Samrat is a yoga instructor and an inversion nut job. (And do follow his insane journey on Instagram).

It was 20 Oct 2015… It wasn’t a particulary extraordinary day by any measure.

At 7:00am I had breakfast – 7  idlis (ahem it was actually 11) and some yummy chutney.
I was mighty pleased with myself because I felt like I could eat 3 more. You see, I took a lot of pride in my “capacity”.

I sat down at my computer and didn’t look up until the morning had turned to afternoon – I worked as a freelance digital marketer at the time. Another thing I was not a bad hand at. I was also great at watching movies back to back.

Something yummy smelling interrupted my flow of thought and I drew me into the dining room… BIRYANI. Yessss ..Score.
Damn what a wonderful day I was having.

Then it happened – out of nowhere – I had my first high BP attack, while walking towards that crazy delicious smell.

I was rushed to the the hospital… enroute, I had a massive muscle cramp in the abdomen. At this point my mind was on paranoid overdrive and the new development wasn’t doing my BP any favours.

Anyway the doctor wrote a battery of tests asked me to meet him the following day. I was given the diagnosis. I weighted a 101 kgs, I had a Fatty liver, severe Hypothyroidism and some Skeletal muscle myopathy which was causing high BP and Anxiety.

In just 2 days .. I went from being really happy about Biryani to a being a miserable 30 year old who was really pissed off… at vaguely everything.

For the next 2 months I was on a bunch of pills and my humour began to suck more and more each day.

On my next consult my strangely affable doctor however had left me with one tidbit that stuck in my head… He said, my fatty liver thing could be reversed in as little as 6 months just adopt a healthy lifestyle and lose some weight.

Huh,” what was wrong with my lifestyle?”.  So I decided to understand what the heck he was talking about. I spent the next couple of months researching diets and exercise. Again and again I found myself thinking I’d actually attempted most of them. Why, then was it not working for me?

It turned out that consistency was the problem – I’d fall off the wagon in a matter of weeks to months.

the breakthrough came when I started testing another way of thinking. Rather than push for glory in one small area I began to
make many small changes in a variety of related areas. This quickly amounted to significant gains. I was really excited by this approach as it meant it was doable.

a) Diet – changes little by little was the key. (I found that its really hard to out-exercise a diet that’s working against you)
b) Water – the number of time I ate when I was actually thirsty was frightening
c) Sunshine – This was crucial – I needed to correct years of messing with my circadian rhythm because I worked through the night
d) Exercise – I started with walking and within a couple of months I found that I enjoyed yoga – been a fan since.

A year later the affable doctor turned out to be right …The fatty liver had disappeared, I’m 68.5 kgs, No Anxiety or Muscle Myopathies or BP, have had to reduce hypothyroid medication to a quarter the dose.