Have you been trying to stick to a diet for most of your life — and not really succeeded in your battle of the bulge?

Join the club.

You may be someone who doesn’t eat very much at one go, but you always relish what you eat. You may not be fussy about your food: You don’t believe, for instance, that fish curry “goes” only with rice. So, if there is no rice on the table, then unlike your slim friends, you wouldn’t forego the fish rather than combine it with a “mismatched” chapatti. You could also be easygoing about when you have what — and you’re fine with muesli for dinner and leftover biryani for breakfast. It all tastes good anyway.

At places that offer Cordon Bleu/Michelin star food, you recall that those svelte French beauties stay the way they are despite their delicious cuisine by opting for small servings, and you too have “just a taste” of everything. You long for another helping, but you don’t want to fall off the wagon and you curb yourself from overindulging — while your companions (who are half your size) plough disinterestedly through the piled-high delicacies on their plates.

Somewhere at the back of your mind, you think that it could be your enjoyment of food that is the culprit in the size stakes. “It’s those traitorous taste buds!” you say. “From now on, I’ll stick to the ordinary and the repetitive.”

So there you are at lunchtime every day of the week with a small serving of idli-sambar/veg noodles. There should be distaste evident on your face at the sight of the same old thing on your plate, but instead, it is your companions who shudder and say, “Not again!” while you hungrily tuck into the idli-sambar/veg soft noodles for the 17th day in a row.

It still tastes sooooo good.

Meanwhile, your companions are busy running through the items on the menu and turning up their noses at the lack of choice. While they discuss the alternatives and consider ingredients and refuse to repeat what they ate yesterday, you are breathing in the aroma of the spices in the sambar or the faint smoky smell of the noodles and are thoroughly pleased.

You don’t even notice the dagger-like looks from your table-mates!

There are other things you do that your thin friends and acquaintances most likely do not. For instance, you know that you shouldn’t be indulging in pies and pastries, macaroons and cakes, but for sheer pleasure, you linger at the bakery to feast your eyes on the cherry-topped red velvet concoctions and inhale the tantalising fragrance of freshly-baked bread.

Finally, your ocular and olfactory senses replete, you buy yourself a packet of rusks — what you think is the least fattening item on view — and you leave feeling virtuous about that diet you are on.

But — that diet isn’t working. You have walked your 10,000 steps a day. You have stayed off all sugary drinks. You have stuck to the straight and narrow and what you think is the tried and-tested ... and where are you vis-a vis your friends? Still overflowing on all sides of them.

“I give up!” you say. “All I have to do is smell food and the calories pile on.”

Now, with the latest discoveries by scientists, it appears that you’re right. Your sense of smell could be the offender!

Lab experiments have shown that a good sense of smell makes mice fat and those mice that lost their sense of smell lost weight.

I don’t know about you, but I’m going out to get myself a firm set of nose clips.

No more indulging my traitorous sense of smell in the bakery or beside the barbecue/grill — and “catching” the kilos!

Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India.