It’s always fun to write about that one book, which you can call your favorite, because reading that book was not only a good experience but it also changed my thought process!
For me, that book is ‘Don’t Lose Your Mind, Lose Your Weight’ by the dietician Rujuta Diwekar.
My idea of a good weight and fitness plan was some boring salad diets or low carb or no carb diets, basically depriving myself from the delicious food, which as a foodie I have always loved. And to add to the boredom, fitness also meant going to the gym regularly, even though I’m not a gym person, and doing those difficult workouts and waiting every few days for the weighing machine to show I have lost weight. But, all of that changed when I read this book.
I have always been a Bollywood fan so when my sister brought the book of Diwekar, which had a foreword by Kareena Kapoor, one of my favorite actresses, I got tempted to read the book. Also, I had heard a lot about Kapoor losing weight by eating all the time, which was opposite to my fitness plan. That made me more curious.
This book slowly changed the way I thought about food and dieting. It affected me so much that she was in my head guiding me about everything. I started enjoying all my favorite food guilt free and started losing weight, too! It was like magic, to lose weight by eating.
I made some changes in my daily lifestyle as per the guidelines given by Diwekar in the book and it slowly started showing on me. I started getting compliments from family and friends, which motivated me to go further.
Following are the most important lessons I learnt from her book: Wake up close to sunrise, but never wake up to tea or coffee, instead eat real food within 10 – 15 minutes of waking up. Eat after two hours, yes you read it right...eat frequently. Eat more when you are more active and eat less when you are less active. Keep moving to lose weight, stay active and fit.
The best part of this book is its simplicity and common sense. She busts myths and injects a good dose of common sense, which we somehow lose completely when it comes to weight loss. Also she gives lots of real life examples in this book, which makes it easy to understand what she means. The amount of knowledge that I have gathered from this book is invaluable. I have read it many times, but each time I read it, I find something more in there that I hadn’t noticed or understood before.
If you are a person who wants to lose weight or who does not like to exercise or are a foodie, so cannot diet, I suggest this book as a must-read because it will not only make you understand the basics of diet and nutrition, it will also make you more comfortable and confident and will help you love yourself all over again.
— The reader is based in Dubai.
