6 Tips For Overweight Women

“Our images of womanhood are almost synonymous with thinness. If we are thin we shall feel healthier, lighter and less restricted. Our sex lives will be easier and more satisfying. We shall have more energy and vigour. We shall be able to buy nice clothes and decorate our bodies, winning approval from our lovers, families and friends…” – Susie Orbach –‘Fat is a Feminist Issue’

1. Realize that you’re not a failure just because you’re fat and that you’ve been wrongly advised about how to deal with it.
2. Allow yourself to enjoy food again and eat sensibly without dying from hunger pangs all the time. Don’t deny your hunger.
3. Stop weighing yourself every day. Once a month will do.
4. Follow an exercise schedule to keep fit but don’t do things that put pressure on your joints like aerobics. Also, half an hour to forty five minutes a day is enough. Don’t overdo it.
5. Ignore insulting comments from strangers and explain to your friends (who comment on your weight) that you’ve decided to stay that way.
6. Live for the moment, and fully. You may become lighter or heavier or stay where you are, but ultimately you must learn to like yourself for what you are now.

Among all the battles women must fight in the course of their lives, the battle of the bulge seems the most common. In a culture obsessed with thinness (look at the models on the ramps), it seems almost a crime to be fat. Men often get away with excess fat but women seldom do. What fat women must realize is that no matter how much they diet, if it’s in their genes, they will never become thin. Their battle then becomes torture and can cause deep psychological problems as well as make them fatter. But that’s partly due to the talk about the hazards to health of being overweight. The truth is that for most women there is no great risk until they’re about 30 per cent overweight.

Research has revealed that dieting can create as many weight problems as it solves. There is no guarantee that people who diet will become lighter. On the contrary, they may end up heavier. In his book, ‘Dieting Makes you Fat’, dieting expert, Geoffrey Cannon says that when fat people who do little exercise go on a diet, they lose not only the extra fat as we believed earlier, but actually lean tissue!

And just how does the body become fatter? The body believes it’s starving and goes all out to preserve its stores of fat as it would in times of famine. What’s more, too many diets slow down the metabolic rate of the body and make it progressively more difficult to lose weight.

Research has revealed that dieting can create as many weight problems as it solves. There is no guarantee that people who diet will become lighter. On the contrary, they may end up heavier. In his book, ‘Dieting Makes you Fat’, dieting expert, Geoffrey Cannon says that when fat people who do little exercise go on a diet, they lose not only the extra fat as we believed earlier, but actually lean tissue!

And just how does the body become fatter? The body believes it’s starving and goes all out to preserve its stores of fat as it would in times of famine. What’s more, too many diets slow down the metabolic rate of the body and make it progressively more difficult to lose weight.

Says Susan Howard who counsels overweight women: “Worrying about what they’ve eaten and haven’t eaten and whether they’ve lost the weight they want to lose – that sort of pressure is incredibly draining emotionally, and leaves dieters without the energy to put into more important things.”

Here’s what you do to regain your self respect if you’re overweight and unhappy about it:

1. Realize that you’re not a failure just because you’re fat and that you’ve been wrongly advised about how to deal with it.
2. Allow yourself to enjoy food again and eat sensibly without dying from hunger pangs all the time. Don’t deny your hunger.
3. Stop weighing yourself every day. Once a month will do.
4. Follow an exercise schedule to keep fit but don’t do things that put pressure on your joints like aerobics. Also, half an hour to forty five minutes a day is enough. Don’t overdo it.
5. Ignore insulting comments from strangers and explain to your friends (who comment on your weight) that you’ve decided to stay that way.
6. Live for the moment, and fully. You may become lighter or heavier or stay where you are, but ultimately you must learn to like yourself for what you are now.