Losing weight in India and how to do it.

People who know me know that I am large. Always had XXL sizing in everything (even the fries) and things were ok for a while (being overweight was cute chubby). Then I realised a host of diseases that started entering my point of view (reading) and I started getting scared.

Because it’s true, as you get older the weight coming off gets harder and you have to work out longer. That doesn’t mean people haven’t lost weight.. They do, it’s just harder and take this from a mid twenty year old living in India.

Here is a real life example of inspiration. My brother and I used to gorge on anything that topped the list of unhealthy eating. Fries, Coke, Pofak Chips (in Kuwait), Salads (heavy on the macaroni cheese stuff), Pizza and whatever. It was our mother’s unbound love for keeping her sons strong and healthy. The elder one (me) unfortunately didn’t get the message too well and I have been at it, so much so that my cousin asks my mom one day “Did you not stop the complan aunty?” (that’s an Ad in India where kids drink that flavoured milk powder to keep growing, kinda like ovaltine, horlicks and stuff).

My brother had enough and stopped. He did 4 months of jogging, severe restriction on food. All in all lost about 20 kilos. He went from 98 to 70 right now if I am right. Another story is that of my friend Udai Singh Pawar who was larger than life always and in all ways now can’t be recognised. Guy has lost around 20 kilos easily as well. So how did these guys do it? What was their secret?

Nothing but plain common sense and hardwork. See the reality is losing weight is not hard (20 mins a day out of 24 hours), but sticking to it is hard. You will always find 10s and 1000s of excuses to not work out, but you have to stick to it. Why? Cause you can look so sexy (everyone looks good thin) that when you go out next time, you have hot women turning to look at you. Or if you want more motivation stop eating or you’ll end up like this.

That is not a pretty picture. And furthermore far far too unhealthy.

So here’s my friend’s advice to lose weight. It’s concentrated on Vegetarians living in India. It has no simple formula and in one day you cannot expect to look like Brad Pitt, but if you are at it, you’ll look far better.

So here’s my chat with Udai and his advice to you to lose over 20 kilos of weight.

Udai: hehe its easy…just follow these steps…

1. Stop drinking any cola, and avoid deepfried stuff and chocolates (rest u can eat as normal)
For example in McDonalds just eat the burger but not chips and the cola is the worst thing to put in your mouth. Cola is sugar water basically and Diet Cola is cancer water. Cut pointless fats don’t eat cream and heavy doses of butter and stuff.

2. Exercise is good but not necessary.
I used to do some kickboxing in bangalore which helped but the food thing and diet control was better.Nowadays I don’t have money for travel so I have to walk around a lot and climb slopes and stuff, but otherwise food was best option.

3. Heartbreak is good
When I broke up, I lost 20 kilos..which helped. So a quick shot way is find a girl fall in love or something.. get a heartbreak and that will make u lose weight hehe. Be warned though for some ppl its the inverse
they eat more..

4. ZERO colas and ZERO deepfried
ZERO is important because when discipline is established it carries over to other things. Our office had free colas and free snacks mostly deepfried each evenin. Free colas were available all day. I used to hog at the meals… and at home for dinner and all but i just fought to skip the colas and the deepfried… and ate mostly normally. But the cola and french fries control i think unconsciously helped elsewhere.

5. Reduce slowly.
Thing is you cant stop eating like i would eat just one dessert rather than two three and put one sugar in coffee instead of two  and eventually when i stopped mid day going to pantry for cola.. that meant no biscuits in mid day too etc etc. So dont pick a huge goal like… “no biryani, no good food etc.. ”
because that is a stupid aim, instead aim to eat good food. You can continue eating good food as long as u cut the crap, our body needs food so if u cut the meat ahd chapathis (breads) u will only get hungry and hog more and then overcomepnsate but if u cut the side orders etc, then ur body gets all teh food to survive and u are not starving.. plus its good food so u are happy and can do the diet..

6. Substitute healthy.
For example.. eat tomato sandwich instead of potato sandwich… dont eat things like BOMBAY sandwich which is ONLY carbs and fats, nothing else .. but even a ham sandwich is better than that and if made well not much less tasty.. and that way iwhen u do eat bombay sandwich , u will enjoy it more..

7. NO STARVING anywhere.
You know if you eat eventually u realise that if the burger is good, then u dont need the fries..if you are pissed hungry then instead of fries eat another burger, second one but smaller burger. French Fries are just pure pure carbohydrate and fat  with oil = BAD BAD BAD. The burger of same weight… is some proteins and less oil based carbs .

8. Mind people are smarter, Body People work harder.
You have to understand that we will never be motivated like miss universe contestants and the stupid fools who just build their body in the gyms. We are mind ppl.. not body ppl hehe so forget boring jogging 24/7 dude and just work with your brain like I did.

