I realized what I needed to do when it restarted. 

So when in 2010 I began to travel again for work, I decided to see the sights and see the cities in all their glory. Also a long work day meant that most of the time the free time would be in the evening and in the evening if you want to see the city then it has to be more gastronomical than anything else.

Thats how i slowly started sampling what the city has to offer in terms of food more than anything else. Amongst the food memories that i have these few stand out - the chai in the earthen pot in kolkata, the chills pakoda in vizag, the crazy food market at Manek chowk in Ahmedabad and the sarafa bazaar in Indore, the delhi parantha waali galli in chandini chowk and the soya chop sabzi in bengali market (delhi) which i can never forget, murugan idli in Chennai, the bhendi chips in ananda bhavan in Bengaluru, parathas somewhere in Chandigarh, and so on… Such is the rich experience I have had over the last few years and ofcourrse i have obviously missed many more lovely experiences. Plus these are the ones I have experienced as an official traveler. Those that I have had a leisure traveler are also too numerous.

The leisure ones I think started in earnest with our London trip. In London, we were out the whole day and the thing we subsisted on were cheap sandwiches which you get everywhere. you just pick up with a drink and chips and run along doing whatever you wanted to do. So thats what we ended up doing. On the first day I told Jispa - no matter how tasty the sandwich, we not have the same thing twice. So we experimented with every different sandwich and bread that we could and I found a willing ally in Jispa. We discussed the texture and the tastes and we enjoyed the variety that London had to offer us.

Now that I found food interesting and my palate began to develop, my mind followed and I began to look closely at what I could understand on food. Texture, taste, ingredients etc gave me insights into the kind of behavior and attitudes people exhibited and it began to shape a lot about what I saw and understood. The best was when Jasmine’s brother took us to the Hilton resort at Shillim (lonavala) which by itself was an extremely pricey hotel. There, we were there for a few days and I was bored with the standard fare so we experimented with a new restaurant in the hotel. We walked and started ordering only to realize that it was Fine Dine. To my amazement, i loved the food and loved sharing about the experiences with Jispa. He palate too had refined and she could also find discernible differences in the texture and the food and the course. I was hooked.

So this time on Jasmine’s birthday I booked ourselves at the Masala Library which I was told had a lovely tasting menu which was designed as a nine course plated meal. ( a lot of people in India don't even know what plated means). WE went and enjoy the mean and we were critical of it enough to know what we were served was clearly NOT clearly up to mark. It was the most expensive meal that would have eaten with my family and it was an experience in itself. All my life i have had times of feeling rich and feeling poor. I would feel rich only to create a (happy) instance where I went and over invested and ended up being poor till salaries rose.

These days I am feeling mixed. Rich due to a surplus spending potential but risk averse as i work in an insecure start up environment. So I thought why not take food as an experience and enjoy it with Jispa and the family. Jasmine too enjoys her food but she is an extremely tough nut to crack. She is not easily amused or vocal about it. Being from her Dand family she loves sweet and cold stuff more than anything else. Very rarely I have seen her get interested in food and drink and she rarely praises the food. It would take a lot out of her to get her to appreciate fine food. i must seen her praise some food only a few times in the time I have been with her. If she like an experience then it better be world class. Jispa and me on the other hand act like critics enjoying, praising critiquing the food we have anywhere, including possibly Burger King! We can get intellectual about fries with Jasmine wondering what the fuss would be about.

I think Jispa and me just love having these overtly intellectual conversations knowing that we are just having a ball of a time having  conversation.

For the record, the masala Library was a sore disappointment and not be had. Shit bland and overpriced menu and hardly beautifully decorated and plated. It was just a north Indian explosion of fat and taste. Rich wannabe Punju style with nothing in terms of texture and differentiated taste to show for it. Nothing at all. Just normal punk food served with some feeble attempt at style. Zilch!

