...shoOOonya...

2009 has been a personal roller coaster ride for me ... A year ago i had posted about how 2008 had been a horrible terrible year ... and how I hoped 2009 to be better ... Well .. 2009 was definately better then 2008 in overall terms but by no means was it a good year ... The roller coaster ride of 2008 simply continued in 2009 ... with a couple of more shocks and sufferings ... the only consolation being it slowed down to a crawled in second half of the year and things started to look up towards the end of the year … But … during the first half of the year, things simply refused to look up… infact they simply continued the downward spiral journey I felt as if my life was responding to the global financial crisis in equal measures with a personal emotional crisis of my own :P The second half of the year was slightly better ... and i hope 2010 becomes a much better year as compared to last two ... keeping up with the upward trending wave that I am currently riding … With these hopes and ...

I spent about 10 days in Mumbai last week. As always, being home is a wonderful feeling. Home cooked mom-ke-haath-ka-khana is a treat unto itself. Its also a vacation for me where I don't really have to worry about office. I get to spend some time with my family once in a quarter for about a week.   During the weeklong trip … I attended 2 weddings. One wedding was in my family so I was there practically from 10 am to 10 pm meeting the entire extended family on my maternal side (metting several members after a long gap). It was actually nice meeting all people and yes, food was excellent. The second one was a Punjabi family wedding reception … wedding of the daughter of one of my Dad's business associate. I just went along since dad did not want to go alone. It was interesting to attend the wedding. Food was good J rounding off with dessert of Jalebi, Kulfi and Rabdi J     One of the things I do when in Mumbai is to watch movies J the economics and the logistics are s...

  Weight check … I began the diet with 82.9 Kg and ended up with 78.9 Kg. Accounting for the variable weight of the various external elements like clothes, shoes, mobile, change in the pocket and money in the purse J , the GM diet enabled me to lose approx. 3.5 to 4 KG. So I can conclude that the diet experiment was pretty successful.   Diet Discounts ... it was fun to take them but maybe not taking them would have resulted in greater weight loss by at least a kg or two – I had taken diet discounts in the form of chocolate bites, dry fruit sweets, tea with milk and sugar, salt and spices etc. Learning Curve … Also, now I feel packaged coconut drink was not a good idea. I was probably supposed to have fresh coconut milk/drink and fresh juice. Also, I read somewhere that Rice is a not an effective substitute for beef in the veggie version and it reduces the extent of weight loss. Work-Out - Yet another key thing was that I did not visit the gym even once during the diet w...

I woke up in the morning with the pleasant realization the diet period was over and I could eat all tasty spicy stuff without worrying about any restriction !! YAY !! Stated the day with 2 khakhras with ghee and pudina chatni / singhdana chatni ! WOW !! In office I grabbed a pack of Potato stic (Hot Chilli flavor) and also took a Tiffany creamy wafer biscuit. Lunch was the pulav and vegetable I prepared yesterday evening. .... I am off-diet now and I am going to take full advantage of it. Will go out McDonalds and grab a Pizza McPuff and a Aloo Tikki (called Veggie Surpise here), have an ice cream and even a Do-nut before I go to India by weekend … that will be FEAST Time !! My birthday also coming during the home stay ... sooooo .... cakes and ice creams and pizza and all .... .... And yes .. just FYI … I weighed myself yesterday and the pointr crossed 79 KG on the downward journey.    

Weekend time  !! Woke up only at 11 AM on both days :P Day 6 At 12 Noon, I had some salad of chopped carrot, cucumber and tomato ! About 3.30 PM came the lunch … Rice with peas, corn, cabbage and tomato !! Kinda fried rice or Pulav. This was practically the first time i had tried experimenting with making Pulav ... I made a call home and asked Mom how to go about it. She guided me and the result was not bad at all :) Nimboo paani in the evening at about 6 pm before going out for grocery to stock up again for the last day of the diet and the few days left before my Mumbai trip to home. Late evening, I had the dinner of the Pulav I made in the afternoon. It was kinda nice. Now one more thing gets added to the (short) list of things I can cook :P Since its weekend, no preparations for tomorrow to be made in advance. Day 7 – Woke up at 11 AM again ... and last day of the diet !! Started the day with the two tomatoes and then lazed around watching TV and thinking :P Late...

Day began with some rice which I prepared early morning. I packed my lunch box with the tomatoes and the rice and the soup for the day. I had prepared the soup on previous night itself. cant do eveything in the morning. I had the 2 chopped tomatoes at about 10.30 in office … Lunch was the time when I had Rice along with the Soup. It was not exactly tasty but definitely better than having the plain rice alone. I guess the difficult part of GM Diet is that u get 'taste deprived'. Eating plain rice is very difficult for the simple lack of taste. Late Afternoon I had the two chopped tomatoes again. As mentioned earlier, plain rice is hardly consumable so while returning home in the evening, I picked up some Fried Rice from the super market. I guess this will qualify as a diet disount of the day (fried food). Had a little of the fried rice in the evening and the remaining in the night for dinner. It was indeed tasty J BTW … I weighed myself yesterday and found that...

One Litre Low Fat Milk and about 9 bananas - ready for the day. Began the day with a singular Banana and a glass of milk. Poured a glass of milk in a small bottle and a kept it the refrigerator, carried the rest of the milk in the original carton to office along with about 6 bananas. Anyone coming to my desk will be wierdly surprised to fidn the milk carton on my desk today. Day was not bad in the sense that there were no serious cravings or hunger pangs. I had One Banana and a gulp of milk at about 11 and then 2 Bananas for lunch at 1 and one banana again at 3.30 and finally one before leaving office by 6. Milk also consumed through the day in occasional gulps. And yes, how can I forget. The sweets from day 1 (Extremely delicious Dry Fruit Barfi) appeared on the scene again and I took my pick. That was today's Diet Discount for me !! I had some concerns for the next day though ... Day 5 is only Rice and Tomato. Plain rice without anything else is virtually impossible f...