9. Remember Don’t Skip food.
Minerals come in required amounts as long as u maintain normal diet and dont start skipping meals so dont have to worry about those either vitamins too and in case you are skipping some meals… atleast have lots of fruits they are healthy and keep the minerals and nutrients alive all u need to adjust are carbohydrates and fats.   i dont know nohting about fundoo dieting fundey like atkins and all, but i just think about carbs and fats.  if u decrease carbs, ur fats eventually burn but not always properly.. so u’ll feel hungry first if u just cut carbs insantly, and then eat too much and lose diet cut pointless fats – like the deepfried stuff i was saying, and cheese  and whipped cream which is just like the cherry on top, but if the cake is good cherry is waste

Ending advice.

So just know what makes u happy…. dont get rid of that.. get rid of things that u just take for lack of thinking and habit like the colas and fries and all the fatty food. Eat smart, snack often and take healthy diet.
Oh by the way dont have beer , vodka instead with some lemonade and all is far better.

Welcome to Karthick Gopal.com! To stay in touch with all the posts, subscribe to myRSS feed or follow me on Twitter for more interesting stuff.

Happy Halloween (company logos)

Not a big deal in India, but I am a fan for logos and stuff, so I put together a collage of Halloween logos (some of the immediate ones I found). These were taken from Google Image search so don’t bust my ass if there’s anything legal, I’m just spreading the fun.

Obviously Google’s got the most creative stuff around, I haven’t seen many break that branding mold taught at MBA’s and experiment with fun.  This is something I’ll definitely keep in mind when I start my company .

The type of lover that I am

I have 2 great friends online. The shagger Nikhil and the bubbly Jaczie. The reason I call them online is because they are great friends WHO I HAVEN’T MET YET. Seriously. I took a test recently while surfing Jaczie’s site and turned out to be a romantic lover. IF you haven’t noticed that preamble was totally irrelevant.

Your result for The Lover Style Profile Test…

The Romantic Lover

The Godfather Series- Character Analysis

One of the greatest series ever written was the Godfather series. Even the number 1 movie of all time is The Godfather.  I was at my local bookshop today when I noticed that there’s a new series on the Godfather written by a certain Mark Winegardnr (that’s how his name is really spelt). So obviously being a Godfather buff (I sometimes nickname myself Kage Coreleone) I picked it up, I am yet to read it though but I thought I should write a post on the Godfather character analysis.

When one mentions the Godfather, you have 2 images that stir deep emotions. One is of the father, Don Vito Coreleone, and the other his erstwhile son Micheal Coreleone. I’m not going to spend time talking about the history of the series and if you haven’t seen it, pick it up already.

What makes the 2 Godfathers different?

Vito Coreleone, or the original Don, is the one potrayed in the center of the first series of the Godfather. He is what I would call a  pragmatic unruflled Mafia don. Even his son Michael, despite tremendous successes, loses in such a comparison, as he lacks the one thing that makes Vito the Don to emulate, the warmth, compassion and sheer predictibility of the future. If there was a difference between Micheal and Vito, it would be that of a certain touch of class. Just as the case is between Jordan and Bryant. He is the Godfather par excellence. Establishing himself at a time when class was rare with particualr hindsight. I would closely relate this to the Ambani brothers of India. While Dhirubhai played a lot of particular notes and pulled strings, he rose from nothing, he inherited nothing and built everything from scratch. An amazing parallel is Vito. Wise , intelligent, an excellent reader of others’ intentions, and a smooth, subtle talker, able to convince with words, not having to rely only on bullets. The most exceptional thing about Vito, and the way in which he most outshines his son, is the manner in which he conducts his personal life. Though a ruthless, violent criminal, Vito is also a warm, loving father and husband, and the paradox of his character is that it is precisely the warmth of his humanity that makes him appear superhuman. In his later years, Vito comes across as relaxed and playful, even mellow and the death scene in which he’s playing with his grand kid even though he’s the Don and chasing them around is what shows him to be not only a great individual but also a pillar of the family / social society.

He was at the top when needed, astute when required and lived a rich, full life and settled into a quiet retirement. You’ll notice that in part 2, where as a younger man, when he is played by Robert De Niro, he is caring and devoted but also silent and intense.  It’s the intensity and the insane pauses while thinking that manifest the power in Vito Coreleone. Michael lets his intensity eat away at him, Vito does not. There is never any tension for Vito between the two meanings of “family” (i.e. blood relations and crime family), and he doesn’t feel conflicted about what he’s doing.  His intensity is that of a hard-working man, though one who still manages to come home at the end of the workday to spend time with his family. In short, Vito comes across as both the perfect father and the perfect Godfather, making him a difficult model for all of his children, especially Michael, to imitate.

