The Stock Market …. and my weight…. (???)

Yesterday, an old pal of mine from College (you know who you are) asked me why I had not written in ages. What can I say, lots of work and lots of to do’s hanging out there. I have great ideas but if you have a Damocles’ Sword handing on your head (metaphorically speaking), it is tough to put your ideas into words. They just always come out flat. I worked hard this weekend and my to do list has now whittled down to almost nothing. Before any new tasks get added and the proverbial sword hangs once again over my head, I thought I ‘d take the time out and write something – anything as long as it has nothing to do with work.

So what do I have to say today? Is there a new gripe I can latch on to or can I dust off an oft repeated theme about my kids who provide me ample material. No, none of that. Today I want to talk about the mess that is the stock market and draw some parallels between stock market and my adventures in weight fluctuations. What does the stock market have to do with my personal weight – not much to the layman but if you follow my convoluted argument, I think you can be convinced. I have done some analysis over the past decade, and I think I have gleaned some parallels.

As we are growing older(not at heart but in age), all of us old fogies are on some diet or the other. Be it to fight bad cholesterol levels, gout, or just plain overweight, we all have our motivations. Some of us have turned teetotalers, and some of us have started downing bowls of salad like we were all goats. Nothing against salad personally, I love salad very much.

Overheard at a recent get-together, “Man, you’ve lost so much weight. What have you been doing”. Overheard at yet another get-together, “Yaar, I like the South Beach Diet. It totally works for me”. At another get together, the host made sure that the guests were made aware that he had lost hajjaar weight. It definitely showed but he just had to rub it in. And then we come to my husband who lately has been attached to the weighing machine – he religiously weighs himself after a bath, before a bath, before going to bed etc. I think he’s secretly in love with eth weighing machine and I think I spied him sending flying kisses its way. As if this is not enough he has to beckon me no matter where I am and how busy I am and show me his latest weight loss. What a loser – pun absolutely intended. Come to think of it, is that not the title of the latest reality show – “The Biggest Loser”.

I was never blessed with “thinness” – if it can be called that. Or in other words, I never can remember a time when someone called me skinny. I was always just a tad bit overweight and I have strived hard to always remain overweight. It’s been tough staying overweight but with sheer perseverance, I have managed the feat. J Growing up, it didn’t help that all the women in my family (My Mom, my sister and my dog) were gorgeous (well, beauty lies in the eye of the beholder and to me they were and still are gorgeous) and very, very slender and thin. I may sound like a “poor, poor pitiful me” – but that is because I sometimes felt like it. Most of the time, I was too busy to care but there were a few days when I would get up feeling blue. Those were the days when my poor Mom and sister almost pulled their hair out trying to figure out a way to make me feel better. My Dad was no competition since Guys absolutely do not care about weight.

Like the stock market, I have had some major upticks in the radar. The first one was when I entered the country. My body which was used to the heat, sweat and grime of New Delhi, was in absolute shock when I landed in Toledo, Ohio. And it didn’t help to realize that I absolutely loved Tex Mex food, and Daroo. Within a couple of months, I ballooned a couple of sizes larger than what I was. I lost a couple of pounds here and there but the general direction was up. Kind of like the lateral movement of the stock market with a general upward trend.

The next serious uptick was when I became pregnant. Remember in 2000 when the Dow slid from 13000 all the way to 9000 and then at 9000, there was some traction. That’s how I was. I gained a little in the first trimester and then form the second trimester, there was no looking back. I just kept growing larger and larger. My obstetrician and I would often laugh at the amount of weight I had put on. From then on, I pretty much bade goodbye to all my former clothes. There really was no going back, baby or no baby. This period of weight gain was akin to the irrational exuberance that Alan Greenspan touted through out his tenure. I had pretty much lost all rational thought, I was on the road and made some really poor choices in food – all in the name of a healthy baby.

Fast forward six years, yet another baby and yet another uptick. This time there was no serious damage done since I had Gestational diabetes and hence had to control my weight. This was the cautious investment phase. My poor mother in law, who hd come a-visiting, had to tone down her cooking since I barely could eat anything. All she wanted was to feed her sunbaai and I was pathetic enough to count the number of peanuts that I was eating. I think I pretty much survived on Ham and Swiss Cheese sandwiches for the last trimester or so.

But after the second baby I really have no excuse, my weight still trended upward. After seeing a couple of friends lose some serious weight, my husband and I decided to try some good choices in our food. So from that day onwards, starch was Enemy number 1 and vegetables, meat and salads were my best friends. We haven’t adhered to any one diet but it is just a general hodge podge of diets. It’s mostly my husband’s half baked ideas and long(really long) lectures. Trust me, the man can pontificate for ages on good foods vs bad and exercise vs no exercise. If you think my columns are long, you should hear a sermon by Nallu on the advantages of eating protein every day. Try to stay awake if you can – I dare you.

Anyway, it’s been a couple of months and I have slowly reduced my weight by a couple of pounds or so. And every time I climbed onto the weighing scale and saw that I’d gained back all I had lost, I felt the same sinking feeling you feel when your yahoo portfolio gives back all the gains from the prior week. I hate the weighing scale as much as my husband loves it. Nallu on the other had has lost weight at a rather rapid rate. Any place I go, it doesn’t matter if I went butt naked, I probably would not even get noticed. “Nallu, what has happened to you? Man you’ve lost some serious weight. Kya hua, biwi bahut bhaga rahi hai kya?”. Why do we wives get all the “credit”? I truly have no contribution to Nallu losing weight, he got there all by himself.

So anyway, Thank God weight fluctuations are not exactly like the stock market. I would definitely not want cyclicality in weight gain. So you lose some today and gain some tomorrow. I just want to lose weight once and for all. And that would be that. Back in College, our Economics Professor always said, that in Economics, especially in macro economics, if you collectively think gloom and doom, the economy will be doomed. It’s all about perspective. If you think the stock will fall, the stock will fall. If you think the economy will have negative growth, the economy will have negative growth. It sounded fantastic then but I’ve seen this in action and it really does hold true. It’s all commonsense at the end of the day. The irrational exuberance of 2000’s has now been converted to over conservative investors. The double digit gains in the housing market are now flat if not negative.

There is one parallel that I always wish were true of weight fluctuations. I wish I could just will myself to weight loss. If I think I am thin, I will be thin. Oh on! That never works with me, if I even think thin, I will be that much more hungry that day. So I’m hoping to lose a little more weight. And thanks to Nallu’s overbearing Nature, big bully that he is, he has bullied me, nagged me, scolded me, snatched food away from me and in general has been a royal pain in the you know where. But thanks to him, I have stayed the course and have at least not gained any weight in the past two months. A couple of folks at work have started Jenny Craig and yet a few have joined the Gym. I told them I had lost a few pounds and all they said was, “Really! It does not look like it.”. Little do they know that I have smuggled my weighing scale into the office today and am going to somehow find an opportunity to plonk it on their collective heads. Really, indeed.

The funny thing in this whole battle against weight is that I’m not even sure what weight target to strive for. Most people think that they would be on top of the world if they could get back to their pre pregnancy weight or if they were down to the weight back in 1980. Well, I’ve always been overweight for as long as I can remember, so what weight do I aspire to. Huh! It’s like I’m at the battlefield, and I have an army. Right, now who do I need to fight?

I think I am thin. I think I’m thin. I think I’m thin. I think I am thin. I think I’m thin. I think I’m thin…..

When all else fails, hope and prayer prevail….