"I am soooooooooo fat. I just hate hate hate hate hate how I look. I hate to look at myself!!"  

That was my journal entry on 30th October 2009 – just about a year ago. I was perhaps at my lowest, self esteem wise but at my highest, weight-wise, a miserable 72 kgs! I had just returned from a big fat Malayali wedding in the heart of the motherland with the grim realization that I didn’t look like a 29 year-old mother of an infant but rather the 45 year-old mother of a teenager who never failed to drown her sorrows in a delectable piece of chocolate cake!

Really, how could I let myself go like this? I thought back to the wedding and the dance we girls put on for the guests. All of us dressed like Kerela fisher women with skimpy blouses and saris tied up tight at the waist. How hot everyone looked, some of them mothers of three! Slim and trim as if they were in college and me hovering around looking like every one's middle-aged aunt. To make matters worse, someone decided it would be real nice to send videos of the dance to all the participants. Now it is a well known fact that the TV adds on at least five kilos but something told me that it was no TV illusion, just my pathetic head-in-the-sand consolation as I watched the action replay of my humiliation. And so as I unpacked all my over-sized kurtas and extra-large salwar kameezes I thought - "Good God, something must be done woman!"

To find out what happened and for before-after photos click on http://adventuresofthefull-timemother.blogspot.com/2010/10/going-from-new-mummy-to-hot-mama.html