moving on - there is something I also want to write about - Chakrasan. Go ahead and google it. Its a pose in Yoga. AN the humble chakrasan is the pose that stands for a lot of things in my life right now. I joined pilates class to get my back into shape and stretch my muscles. Later i realized it was a yogalates class. Basically a combo of yoga with pilates. It seeks to strengthen core muscles and promote a generally healthy body. I tried it at the start and it immediately helped strengthen my back which had started to hurt again in the middle. My core developed and so did my general strength and health. Twice a week in the morning I go for it. After two odd months I realized something… I hated the class but it was good for me. I hate the shit ass yoga music played and I hate the exercises and I hate the stretching I have to do. I hate the surya namaskars I have to do in different variations, but I know one thing - its good for me. I think I have always hated gymming out. I prefer playing some sport or a game instead. This is torture for me of the highest order. So many exercises that end up really hurting while I do it. Especially the plank! Its really really a tough thing to do. Then you have variations and other stuff, I hate. I hate the warm up routine and I hate the end routine. I keep looking at the watch as to what time will this end. And i hate the chakrasan. But I discovered a weird kind of will power while doing it. I realized that I was willing to do something that I completely hated and for me its is a source of strength and some proof that at 40 I still had control over what is right for me. Wow.

And chakrasan is the one thing that proves it for me. At the start I just couldn't do the chakrasan. then slowly slowly I could manage it. then one time, I was determined and I did it. the next time again I did it again a little more determined. this time, I sprained a little on the back where I think some of my muscles or nerves got entangled. So the last time, this week, I simply thought a little, cleared my mind and with my own time, I slowly lifted my body. I could do the chakrasan! wow. That was good. But still it doesn't escape the fact that I hate the class. And I am so proud of myself for hating the class and yet going in for it regularly in the morning! We all do things we love and we willingly make sacrifices for it but for doing something you hate and yet doing it as it is good for you in the long run, you know you have grown a little older, when that happens, isn't it?

Coming back to food, since I am lactose intolerant, I discovered the joy of having coffee with soy milk at the Starbucks. My favorite is the cappuccino soy, dry. Dry means that they put a lot more foam than the liquid from the soy milk. Nice strong and tasty with a ratchet of sugar. But when its hot, I have struggled for  finding relevance at the Starbucks. And I found a new one. A double shot expresso, served with Soy milk on the side. Along with Ice. Its funny because this is not on the menu. A double shot expresso with milk on the side is the cheapest on the menu and it not meant to be cold. Cold drinks are expensive at Starbucks. The cold coffee with soy milk is expensive as the cold coffee is made with cream, so you can choose not to add cream but you get charged for it. They aren't allowed to expresso on the rocks so I ask for all the ingredients separately and get it made according to my specifications at the bar. I love the strong drink I get and its the cheapest thing on the menu. haha! The joys of gaming your favorite place to be and getting your best thing done!

Also since Jispa got her cell phone every time we get into the car, we end up connecting her cell to the car bluetooth and listen to her collection of songs. I think the basic kind of music that the kids like hasn't change from my time. But its nice to get acquainted with music this way. Jispa, unlike me, loves her music and understands it. So who am I to stand in the way. So i happily listen to it and learn from it. New learning - Justin Bieber - the kid who shot to stardom and was tanked for crap music has made a come back. he is fans i am told are called ‘Beliebers’ and his latest album (Purpose) has been a hit and a come back to silence critics. Ofcourse not all critics are amused and of course there are detractors, but the point is that he changed his songs and the fans love it. Non Beilebers have turned and are listening. Jispa has it in the collection of songs she plays and I have heard it. I can safely say I am impressed. It is a bold new avatar for the guy!

here is the song and the music video

jispa and I both enjoyed it!

and now i saw this - a youtube response to the song. the Original is a guys perspective on a  break up and this one has both perspectives. The youtube stars now sing a song with both perspectives with the chick giving it a hard shot where it hurts and she is the one using expletives! Hah! that is one hell of a video. Yes for the record I saw it with jispa and I did not bleep the expletive!

guide to the future and past

I have on my left hand something that also tells me the time. I bought the Moto 360. It is basically a smart watch. On a lot of the mobile revolution I was wrong or caught napping. When mobiles first came out, I thought they were hardly of any use. Then when Black Berrys made a lot of noise, I was late onto the market. I couldn’t understand what the fuss was all about. What do you get by checking your phone regularly for email? Why would you need that? And of course all those investment bankers in their suits in the lifts, spending eth valuable 30 seconds to see their mail as opposed to simply saying hi, or at the least acknowledging the presence of another human being. So when the iPhone first came out, I too was unimpressed. What use could it possibly have in my life.

