The Weighty Issue

“Dear, do I look fat?”

Aha! The million dollar question. I am very sure, that all of you guys here in this room have fallen into this age-old trap before. The extensive preoccupation with that obscene word that spells F.A.T, is the IN thing nowadays.

Tthe widespread media coverage of slim, skinny and skimpily-dressed women bombards our sense of vision every other minute. Men look at these pictures and drool. Women, look on in envy and wonder how they too, can look like them.

From fad diets to slimming pills to slimming centres, it is this fixation that is consuming the market nowadays. Just run a search on the Internet and you will get millions of hits on the subject. It doesn’t help that celebrities swear by those fad diets like the Zone diet and the Atkins diet or endorse slimming centres and slimming pills. No wonder there are more bulimics and anorexics nowadays, and it is affecting teenagers and adults alike. You either gorge-and-purge, or develop an animosity towards food.

Then you have shows like Nip and Tuck and Extreme Makeover, wow, that’s really something! There is hope after all, for the rest of us, the ugly and fat cohort. But wait a minute, nothing comes free, do they? Read the fine prints and you will realize that there is hope ONLY if you have the “moolah”, or money, as we normally call them! A liposuction costs about $10000 and it doesn’t decrease the number of fat cells you have which essentially means over time, you put on the weight again, if you are not careful. Oh and forget about slimming pills, they only make you agitated, break out in cold sweat and wreck your body big time. Remember the Andrea De Cruz saga? That’s not pretty.

One of the things I realized over the years, is that weight loss, is a step by step process. Pretty much like keeping your hair long or growing up, losing weight is not a fly-by-night kind of incident. Experts have published articles after articles on healthy weight loss tips and the professional recommendation is to lose 1 kilogram per month, with the help of an exercise regime, and healthy eating habits. For the record, to lose 0.5 kilograms of fat requires a deficit of 3500 calories, which translates into 1 whole cheesecake or 6 hours of moving furniture continuously. Get the picture?

The other thing I’ve learnt is not to get too hung up about the number that appears when you stand on the bathroom scale. Especially if you have been regularly working out. The reason is, as long as you are working out, you are developing muscles, which weighs more than fat. Similarly, as the muscle composition increase, your body burns more fat. Eventually, you will be leaner than before, but the scale may tell you otherwise.

At the end of the day, the weighty issue falls back onto our shoulders. No one can help you, unless you first acknowledge your obsession with the number on the scale. Throw out all those slimming pills and fad diet articles, park those thoughts about slimming centres aside. It’s time to get real and set an attainable goal and embark on the journey to good health. It’s not about how much spare cash you have to spend, or how determined you are to lost weight. It is about being ready to start making a difference. Do it right and you’ll never have to do battle with the number game again!