The Prodigal Son

Micheal on the other hand  is cold-blooded, ruthless, smart, and determined. His ability to think clearly under fire, to be decisive, and to command respect makes him an excellent Godfather as well. One sees fate play a strange card when out of all the Don’s children, the youngest and most unlikely to head the family makes for the best candidate to ascend the throne.  Michael was never supposed to get involved in the Mafia. He was supposed to become a senator, perhaps even president. Even when he does begin working for his father, he doesn’t seem fully reconciled to the decision. He promises Kay before they marry that the family will become “legitimate” soon. Over twenty years later, in The Godfather Part III, he still seeks this legitimacy. Unlike Vito, who appears at ease in the role of Godfather, Michael is burdened by the responsibility. One senses that he views himself as a sacrificial hero, slaving away for the rest of the family, sacrificing his soul for the well-being of those around him. In many ways, Michael’s story is a familiar one in American mythology: that of the immigrant’s child. He achieves great heights of success, just as his hard-working immigrant parents hoped for him, but at considerable personal cost. In Michael’s case, this cost is to his family life, as he loses his wife and children. The difference, is the burden of having to rest on the shoulders of giants. Just as Einstein is remarked to have done one better on Newton, Micheal has done one better than Vito. But Michael is often seen as a classical tragic figure. Immensely talented and powerful, he is undone by tragic flaws: his insatiable desire for vengeance, which creates a web of violence and recrimination that he cannot escape; his illusions of omnipotence, which blind him to the fact that achieving legitimacy is impossible; and his sense of being perpetually at war, which never allows him a moment of rest. In the end, while the Don dies to his family, Michael dies alone. Instead, he brought them only pain and death.

The original Godfather is a romanticized Mafia portrayal, while his son bears that of hardness and bitterness that comes closer to reality.

Welcome to Karthick Gopal’s new look.

I know I have moved this site over 100 times, but this time it stays final. You can click on the RSS quite freely, I have made use of a simple theme called Grace, which is really neat and I’ll be making many additions to this over a period of time.

I have found out that I have an interest in blogging/learning about business tycoons, wordpress optimisation, gaming and design. And this blog, from henceforth, will have posts on these lines.

So welcome to Kage’s Pages and keep commenting!

Goals for this year.

I haven’t updated anything for a while, because I have been reading far too many books of late, but remember those goals I talked about a while back? Here they are.

– Learn WordPress completely.
I started a website www.igamemag.com, with my views into gaming and stuff. It’s something I wish to take higher, maybe even get it to sponsorships and stuff. Right now it’s an experiment to learn WordPress, phpmyadmin and other popular tools.

– Learn PHP
The only reason is to fix my scripts, but I see that consulting with this an option too. No really I’m not the coder type, I’m more a designer types, but sometimes it’s useful to know who is bullshitting you and who is not.

–Learn everything about Online Monetization
This is something that’s increasingly become something that I want to dibble in. It’s a dream to be your own master and to get blogging going on by sitting at home and earning. Many have done it before, so it’s not something that is undoable.

– Art of prioritization
Something that’s heavily been disturbing is my lack of focus and priorities, so here’s learning the tools of efficiency and how to go about making sure that I learn to prioritize.

Lakshmi Mittal Cold Steeled.

I picked up the book ColdSteel from a colleague of mine, and I turned to the backcover. What I saw next immediately got me spending the next few hours researching the man behind the face that had a furios flame burning in orange and the words were that of an Indian. A very powerful Indian.

“This is Lakshmi Mittal. As a matter of courtesy, I am calling to tell you that tomorrow I will mount a public offer to your shareholders to take over your company” – Lakshmi Mittal to Guy Dole.

Here was another supremely interesting business character who raked in raw power. He was also a mentor of many people I knew. Whenever someone can show such a ballsy attitude in public, I knew that this was one of the other entreprenuers I would admire, so I set to read everything I could on Lakshmi Mittal. I haven’t finished the book yet but I couldn’t wait to share what I spent reading about him.

Who is Lakshmi Mittal?

Lakshmi Mittal, LNM for short, was born in western Rajasthan. Mittal was born in an obscure village that did not even have electricity and his beginnings were simple. Later on, his family moved to Calcutta. In 1970, he graduated from the prestigious St Xavier’s College specialising in Commercial Studies. He has often been praised as a very astute learner who topped his studies in college. It seems, he was ready to take up professorship at the university but was repulsed by the fact that the person he was reporting to stated, “you have to be at work at 6 am sharp from tomorrow”. He decided to leave that and pursue his dad’s business. Mohan Lal, who ran a small family-owned steel mill was also a budding entreprenuer and accepted his son into his company as a trainee.

