Worried about Diwali weight gain? Here are 5 exercises to sort you out before Christmas
Time is short. But your goals need not be.
So the hurly burly is done. You spent weeks matching dupattas to earrings, curtains to cushion covers. Deciding on just the right lights, rangolis, sweets. Your labours bore fruit yesterday.
Now, Diwali is over.
You are feeling rather flat.
In all probability, you are also feeling rather fat.
The festive season is not kind to weight-watchers. From Navratris to Diwali, there is hope and happiness in the air, oil and sugar in the food. You are only human. You indulge.
But between Diwali and the Christmas-New Year period, you have roughly one month to recover from the excesses, get in shape, and be ready to party again.
Time is short. But your goals need not be.
Here are some custom-made tips to lose the post Diwali weight:
Food walks
Your fridge is overflowing with sweets and other leftover delicacies. So is your neighbours’. And your colleagues’. Everyone will try to offer everyone food over the next few days. Walk away every time it’s done to you.
Don’t just walk, run.
Don’t just run, jump. Every time you see food, just get rapidly away.
Regarding your own food, scatter it far and wide over town. Walk to friends who live on the other side of the city and drop off that box of kaju katlis. Run away when they protest.
Skipping
You have probably read at least 16 articles about the benefits of skipping ropes while stuffing your face with a samosa in office. You have probably also realised you will never really jump about with a rope in hand, no matter how blithe and lithe the people doing it in that article look.
Try a different kind of skipping. Skip the 10 coffees you drink in office. Skip the litres of green tea you consume, adding sugar in each cup to make that foul stuff drinkable. Skip the evening snacks you take because you are bored.
Not every kind of skipping is for everyone. Skip what you can. But skip you must.
Dance
Every Navratri, you watch Dhol Baaje to Nagade Sang Dhol, knowing you can’t copy either song’s steps. At Diwali milans, your more talented neighbours perform, while you clap, without making it too obvious you are madly jealous. At Christmas and New Year parties, you can’t shake a leg till you have downed a few, shaken and stirred.
Let this festival season be different.
Learn to dance.
It will help you achieve the body you crave, fit into the clothes you covet, and actually equip you with a life-skill for every family wedding ever.
Also, since this is not the wedding season, dance teachers will be cheaper.
And remember what Bollywood ripped off from Step Up to teach us — ABCD (Any Body Can Dance).
Breathing exercises
Whether you are a firecracker enthusiast or a silent — and silence-craving — sufferer, the fact is that you cannot breathe. In Delhi, the post-Diwali morn dawned grey and suffocating, through which electricity-gulping lights, left on all night long, gleamed dully. Other cities aren't much different.
Turn this crisis into opportunity. Put your breathing masks in different locations around the house, so there’s a short workout involved every time you look — desperately — for it. Since you will be oxygen-deprived the entire time, the exercise might get you better results.
Post Diwali-clean up
Of course there’s a pre-Diwali cleaning exercise. Which you possibly ignored or outsourced. But the other side of the festival brings other opportunities.
Volunteer to help all your neighbours remove their Diwali lights. Shimmy up buildings, locate the source where the lights are mysteriously plugged. Scamper down them.
Run around your apartment block, gathering leftover diyas and half-burnt crackers, sweeping away rangoli colours and petals.
Remember, Swachh Bharat can lead to a swastha Bharatiya.
May this Diwali bring in the light of fitness and discipline into your life, and burn away the darkness of sloth and ill-health.
There, I did the wishing. Now you get working.