The touch screen sensation missed me. I had just upgraded myself to the Black berry and used it for a good three years before one day; the BB gave up on me. I came back from a vacation and it refused to spring back to life. Now I recently saw a friend using the smart watch and I was hooked. My first reaction was what my measured reaction is – I am not spending that kind of money. No way. Why should I spend this money? I am a bit of a gujju here. Does it really add that much value to my life? Do I really need something like this? What use is it actually? I kept thinking about it and I realized that I am what I am because I understand technology very well. I am constantly ahead of the curve in technology, I read technology, I use technology then I can’t let the iPhone mistake to happen again. I must be there in the middle of it all. I must be the early adopter and I must see how it works and evolves. Today I claim to understand Google and what it does for me because I have seen it evolve from what it origins were. I see it as a human. If I understand its soul at its core it will bare it to me, with all its mysteries. So when the android wear 1.0 has launched, I should be stupid not to adapt to it first up. I must.

Coming back to the soul. Technology is nothing but the manifestation of the human mind. It tries to do what a mind has taught it to do. The inventor has a belief and a philosophy. What is that philosophy? We must understand it and we must internalize it. Once you understand this core, you will be in a position to leverage it for you.  Mathematics can do everything; it can twist the universe and bend it. It proves that the world is far more than what we can see. In fact it predicted what you cannot see and hence you have to look out for what you cannot see and then find it – aha – the black holes. But at the end of it, it also has a philosophy, that of its writer. So if you understand the writer then you understand his philosophy and then you can understand its core. Whenever I try t understand some math guy or some algo, I try and decipher its core philosophy. Once that’s done – you can understand where its come from. That’s why history is so interesting. Once you understand where you come from you can predict where you will go… atleast it will give you probabilities.

Here is one – you are what you eat

Researchers have found that people from rice-growing southern China are more interdependent and holistic thinkers, while those from the wheat-growing north are more independent and analytical.

The researchers call it “rice theory”, and they believe the psychological differences of southern and northern Chinese stem from their ancestors’ subsistence techniques – rice farming needs co-operation and planning; wheat farming requires less co-operation between neighbours.

…The last experiment assessed the nepotism, or group loyalty, of the participants. Students were given hypothetical scenarios and asked how they would treat friends and strangers in reaction to helpful or harmful actions. A defining characteristic of holistic culture is that people draw sharp contrasts between friend and stranger.

“The data suggests that legacies of farming are continuing to affect people,” Thomas Talhelm, of the University of Virginia and lead author of the research, said. “It has resulted in two distinct cultural psychologies that mirror the differences between East Asia and the West.”

Talhelm and his team concluded that the co-operative nature of rice-growing has cultivated a culture of interdependence, while wheat-growing has cultivated independence.

“I think the rice theory provides some insight to why the rice-growing regions of East Asia are less individualistic than the Western world or northern China, even with their wealth and modernisation,” Talhelm said.

We went to Elephanta recently and I had read up on it before hand. I had a book that I had bought many years ago but we never did manage to go to Elephanta island. Here we took a local guide but I soon asked him to keep quiet. He got his facts wrong. I started off explaining to the kids what each statue was and the significance of the story behind it. Each one is a picture that tells a moral much like Aesop’s fables. It was lovely. I also did not know how much I knew. Now I plan to read more and more and then I want to be a guide at least to Elephant. I want to explore the island and go often enough. I want understand it more. This is near home, it is exquisite and then let me see if I can do guiding to Elephanta for certain tourists on weekends. I would love to be a guide. Today I know more and I can explain more than most guides on the island. I know the stories and the mythology behind it. The significance of Shiva murals and the other gods in it. Just a little more research and I could be in business. What say? I want to be a guide that says – come along – really low or free to join and work completely on tips. If you like you pay, else it’s up to you. Just like teaching – money can’t be the motivator. In teaching you don’t get or want tips, but here that is critical. If I am able to make it fun and happy for all, who knows, this could be a great source of self-fulfillment. Teaching helps me learn so much, being a guide will also help me. I want to be a guide. Elephant is the perfect starting block.

I was speaking o Jispa about Elephanta and was asking her about the trip. She then remarked that if I loved history and mythology so much, why I didn’t pick it up as a career or something. What to do… in school, I hated history which was nothing but a bunch of dates to remember. I remember asking mom – what use is history to us? Hmmm.. today I try and explain the importance of these subjects to Jispa. They are important. Yesterday I was explaining why civics is important. And I explained how she wouldn’t appreciate it now, it’s almost impossible to appreciate it as a young kid but it is extremely important to understand how we are governed… by ourselves and how the structure is critical to be understood by every citizen. I have to teach her civics one of these days… I hope I can teach it without boring the crap out of her.

jalebi

Lactose intolerant.

