Omad, 2mad, nomad and other forms of madness

Through my life, I recall someone or the other pestering me to eat healthy, starting with my mother, then my vigilant wife. Now of course, there is Youtube…

But through this journey, the crux was always about what to consume. The “when?” question was never considered worthy of scientific enquiry. In fact “more the healthier” used to be the conventional wisdom in my younger days. Eat 4 - 5 moderate meals a day, snacking now and then is OK. Those were the good old days when hunger was a sensation you could swiftly and mercilessly act upon. And given the very elastic interpretation of what moderation meant to different people, it was pretty much the dietary utopia.

 

Alas, a happy equilibrium is not meant to last in the internet age. Into this garden of Eden, a bunch of nutrition experts started intruding nastily. Having exhausted all permutations of what one can eat, they now came in with a new trajectory of attack. Namely, when you eat and how often you eat! Evolution had not built man, they proclaimed, for so many meals a day. In their jaundiced view, breakfast-lunch-high tea-dinner (with a bunch of snack breaks thrown in) was an artificial construct, brought about by modern living. So what? Would these blokes shut down their Youtube channel and use cave paintings to get their message across?

 

It’s terrifying to see the rapidity with which the absurd gets mainstreamed in the digital world with sundry influencers perennially hunting for the next new thing coupled with the relentless pressure their followers are under to conform to what their role model suggests.

 

I was rudely sucked into this vortex when my wife, having chanced upon one such reel, issued some clear directives. No more snacking between meals. Further, dinner will henceforth be treated as the last meal of the day in letter and spirit, she ruled. 

 

While that was a constraint, I consoled myself that I could live with it and in fact, over time, was able to accept a snackless existence as some kind of a new and a healthy norm. This kind of living, I told myself, would extend my life. OK, the extended life will exclude snacking but the trade off, while dubious, felt like I was at least doing the right thing. My body is my temple, I kept reminding myself, while trying to keep away intruding images of laddoos and similar prasadam items that the metaphor spawned…

 

Cut to a recent reunion of my batchmates. Inevitably matters turned to how someone was so fit and someone else still possessed that full mop of hair and the like. Many were touting something called “intermittent fasting”. I was not initially impressed. The thing sounded suspiciously like the fast of our Tamil Nadu politicians on the Sri Lanka issue or the Cauvery water issue. The modus operandi is that our noble lawmakers have a heavy breakfast and proceed to Marina beach at 930 am. There, a Shamiana will be set up to shield their sensitive skins from heat exposure. Some half hearted sloganeering will follow and by about 130 pm the ritualistic consumption of a glass of OJ will signal the end of the fast, to be followed by a sumptuous lunch. Sheer genius, ticks off so many boxes. 

 

Intermittent fasting though, as I subsequently learnt, was designed to be a little more intense – essentially, two meals a day. 2mad. In one fell swoop, the number of meals is halved, accompanied by a liberal dose of science to suppress voices of alarm and dissent. Autophagy. Fewer Glucose spikes. Lower Insulin resistance. Plus, one evidently has to give one’s gut microbiome some rest and downtime. Seriously? Who would have known that these gut bacteria chaps were also agitating for work life balance! What next? A four day work week or something?

 

I should have steered clear. But making grand pronouncements is a universal frailty and in an unguarded moment, I announced to my family that I was moving to a 2mad plan. I was temporarily gratified by the admiring looks from my family members, but with time, I sobered down and realized I was stuck. I had to make 2mad work for me. Or risk my family’s derision.

 

As I peeled the specifics of this transition from 4mad to 2mad, I realized with a sinking stomach that it comes with very rigid rules. You have to go all in. The slightest transgression will qualify as a meal rendering my 2mad regime null and void. No biscuits, slice of bread, nothing in between the two meals. Not even coffee, unless it is black, no sugar. You see the slippery slope? I observe the growing list of sacrifices with despair. Snacks, coffee, cookies… With each denial, I can feel my life getting robustly extended but without any accompanying sensation of achievement. In fact, the only physiological sensation I feel mostly is that of a growling stomach. And emotionally? They say the gut is connected to the brain, which is probably why my mind feels empty most days as I move around like a zombie counting the hours till the next of my two meals. OK, I lie. Far from being empty, my mind is actually full of thoughts of onion pakodas and jilebis… 

 

Things hit a peak when my son recently announced over the phone that he is toying with going omad. One meal a day. It is incomprehensible to me, but it is apparently a thing with his generation. Where is the world going? From omad to nomad is a short step. But I’m willing to bet that’s going to happen. Nomad is too cool an acronym to let go! Surely it  will be interpreted in a workable manner into our diets! 

 

Many of us were puzzled when India was ranked 102 out of 123 countries in the World Hunger Index. Below even Burkina Faso! Now you know the answer. In fact, I would postulate that in interpreting this index, availability of food to consume is a distant second factor to the degree of traction this number of meals a day scam has achieved in that country…

 

Anyway, adaptation and survival being second nature to man, I have been able to overcome my initial dismay at 2mad and its cruel limitations. Following a short period of crankiness that naturally accompanies unwarranted abstinence, I have now resorted to underhand methods. My house is of modest size, but it has its nooks and crannies where I can create secret spaces safe from my family’s gaze, all capable of storing cookies and murukkus and the like. Plus I have started maximizing official breakfast and lunch meetings. The trick is to ensure no single individual is around for all your meals of the day, so that nobody knows exactly how many meals you’ve consumed. That way, you can maintain the illusion of 2mad to the world, while the true score is known only to yourself. The net upshot is that I’m eating and snacking like before, sometimes achieving 5mad and even 6mad on a good day…

 

I’m not really sure if this is all good or bad, but I’m strangely unperturbed. I have absolute certainty on one thing. They say the world is circular. Food science is even more so! Something that induces cholesterol yesterday is a superfood today. Just ask the much maligned ghee. Bread has been ill-treated too, albeit in the reverse direction. Coffee, chocolate and wine are good or bad depending on the study being quoted. I am positive that someday in the future 4mad will again attain its erstwhile status as the gold standard diet norm. It’s not a question of “if”, just “when”. That day I’ll come out of the closet. Till then I’m prepared to live a life of subterfuge. OK, gotta go. Feeling snacky…

 

 

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