Of diets and allergies

There are nice mirrors and mean mirrors, you know? The mirror in my Mam's old house, for instance, had a knack of making me feel pretty. The reflection in the glass doors that were the entrance to my grad school on the other hand made me feel fat every time I saw them.

Some clothes do that too. Unpacking four years of clutter, the brother found my favourite pair of jeans that had travelled back to Boston with him in March. I've been wearing them as often as possible since I got them back, and I feel good in them. Of course, it helps that I've lost a teeny-weeny bit of weight lately.

If this holiday has taught me anything though, it's that I am wayyyyy more unfit than I thought I was. The brother wanted to climb up to the top of a cliff, and I agreed to accompany him. We took the easiest and shortest trail there was, but I was huffing and puffing for most of it. So since coming back, I've been put straight back on the "diet" I've been following since March, when my doc looked at my test results, and told me to go off sugar, go on a low carb diet, have absolutely no carbs after 7 in the evening, and basically be half my size when I went to see her again in three months (which is about two weeks and I am nowhere close to being half of what I was).

You don't really realise how much carbs your diet has till you start avoiding them. Roti, bread, rice, potatoes - ALL of these are to be avoided now. And since I am made to have dinner by 6.30 these days, I start feeling hungry by 11ish again. And then there's NOTHING I can even have.

What I did realise was that my biggest enemy was sugar. I used to go through 7-8 cups of tea a day in office, y'know? Each with almost 2 spoons of sugar. Once I reduced that, and replaced sugar with Sugar Free, you could literally see the weight falling off me. Which is very depressing, because I am addicted to sugar. There are times when I actually crave the taste of sugar.

To add insult to injury, I went last week to the doc who'd diagnosed me with asthma last year, and got a full allergy test done. Apart from random airborne allergies which can't be helped, we discovered two food families that I am allergic to - lady fingers and lemon. Anyone who says there is no universal conspiracy out to get me is either blind, or lying. I mean, seriously?! The one vegetable I like is bhindi, and now I can't have it. And do you know what a comfort food nimboo-pani is for me? And how is one supposed to have maachher-jhol-bhaat is I can't put nimboo on it?

I have a cold and a dash of fever right now, so yes, I'm a bit cranky, and meandering more than usual. And I have an appointment with the dentist in exactly two hours. Who knows what he's going to ban for me.

Meh.

A useless lil' vent

Now who on earth uses Bloglines to subscribe to my blog?!?

Bloglines is funny, you know. One, I don't think I'll use it that often anyway, because why should I sign in there separately to read my feeds (is that what they're called? I'm little clueless about all this terminology) when I have Google Reader doing a very nice job for me, and two, for some reason they won't let me claim my blog. And believe you me, I've been trying every six months for nearly two years now - mainly because I forget all about it for the rest of the time. I suspect it's because of the whole old Blogger-new Blogger problem, because they basically don't accept my Gmail ID as my freakin' Blogger Username!

I have a cold. Because I got wet in the rain. The rain which apparently indicates that the monsoons have hit Delhi two week earlier than expected for the first time in 108 years. Which doesn't make sense to me at all, because as far as I'm concerned, there was no summer this year. It's been raining for months!

I had planned to vent about something else as well, and it's completely slipped my mind now.

I hate colds. They make me all miserable and lousy-feeling and drained of energy and even venting doesn't make me feel better. Sheesh.

Annoyed

You know, I am capable of surviving pretty much any illness you throw at me. I've got through bouts of pneumonia (in the middle of my second final exams *shudder*), bronchitis, sundry stomach illnesses, and typhoid. OK, so I nearly died of typhoid, but it wasn't as cool as you'd think it was, considering I was told I nearly died only about eight years after the incident. How boring.

Moving on now. So my point is, I am an exemplary patient. I can handle any kind of illness. Save one. The common cold. I hate catching a cold. It's annoying, and painful, and just downright irritating. My throat aches, I keep shivering, I keep sneezing four times in a row, and don't even get me started on how I get breathless if I try to move. And for some obscure reason, I invariably develop a craving for cold coke every freaking time.

And believe me, I've tried all the remedies there are. Steaming, gargling, dispirin in hot water, haldi milk - with or with a dash of saffron, you name it, I've tried it. Doesn't change a thing. Zilch.

I have a presentation in class tomorrow morning, which I chose to get preponed by three weeks. I'm warning you, if I'm not fit to go to university tomorrow, I am going to be one disgruntled person. More disgruntled than usual that is. So there.