POINT OF VIEW:

God, if you can't make me skinny, make all my friends fat

by Aditha Dissanayake

Do you remember a time when you were so thin, that a slight breeze would have swept you off the face of the earth forever? Now, a number of moons later, not even a typhoon could lift you off your feet?

Whatever happened to that thin figure with the lean contours, of a few years ago? Why do Security Guards take a second look at you when they check your Identity Card? Unable to see any similarities between the thin and hungry looking photo on your passport and the face in front of them, why do emigration officers at the airport ask, "Is this really you?".

Solace in food

Why do you constantly find yourself wanting to have something in your mouth? Even though you have just had lunch, why do you still yearn to nibble on a biscuit or a piece of chocolate? Could it be that, coping with a job, the stresses of finding a partner, marriage, children, their education, and finally, retirement, all together a chaotic existence, has made you seek solace in food?

Food and diet. Perhaps the most talked about four letter words in the world today. Take a look around you and you will realize that most people you know are on a diet, trying to combat obesity, fighting a never ending battle with fat.

Everybody seems to be feeling that they have recklessly over-eaten in the past and should punish themselves for having so little self-control by living on a few boiled carrot sticks and salad leaves. This is only one diet.

There are other diets too, guaranteed to make you shed pounds. The fruit juice diet for instance, when you live entirely on orange or lemon juice for ten days, or the carbohydrate-only diet or the Atkins diet, which insists on protein rich, low carbohydrate meals.

Or else it could be a diet program like Fletcherism invented by Horace Fletcher in 1898. All you have to do is chew your food to a pulp or milky liquid until it practically swallows itself, never eat until hungry, enjoy every bite or morsel, savouring the flavor until it is swallowed, and not eat when you have an unpleasant subject on your mind.

Or you can obey the rules set by Haresh Johari, who says in his book Dhanwantari "never eat before sunrise or sunset, always eat only when the right nostril is operating, drink only when the left is operating, never eat facing south, and whenever possible laugh after meals." In addition you can enlighten yourself by zealously reading all the tips given regularly in the newspapers about "good food" (low fat, low calorie) and "bad food".

The good food list includes water, lentils, and brown bread non-fat milk, and everything else you abhor while the bad food list with your favorite sweets in it stretches for miles and miles. But there are also food like avocado or coconut oil which are classified as bad one day, but praised to the skies as healthy and nutritious, the next day.

The answer

But does dieting and weight-loss programs really work? Does it help you attain the lean lines of the figure you once had, as a teenager? No. According to the American Dietetic Association, 'an estimated 90% of the dieters will regain lost weight after the diet is over".

So, unless you wish to live only on orange juice for the rest of your life, the juice diet wont work. As for the Atkins diet, reports say Dr. Robert Atkins who invented it, "was not merely over-weight but obese and suffered from heart-problems, before he died three years ago.

What then, is the answer? Simple. Give up dieting. Stop aspiring for the unattainable and accept yourself for what you are - a healthy, full grown adult. Do as the animals do; eat when you are hungry, stop when you feel fulfilled. Instead of trying to discipline yourself by refusing a piece of chocolate give way to self-gratification. Soothe yourself with permissiveness.

Once you realize you don't have to over-eat now because you can eat again later, once you let your genes and appetite dictate your weight and once you free yourself from food obsessions, you might, you just might, lose an extra pound or two.

And, if all else fail, you can always take refuge in the wish, "God, if you can't make me skinny, make all my friends fat."

***

No easy way out

Excercising to lose weight and firm the body demand hard work, will power and time. Many would be reducers try to find an easier way - and buy garments and gadgets that are supposed to cause weight loss without excercise or diet.

Among the most common are garments made of material that traps heat and seals in moisture, and which are supposed to provide permanent weight loss. But medical authorities say they do not. By preventing the evaporation of sweat, they cause increased sweating which rids the body not of fat, but of fluid; the fluids lost are soon replenished by a few glasses of water.

To make matters worse, some of the products can aggravate high blood pressure and heart trouble by squeezing tissues so that blood circulation is restricted. There is only one certain protection against exaggerated claims by advertisers for weight reduction; remember that there is no easy way to lose weight.

Exercising for Fitness, C. P. Gilmore