Don't Lose Your Mind, Lose Your Weight

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Don't Lose Your Mind, Lose Your Weight, my first Book, was published in 2009, It was written fast, over a few months, but the thinking behind it had taken any years of working as nutritionist and studying Ayurveda and yoga.

It's tough to revisit the past, especially when you are looking back at a pleasant memory or a discovery rather. For starters, I discovered that the call I received to write a book was not a hoax, it was real. But the most amazing and heart-warming discovery has been the generous love and the free marketing that the book has received from each one of you. Its success lies in the fact that it is your book, one that you have adopted, loved and promoted selflessly. A bestseller is made by readers and you have surely done a wonderful job at ensuring that this book sold year after year like, shall I say, hot jalebis on a Sunday morning.

Now to celebrate the completion of its sixth year in the bestseller charts, we have added a Q&A section that covers some of the most common myths and misunderstandings on food and weight loss still going around. I hope this will resolve any confusion you may have.

I climbed the six kilometres of glacier from Gaumukh (at an elevation of 4000 metres) to Tapovan (4400 metres), with my heart beating in my ears with every step, expectations mounting. I'd heard so much about 'Simla baba', how he had been living in Tapovan for many years; the severe winters he had survived with snowfall more than six feet; how many penances he had done; and all starry eyed, I was hoping to learn something profound from him. On reaching Tapovan, I went to his hut immediately and asked him, 'Baba, aapko yahan kaun laya?"

'Jo tanne yahan laya, wohi manne yahan laya,' he replied, with a straight face. (He who brought you here, brought me here.) 'That's it?" I thought, disappointed.

It took me many more years and realisations to figure out that simplicity is profound.

Simplicity is profound

Don't lose your mind, by complicating something as simple as feeding yourself (although these words appear in smaller font on the cover, they are really the bigger message). Losing weight, as you will realise by the end of the book (I hope), is incidental. A by- product of following a common sense approach to eating-eating right.

But there is a thin line between simplicity and oversimplification. And just like you do with generalisations, you miss the point completely when you oversimplify. Eating a balanced diet will keep you healthy: a simple statement of fact. The less we eat, the thinner we become: an oversimplification. Other examples of oversimplification: blood group, GM (General Motors), cabbage soup and orange juice diets.

In a bizarre way, oversimplification seems to work best through mystification. Theoretically opposites, but apparently a potent combination. The best example of this combo: miracle foods. The weirder sounding, the better; Chia seeds, Acai berry, quinoa, etc., etc. We really want to believe that there is something miraculous in these 'exotic' foods, which will undo all wrong we have done to our bodies (oh we all know we have), but we have no idea how and we don't even want to know.