Step Three: The first 10. Yes, I lost my first 10 kilos… and yes, there is more to come.

On the first of July this year, I embarked on a journey – a journey that involved caloric deficits, personal trainers, and the occasional cheat meal to keep me sane and on track. As I have said before, it is difficult. Very difficult. But it is worth it. Worth it in the long run.

It has been 53 days since I began walking the path that many people do take – yes – but a lot of them abandon halfway through because it is unforgiving. I sometimes debate leaving it as well, especially when my legs hurt a little too much, or my back feels like a steel rod, or when I see foodstuffs that beckon me like a siren does a sailor.

Then, I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked at the readings on the glucose monitor… and suddenly, clothes that did not fit me a couple of years ago began fitting me. And I went – Woah! My neck is now visible. My friends say that I look nice. Compliments are raining upon me like the monsoon in Mumbai. It made me feel like dancing the conga.

But weight loss has a serious side to it. Not many people talk about it. And that side will test you. Losing fat mass – and a little muscle mass along the way, despite resistance training – leaves me tired. The body is adapting, and adaptation takes energy.

When your body has long lived with insulin resistance, regaining sensitivity is both a blessing and a bane. Glucose finally leaves the blood and enters cells, but if food intake doesn’t keep up, that dip feels like weakness. At the same time, leptin – my hunger hormone, ignored for years – suddenly works again. Less hunger means less eating, which only adds to the fatigue. Thanks, leptin. (/s)

And suddenly, weights that once felt manageable now feel impossible. It isn’t permanent loss – it’s the temporary cost of being in deficit. I have to rebuild that strength, slowly. My desire to dance the conga? It is secondary to my desire to want to rest.

As insulin begins working properly again, glucose leaves my blood faster. Without enough food intake to balance it, my sugar levels dip — and I feel it. The mental clarity I first gained with weight loss? It now wavers, like palm trees in a hurricane, every time my blood sugar dips too low. And my determination? Less that is said about it, the better. I begin resisting the temptation of wanting to abandon my post at the gym.

I, too, sometimes want to abandon my post at the gym. Then I remember that it was not my dime, but my mom’s that paid for it. It was my mother and father who were worried like hell seeing my health fail in my early twenties. It was them who stayed up nights in Hyderabad, unable to leave because of responsibilities, while I was wheeled to the ER at 3 AM in an ambulance from my dorm room in Manipal as a grad student.

At 27, I am inching closer to being back in the territory of the double digits. I cannot abandon post – it is akin to treason. To myself and my parents. So, if I feel weak, I will take a glass of electrolytes with just a bit of glucose and say “Chale chalo!” because only a battle has been won… not the war.