Being Thin Is Not Enough!

While friends envied her hourglass figure and racing metabolism, Kermin Bhot was learning that being thin is not all it’s cracked up to be.

- Kermin Bhot

At 18, I was tall and skinny, and no matter how much I ate, my weight never really budged from a happy 45 kilos. The sandwich vendor outside my college was so keen on fattening me up he would add an extra cube of cheese for free. When I started to gain weight in my 20s, I didn’t really notice it. It didn’t hit me even when I’d put on almost 15 kilos

in five years, although I didn’t fit into my old clothes, because in my head I was still that skinny teenager who could eat whatever she wanted. Like everyone else, I too believed that being skinny was equal to being healthy.

At 31, I was working a hectic job at a very successful magazine, when I found myself suffering from breathlessness and palpitations. Often it felt like there was a giant hand squeezing my chest. After some prodding from my fiancé, I consulted a doctor friend, Samrat Shah, who is also a metabolism consultant. He put me through a battery of tests, and sat me down for a long chat about all the stressors in my life, my work-life balance, and my health and fitness goals (I had none, in case you were wondering). The tests returned and my cholesterol levels were through the roof. I was shocked… he wasn’t.