Two self-help books on dieting tips and weight loss approach the subject from opposite poles — self-hatred and self-love, writes Apoorva Dutt.
Confessions Of A Serial Dieter: Secrets From 43 Diets And Workouts That Took Me From 100 to 60}
Author: Kalli Purie
Publisher: HarperCollins
Pages: 226
Price: Rs250
How To Love Your Body And Get The Body You Love
Author: Yaana Gupta
Publisher: Penguin
Pages: 212
Price: Rs199
Some dieters can drive themselves into a mania of self-loathing and self-denial that can leave bystanders puzzled and concerned. What they don’t realise is that a serial dieter’s starvation and mood swings are only the tip of the iceberg - their actions are motivated by a critical internal monologue that would outdo the most rabid internet troller. Only by zapping your pre-existing self-worth can you attain the will-power to stick to a diet that will inevitably leave you fatigued, irritable and depressed.
Yaana Gupta — Bollywood item girl, and Kallie Purie — Oxford-educated media person, are as distant from each other, in their upbringing, backgrounds, career and self-image — as you can find. That they have both written books about health, self-image and food is a testament to how important this issue is to every woman. Gupta’s book, How To Love Your Body And Get The Body You Love, is a soliloquy of self-love, spirituality, and the importance of green tea. Purie’s Confessions Of A Serial Dieter, on the other hand, is a merciless exercise in self-loathing, harsh truths and the importance of cabbage soup.
Purie’s book externalises the serial dieter’s internal monologue in gory detail: “There are people out there who are not defined by their weight…well; I am not one of them. I am defined by my weight.” She begins her journey at the age of four, on her first diet already. She is bribed with jam sandwiches by her parents, to ensure that the pudgy tot takes a few rounds of the compound on her tricycle everyday.
She soars to 100 kilos before plummeting to 55 kilos after a lifelong smorgasbord of diets, including ones consisting entirely of cabbage soup, champagne and lemonade; with the assistance of dieticians, fat camps and innumerable personal trainers; with the assistance of enemas, fat-vibrating machines, laxatives, and a brief flirtation with bulimia, the binge-and-purge eating disorder.
Self-hatred can be a great motivator. And if the ends justify the means, then Purie’s approach is validated. But what is really the end? Purie’s dieting falls into a pattern — she goes to expensive-sounding fat camps, she gets engaged; she gets fat again. She starves and trains, she weds; she gets fat again. She goes to dieticians and ayurveda camps, she gets pregnant; she gets fat again. She runs a marathon, subsists on champagne and toys with bulimia, she gets thin, and…the book ends there. Purie admits to the pattern in the epilogue: “What weight am I going to be when you see me next? I don’t know…”
It is easy to sympathise with Purie’s dilemma. We’ve all been there, right? Starved for a wedding, cringed in changing rooms, banned carbohydrates from our diet, emerging triumphantly, marginally thinner, a week later: if we could retreat to fat camps or hire personal trainers to pull us out of bed at six every morning, we would do it in a heartbeat.
But Purie isn’t a ‘real’ dieter in any way that might be useful to someone looking to become healthier — at least not someone who can’t hire a trainer who charges 25,000 pounds for ten sessions, as Purie did once. She is real in that she is the worst side of our dieting avatars, an avatar motivated by toxic thoughts.
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