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Facing Realities Of Weight Loss

By Gloria Omoruyi

“Are you one of those people who despair of ever getting into some of their favourite clothes again? It is now possible again to remove fatty deposits that will not respond either to diet or exercise from areas such as under the chin, tummy buttocks, thighs calves, ankles and the male breast. Liposuction is a minor surgical procedure which reshapes the body by the removal of stubborn fat from problem areas. Benefits are permanent as once fat cells are removed they cannot return?”

The above excerpt is one of the numerous weight reduction methods proposed by diet industries; other diet plans include pills, injections, hypnosis, lotion and machinery that all present the same extravagant claims.

If any or all the weight reduction methods actually worked, the industry would be in serious trouble because any one could get thin in ten days, stay thin and spend no additional money on weight loss.

The majority of diet plans are hopelessly unrealistic. Some are down right dangerous to health. Few take into consideration that the greater the change that has to be made on the woman’s present diet, the less likely she is capable of sustaining that change over a period sufficiently long enough to experience even temporary weight loss. In most cases, the novelty of the plans wear off, no miraculous weight loss is evident and the old bad eating habits are returned to with vengeance as the pound pile up at an even more rapid rate than ever before. My advice to would-be-dieters is this, “If the weight change is to be permanent, the diet must be permanent” There is no two ways about it.

Taking a cursory look at the numerous diet plans on newspapers and magazines, most of them seem to have been designed with one particular person in mind-a wealthy, unmarried, mathematician, who can perhaps afford delicate portions of salmon and avocado and definitely do not have to work, or else she simply would not have the time to lovingly prepare three splendid three meals for herself everyday, she is decidedly not married. No family even assuming every member wanted to lose weight would eat her meal. If they did, the children would die of malnutrition from night after night of dinners, constituting of clear consommé livened up with a spring of fresh parsley. Finally our diet conscious lady must also be a mathematician to be able to calculate the correct percentage of niacin and pantothenic acid in each portion while she adds and subtracts calories at the same time. Since I am not and most likely neither are you a rich spinster computer, then my remarks would go to the woman who works during the day either at home or outside, who cooks for others as well as herself and who sometimes eat out at restaurants and invite friends home for dinner where it would be very impolite to start counting calorie loudly or silently at table, and who has not the patience let alone to shop for strange exotic delicacies that “melt away fat”.

A woman who is obese should see a physician. The least of her worries is how she looks; she may as well be suffering from high blood pressure. This is true of women who are pregnant or diabetic. But the problem with most women is that they rely on a height-age chart to find their ideal weight, they are notoriously inaccurate and so generalized as to be virtually useless.

Your doctor is really the only one qualified to help you make the judgment. Too often, women are over ambitious and the reason they fall five pounds short and give up is that the body need those five pounds and would put up a massive fight to keep them. Unfortunately, too many women take their cues from fashion illustrations not their doctors and in the fight to lose too many pounds become part of the “yo-yo” syndrome always fluctuating between weight gain and weight loss. Not only does this destroy the morale but encourages rapid cholesterol build up in the arteries. Women who know or suspect they have an ailment related to the heart, kidney or liver should not attempt any form of weight loss without a doctor’s opinion.