By Mohammad Shehzad

People are being told these days that if they want to lose weight to give their body a smart shape
they should switch to ‘five or six-meals-a-day’ diet plan. And most of us rushed to embrace this
plan but what happened at the end of the day? Instead of losing weight we gained!

They gave up hope of losing weight and returned to their habitual diet labeling the 5-6 meal plan
a useless strategy.

All of us want to rid excess fat and look smart. The desire is intense among those who are
looking for a wife or husband. Many girls and boys – looking for a husband or wife - reject each
other on just one ground i.e. obesity and excess weight. This hurts them. Some in a temporary fit
of disappointment start taking pills or quacks’ powders [phakki or safoof] to lose weight and end
up developing brand new health problems. This piece will provide them good tips to lose weight.
I must emphasize that I have used all these tips. It is no cut-and-paste stuff but experience of a
practitioner. I would have six-packs and I would be overweight from time to time due to my
irregular routines caused by work pressure.

Five or six meals a day is not a flawed strategy. It is just a gimmick that would affect different
people differently. The secret is only one – number of calories that you take on daily basis
according to your body mass ratio and body mass index.

Did you ever think about the origin of five or six meals a day? It does not require waseeh
mutalia (extensive reading). All such research or studies are conducted either in Europe or the
West. (We excel in only one thing – producing Jihadis!) Climate, environment, culture and food
of that part of the world are totally different from ours. Goray thoons kar nai khatay [The White
don’t stuff their bellies like us]. We import ideas without paying attention to the spirit. The spirit
behind five or six meals is to put less burden on your stomach, enhance the process of burning
calories and do light exercises at anytime. For example, you are working most of the times sitting
in an armchair in front of your laptop, and if you are on 5-6 meals plan, you can start doing any
weight or cardio exercise for two-minutes after every one hour. If you work for ten hours and by
taking a break every hour, you will end up burning 200 calories. Great achievement provided
you have not exceeded the required calorie intake.

I tried 5-meal plan and found it useless because it does not fit in our culture. We love spicy food.
We can’t abandon it. Cooking is nothing but ingredients. Goras cook without spices; oil does not
float on the top in their dishes. And we can’t quit this chatkhara. So, I devised my own plan – 1
½ meal plan. Before practicing it, please do read carefully about my physique, life and work
style.

I am an entrepreneur. I am free from such routines that must I wake up at six or seven in the
morning, shave, have breakfast and rush to the office. I get up at 1130 or 12noon. This means
breakfast time is gone! I would have a heavy breakfast at lunch time – four friend eggs (around
320 calories); five bran bread slices (dry) – around 450 calories and one mug of strong tea with
little milk (30 calories). So it is a breakfast within 1,000 calories. I will have my dinner at 9pm –
any dish of my choice, spicy oily but with one light chapatti. I ensure everything is under 700
calories.

At 4pm, I will do 30 or 45 min staircase. This is probably the greatest cardio exercise. Do it for
10-min and you will know! I must mention that I have a clever formula here. The question is not
doing staircase for 30-min but the question is how many floors you have covered. The formula is
simple. When I am fresh and energetic, I will do staircase for 10-min with a stopwatch and
calculate how many floors I climbed and I will make it a benchmark. Of course, after the first 10-
min your speed will slow down (unless you have developed great stamina with practice) – but
my yardstick is number of floors. The height of my ground floor is 10 feet six inches. Same is
the height of the first floor. So, I climb up two floors. Each floor has 18 steps. This means that a
30-min staircase exercise is like I climbed up 80 floors and came down! In December, I sweat
profusely! My legs would be warm like horse! This is a true cardio. Treadmills are toys!
However elliptical is not!

Besides the staircase, I do 20-min resistance band exercise – one muscle a day. I hit the bed at
3am with half liter of milk and this whole plan keep me fit. My weight does not drop and it
won’t increase. But if I will have to go for six-packs, I will have to keep the same diet plan and
increase the cardio as well as power exercise.

The advantage of 1 ½ meal is, I don’t give up my culture, my spices, my favorite dishes and yet
stay fit. But let me warn you – no sweets, no mithai, no sohan halwa! Otherwise, your plan is
gapoojee gapoojee gum gum [as delivered by Upendra Limaye in the movie Sarkar Raj]

The writer is a freelance journalist and researcher based in Islamabad. Yamankalyan@gmail.com