Lakshmi Mittal, is a person who is astute in the nature of business. He buys out run out mills, remodels them and turns them into profit centers. That is something many could have thought up but few could have executed. And he did this in an industry that is termed dry, steel. While the dotcom boom is the rage and online companies are the way to go, here is the 4th richest man in the world doing what he does best. Much respect. Inspired by this but splitting away completely in a business sense from his father in the mid-1970s, Mittal slowly made his own way in the industry. He developed from a small plant in Indonesia, before moving into Europe in the 1980s, central Asia in the mid-1990s and the US in 1998 through the acquisition of Inland Steel. Today, Arcelor-Mittal has plants on six continents and more than 300,000 employees.

Qualities of Mittal.

His values, Mittal says, boil down to hard work, a global approach, surrounding himself with capable and loyal people, and relying on his family for advice. Stories have it that he didn’t hesitate to decline an invitation to a party to honour UK’s wealthiest Asians. Mittal, who was too busy tying up a deal in Chicago, decided to pass on the invitation extended by none other by the then British Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

Lakshmi Mittal is ambitious and packs a tough interior on that soft indian broken english exterior. The zeal to be the best in whatever he does perhaps comes from his disciplined lifestyle. Mittal, who does an hour of yoga every day, says he owes a lot to his Asian roots. “Being an Indian is a real advantage . . . you learn a lot about bridging differences and reaching compromises when you grow up in a country with over 300 languages and ethnic groups.”

In an interview with Simi Garewal, his wife Usha Mittal talks about Mittal.

SG: Usha tell me, you’ve known him best. Did you see earlier on some signs in him which would show, you know, prove his later achievements, his later greatness.

Usha: Four months after we got married, he had to give his exam and I saw his determination at that time. And that impressed me greatly. And I still see the same determination in his work. He’s very intelligent and he can see things in advance.

So how did success change things? Lakshmi Mittal’s wealth.

You see, success bring more success and more opportunities and more challenges. That’s one change. And in the personal life, you gain more confidence, you gain more strength. You want to do something better all the time.

His first success story was in 1989 when he bought Trinidad and Tobago’s steel facility, which was losing one million dollars a day. Within a year after its purchase, Mittal doubled the output and made the business profitable. His secret of success is a combination of technological vision and good managerial sense. Despite his remarkable rise, Mittal is known for maintaining a low-profile. Britain’s wealthiest Asian, is also its eighth richest citizen. His house costs 57 million pounds, that he bought from F1 owner a couple of years back. Mittal’s house in Kensington, London is decorated with marble taken from the same quarry that supplied the Taj Mahal. The extravagant show of wealth has been deemed the “Taj Mittal”.

I can’t claim his buying a house to be extravagant, his daughter’s marriage is another affair though. Much talked about though and I think that was an over kill. To have a wedding in Paris, fly the guests in a private jet and then call over a gala event starring Shah Rukh Khan and Aishwarya Rai (because his daughter enjoyed her movies.) (………….) is a wtf throwing off the eyeballs up in the air, but it’s his only daughter and the last one to get wed in the family so I guess that’s ok.

The neighbours to his house on Bishop’s Avenue include the Sultan of Brunei and King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. In an interview with Financial Times Mittal states, “The biggest happiness I felt in my life was the day in 1980 when I had my first $1m in the bank, a result of the Indonesian business. After that, everything has become normal. Fundamentally I have not changed, I still remain the same person who still has the same values, whether it is the family values or work values. Nothing changed in my lifestyle or in my business approach.”

Like Warren Buffet, he’s another person who enjoys Diet Coke. Here’s to India Rising and one of the foreleaders that we can look up to.

Angelina Jolie was paid 14 $ million for her breastfeeding pic

Seriously. The cost of a breast implant is around 4000 $. So for the amount that Angelina Jolie was paid by W magazine for her breastfeeding photo, we could have served 3500 hooter girls with enhancements.

Here is the picture (that was leaked out)

Paper can’t win

This is lol stuff. Paper can’t win dude.

Source.

In Heaven and in Hell.

Taken from Laugh it out. Great read.

In Heaven:

The cooks are French,
The policemen are English,
The mechanics are German,
The lovers are Italian,
The bankers are Swiss.

In Hell:

The cooks are English,
The policemen are German,
The mechanics are French,
The lovers are Swiss,
The bankers are Italian.

In Computer Heaven:

The management is from Intel,
The design and construction is done by Apple,
The marketing is done by Microsoft,
IBM provides the support,
Gateway determines the pricing.

In Computer Hell:

The management is from Apple,
Microsoft does design and construction,
IBM handles the marketing,
The support is from Gateway,
Intel sets the price