opinion

Weight loss programmes

Why do women get taken in by all this, asks John O'Dea

It’s that time of the year again; when fitness centres will try to convince young women that they’re overweight and that they should seriously consider taking up weight loss classes. This after most of these young women will have spent a whole summer getting a tan, toning up their bodies with whatever exercise one does in summer and displaying their tanned and toned up assets all over the place.

This year we’re going one better in that a private hospital is offering a specially devised programme that brings together the services of a clinical psychologist, who will assess and diagnose general mental health problems (?), a Nutritionist who has researched fat distribution, obesity and metabolism, and a physiotherapist who will advise on exercise and personalised training programmes.

Another programme being offered by a Dutch husband and wife team, both doctors one a nutrition specialist and the other a medical/clinical psychologist and psychotherapist is based on a minimal daily dose of Human Chorionic Gonadotrophin (HGC), whatever that is, a sugar, fat and starch free diet, regular exercise and daily relaxation. Incidentally I looked up Gonadotrophin and found that it’s a hormone that stimulates the growth and activity of the gonads, especially any of the pituitary hormones that stimulate the function of the ovaries and the testis. The Chorion contributes to the development of the placenta. Does that sound like it’s got anything to do with weight loss to you?

Why do women get taken in by all this rubbish? Do they really need psychoanalysis to come to terms with their bodies? Do they really need a nutritionist to advise them on their food intake? If anybody took any notice of what nutritionists preach fast foods places and these so called American style casual dining places would have to close down. Now wouldn’t that be tragic?

Most women today, with the assistance of magazines, the cinema and the media are striving to get into single digit fashion sizes. Anyone who’s over size 9 gets suicidal. My feet wouldn’t fit into the thigh parts of their slacks/trousers or whatever it is that they’re calling the garment with two legs that women wear on their nether parts today and it’s outrageous how women are spending twenty liri and over for an ounce of T-shirt material that wouldn’t and cannot hold up a decent pair of breasts, much less squeeze them into it.

Who in the name of heaven taught women that being skinny is attractive? Who taught them that they should look like boys with balloons on their chest? Meg Ryan? Sandra Bullock? I like both these actresses, but a stiff breeze would blow them over.

The tragedy is that if women actually believe that going through all this will make them attractive to men, then they’re sadly mistaken. Do they really believe that men like gaunt looking waif like creatures with ribs poking out of their tanned skin? When a man puts his arm around a woman or grabs a woman’s extremities, he wants to feel substance. He doesn’t want somebody who would break in two or crush like a cigarette packet, if he gives her a bear hug

Men like curves. They like rounded softness. They think it’s sexy. Men like women like Anna Falchi and Valeria Marini. Scarecrows like Twiggy or Kate Bush or that broomstick with the pimples on her chest that plays Ally Macbeal would only appeal to a minority.

If women do not go through all this ordeal to attract men, why do they do it? Do they do it so as to look good for other women, or do they do it for themselves? I know that most women are concerned about what other women think of them. I know that they die if somebody at a party is wearing the same dress that they’re wearing. I know that they try to outdo one another all the time. I also know that some women do not really see themselves in the mirror, but the person that they imagine that they are.

The silly thing is that some women model themselves upon the women that they see strutting their stuff up and down a catwalk, clothes horses who go through hell to look the way they do. They buy clothes because they look good on a six foot 20 year old bombshell with natural uplift, a washboard stomach, slender hips and legs that start at the shoulders, and do not realise that they do not and cannot ever look like that icon in a million lifetimes.

Get real. The only way to look and feel good is to exercise and eat healthy food.

© The Garlic Press 2001.