The plastic beauties on Page 3, with pencil thin figures are a bunch of motley species leading the run-of-the-mill wannabe models and tinsel town hopefuls on a dieting spree, bordering on starvation that can lead these eye candies, in the offing, to the brink of total exhaustion and extinction. They are like hungry news hounds waiting to devour the latest tidbits and sound bytes on weight loss tips thrown around by the fashionitas of the pretentious beauty industry. But whether you like them or hate them, you cant just ignore them; after all, who dare play the blame game, when all they have is the drive and ambition to look no less gorgeous than their role models.

In the quest for a life less ordinary, with stars in their eyes and diet pills in their diet, they hit the gym, looking for perfection. Perfection? Yes the young brigade is obsessed with the clinical precision and flawlessness of their physical existence. They are an ambitious lot and they can go to all lengths to accomplish their well-crafted physical plans. But sadly their focus is misdirected, and there is no telling where their ends are with so misplaced a means. They have been looking for excellence in the physical realm, which for sure, is neither long lasting nor immortal. Real perfection would come only when you make a conscious effort to nourish and enrich the consciousness, the soul.

What about making a sincere effort to attain the purest diet for the well being of the body, soul and the mind? Instead of making concerted efforts to stick to rigid dietary guidelines and berating ourselves every time we fail to keep up the standard, we could let our palate run free for once to have the food that our body loves. We fear of the unknown, we fear that overweight and obesity would strike us and take their toll on us. Such fears drive us up the wall, and we begin looking for ways like dieting, drugs and other therapies to prevent the catastrophe falling on us, imposing rules and regulations to frame our existence.

We place due importance on the perfect physical nutrients for our bodily nourishment. What if we go a step ahead and place love and care over the nutrients? In a different plane, we can tenderly care for our body by delving into the deeper and richer sources of well being. Like a child responding positively to the affectionate and compassionate gestures of a mother, our body would maintain a state of perfect poise and harmony when we put our trust in the inborn intelligence of our body.

With the gradual corruption and materialization of the human mind, we have tagged each food item with a moral value even before we take the first bite. Depriving ourselves of foods that bring sensory and sensual delights has become ingrained in us. We feel that we our virtue helps us to attain physical perfection by suppressing the vices of taking a bite of the cake. Our mind is closeted in the very dark and pessimistic thought that pleasure brings pain, satisfying and gratifying food makes us overweight and obese.

Our mind is in state of joy and accomplishment after a very hearty meal, enjoyed with our heart and mind. Our spiritual state is at its peak, fully nourished, when our mind is filled with love and joy, free of the redundancies and idiosyncrasies of life. And a nourished and vitalized spirit is the key to the well being of our physical and external attributes.

The crowd that constantly ebbs and flows day in and day out of the-state-of-the-art gyms, keeping away from anything that is delicious should pick a line from the beautiful mother-child relationship. Shower love and care to the body, and let the body intuitively respond to what is best for us at the moment, with its innate wisdom. We need to appreciate every bite we take with gay abandon. When we value the love and wisdom of the body, our body would lead us to the food it needs.