The trainer took out the scale from under his desk. "Step on it", he commanded.
I stepped on the scale, the numbers rolled up till it read 41kgs. I was pleasently surprised, this was still very thin, but the last time I checked several months ago, I was just 39kgs, a smile turned up on my face.
"Are you serious!", the trainer exclaimed. "You better start eating everything you see", "and protein", he said. "Protein is the most important", he stated. "You get it from meat and beans and milk and pulses and all", he explained, "a boy your size will need at least 100gms a day", he continued. "I will tell you how much that is", he continued, taking out a piece of paper.
He wrote down 'meat: 20-28% protein'
"This means all types of land animal meat", he explained. "Some meat has slightly more protein then others, but in general it will be in this range", he explained.
'Fish: 15-20% protein'
"This too includes both ocean fish, river fish, and shrimp", he continued.
'Dal: 9% protein'
"Dal protein is actually incomplete, it doesn't count if you don't have big serving of rice or wheat with it", he explained.
'Milk: 8gms protein per cup'
'Kidney beans: 23% protein"
"That is when they are raw, when they are soaked and cooked it becomes less then half that"
'Peanuts: 20% protein
Eggs: 5gms protein each
I thought this over as I tried to have it sink in. The first thing I looked at was the meat with the 20 something percent protein. "How much protein am I supposed to eat again", I asked.
"You will need at least 100gm a day, and as you get bigger and stronger it will keep on going up", he reminded.
I calculated this in my head. If I needed 100 gm of protein from food that was 25% protein, or 25 gm for every 100 grams, I would need 400 gm a day. I didn't know how much this was, but it sounded like a lot, it would also mean an entire half kilo of seafood or more then a kilo of dal, or 12.5 cups of milk a day.
"Now, this would be a lot for you, it doesn't look like you have been eating even 1/4th of what you should be eating", he explained. "If you tried to eat all this protein from only 1 source it would be overwhelming and you will get bored, so eat from variety of sources". "This could mean 150gm dal, 2 cups of milk, 150gms chicken, 50 gms nuts, 150gms shrimp", he explained. "You will have to be eating at least 5 meals a day, preferably 6, so have one one protein source in each meal". "I know this is hard, but when I was your age, it was even harder, no one spelled it out to me like this, and I was constantly yelled at for being a glutton at home, so you can imagine, right?"
I had to let this sink in. How dumb and naive and uninformed was I. I had no idea what a 150 gm serving of chicken looked like. The one thing I was sure of was that I was eating like a beggar simply because I didn't feel hungry easily and didn't actually like any of the food that my parents usually put on the table. This wasn't new, my mother had been scolding me for under-eating my whole life. I thought to it, my appetite had bumped up in the past few months, I was no longer full on the portions that filled me for years.
"This is the hardest part of getting strong", said the trainer. "Working out and increasing the weight you can lift is the fun part", he explained.
"I will tell you this advice step by step", he explained. "Eating a lot of protein and water and 6 meals a day is step one", he explained. "You yourself will have to find out what 100 gm of food looks like".
The advice sounded hard, and I wasn't wrong, but I had saved up money for the entire month's membership, I couldn't give up so easy.
The first thing i did was walk to the butchers shop nearby, and asked him what 100 gm of meat looked like. the trainer had spoke as if it was a pretty small serving.
"You mean this much?", asked the butcher as he sliced off a piece of a slaughtered goat. The piece was smaller then his hand, but to my dismay it was a lot bigger then the amount I would usually eat. Though I was pretty sure I could eat that much if I wanted to.
The next thing I did was go to the grocery store, and asked the store people what 200gms of lentils and beans and nuts looked like. They all looked like decent sized servings, but I could probably comfortably eat them if it was the only thing I had in each meal.
I suddenly remembered something, my mother had given me 100 rupees as I had told her I wanted the grilled chicken they were serving on the street, I looked at the prices of the dal and nuts, dal was just 100 rupees per kg and peanuts were 200 per kg. The nuts may have costed more, but I don't know a single person that actually likes dal, so I got a bag of 500 gm of peanuts.