Shedding 7kg: Manpreet's weight loss journey

AFTER the Paris Games, Manpreet Singh let himself go. There were celebrations every other day. After refusing to go within a mile of anything sugary for years, the two-time Olympic medallist 'lost control'.

- SWAROOP SWAMINATHAN @Chennai

Even as he drowned himself in 'kaju katli' and other sweets, he thought 'sab chalta hai (everything is okay)'. Everything, though, wasn't okay. When he turned up at the Asian Champions Trophy in Hulunbuir in the second week of September, the warm afterglow of the Paris medal was visible in multiple places, including on the weighing machine.

"I had touched 73kgs," he told this daily a week ago. "The heaviest I had ever been." He didn't have a eureka moment but he had felt that heaviness during the ACT in China, like a man carrying a piano while dribbling out of midfield and running down both wings.

"When we were playing in the Asian Champions Trophy, I felt heavy," he said. "I realised if I want to play good hockey, I must focus on fitness first."