Guest Review: Confessions of a serial dieter

Author: Kalli Purie

Reviewed by: Purvi Shah

The title says it’s a weight loss memoir and that’s exactly what it is. I loved this book. Period.

 One- because anyone who knows how difficult it is to lose weight is constantly experimenting with diets, especially lazy ones like me who have trouble exercising.

Two- You see so many people in the gym who have been on the treadmill for eons AND you see them everyday and yet they have not lost a millimeter. I, for one wanted to find out the secret behind the hot bods.

Kalli takes you on her weight loss journey step by step, bit by bit. She has experimented with so many different diets, ( some of which I have tried myself) and she rates each of them. Kudos to her memory. I don’t know if you are a fitness freak, but I have searched the internet only to find out that the closely guarded, 100 percent sure secrets come out of the bag only when you pay 100 dollars. Now all you have to do is to grab this book and the cat is out of the bag.

Apart from the diet tables and grading the diets that she has done, she really gets to the fat person’s psyche. There are instances you can relate to and incidences that seem familiar. She has compiled her diet and exercise diary and given to you on a platter. Its not about do’s and don’ts and its not about what’s right and what’s not and its not written by a dietician, it is about what actually works and what works for you.

You want to get thin and you want it fast, so you want to diet and there’s the dietician telling you to eat moderately and have patience since losing weight is a slow process. Sorry, doesn’t work. You need someone who has been there and done that to tell you what works . Kalli is right, most of our slim friends, just bluff. They tell you anything but the truth.

There are great comparisons between the so called wholesome-never-go-hungry , six-meals-a-day diets and the deadly  I-am-hungry-all the time diets. She takes you through a plethora of diets like the dahi papaya diet, the champagne diet, the idli sambhar diet, the udipi diet and the works.

Kalli’s writing is fresh and filled with funny anecdotes. On a particular diet she says they were given a treat of gajar ka halwa-1teaspoon: a client thought it was pickle and ate it with her roti. And a portion of fruit meant not half a fruit but a slice of apple , three jamuns, one strawberry or ten seeds of pomegranate.

In her words, “ If you are short , you can not get tall, but no matter how fat you are , you can always get thin.”

So for all those out there testing and trying  or yet wondering how to lose weight, I suggest you grab a copy of this amazing book. I loved every minute (or every diet) of reading it. I would give it a 9/10.

And for the author I would like to add a word  “THANKS”.