You see a multiple level of disclaimers on chocolates and other snacks. Peanut allergy, gluten free, lactose free – whatever. I always wondered. These seemed to my mind a fad for rich countries. The Americans were in any case pretty crazy with all kind of weird alien diseases and mental allergies. Come on man, what kind of shit is peanut allergy. It’s an allergy that was designed for the villain in a Hollywood movie to have – so that he accidentally swallowed one peanut and his face instantly erupted. Normal people don’t have these allergies and why would you be so bothered about a factory that manufactured these products, as long as your food doesn’t have it.

I had a tummy issue for the last three years. My tummy would just bloat up and I would take my medicines and it would come back in place. So much so that I had two sets of pants – 2-3 inches apart. I was confident that my ayurvedic doctor would solve it. But for some reason, things would move forward and then relapse. It was pretty painful. Not painful in a physical sense but more bloody mental. Gas is a bloody irritating thing. And especially when you are active and keep playing a lot and then you look at your tummy and feel like a piece of shit. Of all things – I don’t especially work towards an Adonis body. I don’t like the big muscle look. For me it was always the lean sportsman that I admired. Lean, fast and light. And then I look at my tummy and wonder. I actually thought I was fat around the tummy.

Then it got really bad. Whenever the medicine effect lapsed, any physical activity would have triggered a massive debilitating headache that made me go completely numb. It was so irritating that I would not be able to remain patient with anything. It took a lot of effort to not get angry and irritated at any one even madly irritating. That was the final straw and I was then referred to a gastro specialist. I was convinced that I had germs in my tummy. Because I could eat and eat and all I wanted to do was eat to neutralize the acid build up in the tummy.

When I went to the doc, I was prepared for an endoscopy to figure what’s inside. She patiently heard me and then she asked me if I wanted an endoscopy done. I shrugged. A few more questions later she said – before you do the procedure – do one thing. Go off lactose for ten days and see. She thought I could be simply lactose intolerant. I was ready to give it a shot. Who knows?

The effect – in just 10 hours – all gone. Wow. This was a magic pill. I have been lactose free since the last month or so and then it’s been all great. Play as much as you want, no migraine. Yes the dreaded M word. I refused to call it migraine. But that’s what she called it and poof – it’s gone. I used to try to cure it with acidity pills. So there – I had this Lactose intolerance.

This is such a difficult diet for India. We don’t understand Vegan. We can’t understand how to remove lactose from our food. No lactose means no milk, no butter, no ghee, no cheese, no curd and no buttermilk – nothing. No cheesy pasta, no Indian sweets, no chocolates, no pizza, no dal makhani, no paneer food, no butter on bread, no biscuits, no cake, no ice cream  – it eliminates almost anything that is unhealthy, fattening and sinful.  I am going crazy while travelling and eating outside. You can’t tell the waiter about serving Vegan food. He doesn’t understand it at all. So you have to explain no milk, no cream, no ghee no butter. He looks at you and is confused. He is normally accustomed to no oil. A few of them are dumb struck and a few of them are far more cooperative. They rush in and ask the chef and come back with clear information.  I drive them up the wall and they drive me up the wall. Why is it so difficult for Indians to understand dietary requirements? Oh dam you. I think the only thing we have learnt thanks to our obscenely high heart attack rate is – No OIL. Everything else remains a mystery with them.

But hell, As of now – I am enjoying it. It’s a great way to get healthy. Get allergic from the bad stuff. I can actually go to various parts of the country and come back fit. I can’t have almost anything. The saving grace is that Samosas and other fried stuff seem largely ok. But more than me it’s my co travelers and those around me that feel amazing sympathy for me. They feel bad. They wonder what they should eat. Oh go on. I don’t care. The fun ones try and make me jealous. Oh go on, I don’t care.

Food was never one of my big desires. I never did really be tempted by the palette. I am happy eating simple stuff. Do I really miss anything for now? For now, none. I am happy. It’s a big change for my eating habits but no real change for me. Of course from now on every place we go out to eat with someone I will first have a 10 minute conversation explaining my intolerance and then looking at their faces wondering – how the hell will I survive. Then simple eating will start. It will be a fun ride.

