Fit or fib?

I pride myself on being fairly fit. Not fit in terms of thin, because I've always struggled with my weight, I enjoy food way too much to ever be a thinny-skinny, but I eat healthy, I either jog or do yoga or work out at the gym at least 4-5 times a week if not every day, I have fairly good stamina and I am super flexible ;) I drink lots of water, eat a lot of home cooked food, overload on the veggies, etc etc.  Of course, like most women, even the thin ones, my image in the mirror isn't anywhere near ideal to me and I completely blame the switch from thin to chubs on a trip to the US when I was ten years old and was so excited on discovering American fast food that I ate through 12 different fast food chains in 2 months.  Everywhere from Wendy's to Pizza Hut to McDonald's saw a small increasingly chubby Indian girl with giant soda bottle lens spectacles in the summer of 1990 belting down burgers, fries, shakes, pizzas, and that decadent time also resulted in my first and only cavity! There was no looking back and I've yo-yo'd my way through the years, but understanding things about health and fitness much better has come over time and trips to fast food chains are a rare occurrence now!

Sid on the other hand also enjoys his food, but has probably never even thought about his weight since nothing seems to affect him much. While I am racing around the jogging track or being tortured by trainers at the gym he sits around in his boxers with a beer in his hand, eating buttered toast sprinkled with aloo bhujiya, his favourite snack!  Working out has never been his thing, though sports is and he'd much rather go out and play a game of tennis or badminton and is obsessed with golf, playing a few times a week. The only time he's really done any sort of more "organized" exercise is when we used to date and he joined my dance classes, and he happened to join when we were learning tap dancing, really one of the toughest forms I've ever had to learn over the years, and the fact that he'd join at that time will always be one of the funniest, yet extremely flattering, times in our relation. He also did yoga with me for a while, where our instructor may have liked my dedication and bendi-ness, but he lovvvess Sid who is absolutely incapable of touching his toes, cries out in pain for everything and his regular counting for holding any position is a strangled "1,2,6, 25, 80,000' and back to normal!  Our instructor is a young, slightly built, lightweight who goes to great pains to help his idol.  Examples being Sid attempting to touch his toes while sitting, legs extended out. He hopped on his back attempting to put more pressure on him and Sid who wasn't at all comfortable with the excessive proximity of the male touch, froze where he was (which wasn't far!) and remained so for another 30 seconds. Our instructor sweated and grunted, but to no avail and finally slid off defeated. "Sir, aap toh bilkul pedh kee tare ho. Hilte hee nahin...bade strong ho"! (You're built like a tree...so strong and immovable!).  At another time, our instructor was regaling us with stories of one of his students, who couldn't move and he was really struggling with her. Sid, encouraged by worse examples than him, asked hopefully "Mere seh bhi useless hai?" (Are they even worse than me?).  The answer was accompanied by a hearty laugh and not even a split second pause "Arre sir, kya baat kar rahein hain. Aap seh toh koyi non-flexible nahin hain" (What are you saying...no one's as stiff as you are).  But despite me staying loyal for years and as dedicated as ever, Sid gave up after a short while ("It's just too hard bubz, I don't like it, very boring!") and actually hides in the TV room, preferring to stay holed up for an hour then come out. He's always sorely missed by the instructor, who never fails to ask where "Sir" is and always looks disappointed to know that "it's just me"!

To Sid's credit, he has boundless energy and hardly ever sits still. He's always off doing something and is not overly fussed if he misses a meal, making up later with a zillion parathas and tubs of ice cream, and can function well enough with barely any sleep.  However, his days of playing tennis or badminton or squash are rare, the only sport he indulges in being golf a few times a week.  I recently joined Gold's Gym since it opened around the corner from us and Sid accompanied me to check it out.  It's one of those fancy places, plastered with autographed pictures of toned film stars working out and spouting words of wisdom like "Your body is the temple to your soul, worship it" (I don't think I've ever heard Ashmit Patel say anything other than that! Who is he again?!) and though I don't enjoy gyms, my lack of strength or weight training prompted me to go there and since the instructors like me and tell me that they like "my running style" (you can see I choose gyms for all the wrong reasons!) I work out there now. However, the joining was preceded by one of those ghastly sessions of scrutiny where your body is scanned and your fitness score comes out in a series of complicated graphs and figures. Sid did it for fun and as expected, the gym manager gushed all over him, declaring him the fittest person alive and if there was a crown and sash available he would have definitely crowned him immediately.  His paper was waved around for all to see and the C shape of his graph was explained to us as the ideal shape. The secret of his taut tush was asked and a beaming Sid declared that it was all the squash and tennis and golf he played. He said this with a sideways glance at me, shushing me with his eyes and not allowing me to reveal that he hadn't played the former two in the last few years! The gym manager dismissed the golf and said, "Oh it has to be all the tennis and squash"! What a fibber, after all my yoga'ing and dancing and jogging, that cupcake chugging, aloo paratha eating, built like a tree chump gets all the credit! My scan next revealed a regular D, which most people have and lots of hmm'ing and ha'ing later I was told I had my work cut out for me! So while I sweat it out, I get calls from Sid at home asking where I am and if I had made any dessert lately!


C'est la vie, I suppose, that the fibbers are the fittest and the fittest are the fattest! Thank god I'm cuter!