Fighting with Temptation for Heavy Food: Day 1

Today, my aunt sent some delicious foods. There was two items. One was beef curry and the other item was Patishapta Pitha (a traditional cake of Bangladesh). After my wife, I am most fond of this aunt’s cooking. Even from the appearance and smell of the beef curry, I realized that it was very delicious. She sent 1 KG of beef curry. Beef was cut in to small pieces and was then cooked with onion, garlic, red chili powder, turmeric powder and many other kind of spices. I am more fan of mutton (goat meat) than beef but still, in the past, I would have eaten almost 200 grams of this beef with rice in a single lunch or dinner.

Since I started my efforts to decrease weight on 23 October 2009, I had to fight a lot with myself about eating as small amount of meat as possible. Today, I noticed that my heart, stomach or tongue did not cry for it. I was surprised and happy. There were nearly 30 pieces of this traditional cake. I am so much fan of this cake that I could easily eat 10 pieces in a single seating. Today, I controlled myself and just ate 2 pieces and that is the end of this cake. I am not going to eat it anymore in the next few days.

Instead, for lunch, I ate some lentil chop. First red lentil is soaked in water and then smashed with a stone manually. Then some chopped onion, garlic and green chilies are mixed with the red lentil paste along with some turmeric powder and red chili powder. Then in round shape it is fried. The lentil chop is full of protein. In our language, we call it Piyaju or daler bora. Anyway, today, I omitted rice intentionally in lunch as I ate that traditional cake.

I will be eating dinner after 30-40 minutes. In dinner, I am going to eat Chotpoti- perhaps the most favorite snacks in Bangladesh. It can be a very healthy or unhealthy item depending on how you prepare it. As I am on diet, naturally, I am going to eat in a healthy way. That means, I am going to omit red chili powder from the recipe.

Chotpoti is mainly made with boiled White pea, boiled potato and egg, sliced onion and green chili, tamarind water and to make it healthier, we added sliced cucumber and tomato and some lemon juice. The good part is that it does not contain any oil or nothing is fried. Here, people eat it as a snack in the afternoon or evening. However, I like it so much that I can eat it as dinner. If you are an European or American then you will perhaps include it in the salad category. Of course, you will need to omit green chili totally. Also, don’t eat it a lot because even in my city, most people get trouble with their stomach if they eat a lot.

I am talking a lot about food today because this is the number one problem for anyone like me who is hanging around the scale of obesity. As I told you, today, in my home, there is very delicious beef curry and cakes. Sometimes, I felt that if I ate small amount of beef with rice then it is no problem.

At the end of the day, I learnt one valuable lesson. The best way to combat with the temptation of heavy food is to find alternatives healthy food items. For example, today, instead of spicy and oily beef curry, I opted for red lentil chop. I am grateful to God for this kind of change. However, just remember that at the beginning it is difficult. You will fall and fail in your pursuit of losing weight. No problem, failure is pillar of success.