And the invariable question – how long? Well this is supposed to be on for every. Let’s see. Forever on – I will live without eating even one chocolate or a cake or a jalebi? Sounds like fun.

On the topic – see this ad – it’s a classic – Dhaara.

Food catharsis

What a gluttonous weekend we have had. We were invited to sample the newly furbished rooms at a five star in Juhu (JW). All meals included. ALL MEALS INCLUDED. Like a kid in a bikini shop, our brains just short circuited at the massive amounts of food at disposal.
We ate lunch, then we ate dinner, then we had breakfast and then lunch again. The thing is that Jasmine and I are normally smart eaters, we don’t go overboard, we ate simple food at simple restaurants and we definitely don’t do five star brunches. Spending 6K at one shot, just to eat is something we find criminal. Food can’t be entertainment. People enjoy their food and spend massive amounts of money to treat themselves and we just can’t ever do that. Eat less, eat sensibly and that’s it. Entertainment is watching a movie, a vacation or at a garden or even swimming at the club. Then you eat sensibly, treat yourself to a panner tikka or something and go home.
It’s a two pronged thing, (a) fundamentally food shouldn’t give you so much pleasure (b) you can’t be spending this kind f money on something as ephemeral as food. Now it’s in and in a few hours its out… how can I spend thousands of rupees on Food!
So this time FREE LAVISH FOOD and like prisoners released from prison we attacked. The buffet was huge with so much at your disposal. Pizzas, breads, salads, soups, what not… my strategy was simple. Eat very little of everything. One small serving of it all. And of course – if I can’t pronounce it, I eat it first. I was surprised how much I could eat. After you are thru with food, you hit the deserts and the ice cream. My colleagues with me were super surprised at my appetite. I could eat and how. I also dint realize how much I could stuff. After I had started swimming I felt the amount of food my stomach could take in at a time reduced. I actually gained a kilo or two and lost an inch or two. More lean muscle mass, I hoped. I kept telling Jasmine to reduce my lunch and breakfast portions. Can’t eat can’t eat, I cried. I thought it was a physiological thing, but in these few days I realized it’s all psychological.
I think food is a mental thing. If you want to eat and store, your stomach can take in much much more, if you believe that you don’t want to eat, you want to be fit and you want to take care, you stomach responds accordingly. It’s probably you telling yourself, that life is secure and relax. It’s almost many times I feel I can will myself to be fitter. So does that mean that insecure people end up eating more? Nah! That would be bull shit evolutionary mumbo jumbo. One thing I know now – it’s my mind that eats, not my stomach. Food is a mind set. And the more we understand that, the better we get at managing it.
One of things that I always felt while managing my diet was - no cravings. On the whole I avoid sweets, aerated drinks, fried food and other junk. But when my mind would feel punished and craved for it, I would just go ahead and have a few to satiate my mind more than my tongue. I guess that’s the thing with diet and food. If you don’t really will it, you will not succeed at it. And the success will be temporary at best. Over the years I have come to conclude that this is largely inbuilt. I dare say – you are born with it. It’s up to you to look in the mirror and say, nopes – that’s not prosperity – that’s a pot belly. And no one can say it for you.
My only comeback from the 24 hours of eating – I also swam around on both the days. That is so crucial. Learning any sport is so important. Before I started swimming coaching, I used to be a self taught swimmer and I was bad. Now I get the rhythm when I swim and I so enjoy it. I am seeing tiny bits of muscles growing and they seem to be the right swimming muscles. I feel that as long as I can burn these calories coming in, intake should not be a problem.
Speaking of which, on Friday I ran for around 50 minutes – just because I forgot to load my mp3 player with the latest podcasts. How are the two related? No podcast means watching TV. TV means another case of brains short circuiting. Since we don’t have cable at home, we tend to get excited with TV shows. And I watched of all things MasterChef Australia. I didn’t know I would watch a show where they show contestants cooking food, and that too non-veg stuff and I would find it interesting. Even the recipes are not shared. There is drama in cooking! So while food doesn’t make you lose calories, watching food being cooked can mean losing calories – there that’s a trivia question for you.
One thing is for sure – I am off food for some time. Especially the exotic fattening stuff. In fact I am skipping dinner. And this is not for any guilt alleviation; I just can’t get myself to eat more. A day speant eating felt like a really long vacation.