The time's got to be right

More than what you eat, it's when you eat that makes the difference.

The big fat Indian wedding is a lot of fun, but cruel on the stomach. Any self-respecting person is likely to have invitations to several weddings this season. And often it's impossible to avoid the summons to bless the newly wedded couple. How does one, in such circumstances, keep one's weight in check? For food served at weddings is, without an iota of doubt, fattening and artery-clogging.

Sense and sensibility, long divorced from the entire diet debate, suggest that it's the time that you eat your meals rather than what you eat that will ensure that you put on weight. Diet, then, is all a matter of timing. At night, the earlier you eat the easier it is for the body to process all that food. It is increasingly believed that metabolism does slow down as the day comes to a close. Perhaps the old adage, "Eat like a king at breakfast..." and so on, does in fact have more than a kernel of truth to it.

But weddings these days happen later and later in the night, with dinner rarely served before midnight. So how then does one follow this eat-early principle? What many wised-up individuals have started doing is to eat before setting off for a wedding function. This works brilliantly on many counts.

First, this way you will definitely not put on ghastly amounts of weight. Second, given the poor quality and repetitive nature of wedding food menus, you will be spared eating the same dal makhni three weekends in a row. Third, drinking alcohol, a must at most functions, on a full stomach is kinder on your system than drinking on an empty stomach, which will do you a lot of harm in the short as well as long run.

And last, no one looks good while eating "" and that's the likeliest time when you will be clicked by a photographer! You wouldn't want to be preserved for posterity looking like the shark in Jaws, would you now?