THE FATNESS EPIDEMIC

THE STRESS AND SEDENTARY LIFESTYLE INFLICTED BY THE PANDEMIC HAVE TRANSLATED INTO WEIGHT GAIN FOR MANY, TRIGGERING AN ALTOGETHER NEW SET OF PROBLEMS

- SONALI ACHARJEE

When Samira (name changed) stru­ggled with childhood obesity three years ago, her lawyer mother took her to a dietician in their home city of Kolkata. Samira was able to maintain a normal BMI (body mass index) up to Febru­ary 2020 when she turned 13. Then, Covid­19 struck and on March 25, the country went into total lockdown. Like much else, Samira’s exercise classes, too, came to a stop. The teenager, who had a mobile phone of her own, found herself surrounded by bags of ‘emergency food’ such as biscuits, cake, bread, and chocolate. As the months progressed, Samira’s mum found it increasingly difficult to control her daughter’s calorie intake. “It got so stressful, and the pandemic was so demotivating that as a family we began to order in more food, consume more processed food. On an average day, we would eat at least one packet of instant noodles, two packets of sugared biscuits, and two packets of fried namkeen,” she says. As a result, mother and daughter gained 12.5 kg and 10 kg, respectively, in the past year and a half. “I knew I was getting fat but avoided the weighing scale and so never realized how much I had put on. Then my clothes got tight, people began com­eeting and I knew I was in trouble.”