Lose weight but save us the drama

FILE | NATION

What you need to know:

  • Men have had it with this weight loss tangent that women are on, that consigns all great tasting food to the ‘unhealthy’ bin.

I got a strange call the other day from this saleslady who said she had something that would interest me. “Interest me?” I asked cautiously “Let me guess, would it be about low interest rates and …a loan perhaps? Because if it is then I’m afraid now is not a good time.”

“No, it’s about a detox program.”
“Detox, as in alcohol detox?”

“No, something that cleanses your body of impurities,” she said.
“I don’t know… I think I am pure enough,” I said

“Have you ever had a colon flush,” she ploughed on.
“Is it that thing that women do?”

“Even men do it.”
“No, and from the sound of it I don’t think I would enjoy it.”

Anyway she explained to me what it was all about and it didn’t sound like something I would be interested in because it sounded a bit feminine. And somewhat cosmetic.

But more and more women are embracing dietary regimes. More and more women are buying these little weighing scales so as to make sure they don’t cook more than 45gms of fish fillet because a gram more might possibly make them obese.

Detox is the new lingo. Next to detox is the word of this decade; calories.

Food has stopped being about taste. Now it’s about how much calories it has and whether those calories are good for the hips - forget the heart, a good paycheck will always take care of the heart.

Nothing is healthy any more, not meat, not beer, not white rice, not white bread, not sausages, not bacon, not fries. All the things that make life worth living have been flagged as unhealthy.

Food companies are cashing in on this madness and self styled dieticians are crawling out of the woodwork to offer questionable quick weight loss program.

Every street corner has a diet pundit who will tell you what foods are bad for you. Not too long ago I heard from a friend who stared at my pork chops and declared that pork is actually bad for me because it’s red meat.

I ate it all the same because all things bad taste so great. The hell with calories and cholesterol.

Undeniably there are many sober reasons as to why we should curb out lifestyle because indeed death stares at us, even if we choose not to stare back.

It stares at us from all the bad food that we eat. It stares at us from all the alcohol that we imbibe. It stares at us when we choose to lounge before our television set over exercise.

And we are a dying breed, a death that we invite because indeed what will kill most of us are lifestyle diseases. Most of us (men) listen to these messages shake our heads sympathetically and then call our meat guy to lay out a kilogramme or two of the usual goat ribs on the spit.

Men live their lives hungrily because they are burdened with more societal expectations or perhaps because they are afraid - not of death - but of dying. But women? Well, they seem to know better and to tell the truth it’s highly admirable.

But watching your weight and looking good is more important for women than men, especially for the single ones because it’s their ticket to getting hitched for the reason that men don’t lust over brains.

Image is indeed everything. And so exercise regimes and diet plans are all reasonable to keep that shape tight and to tone that underarm that moves like mercury in a glass.

But it’s getting obsessive, this fad to eat right and live right. When a woman fusses about an innocent thing like a chicken’s skin calling it “dangerous” then you know it’s gotten chronic.

Since when did some crusty delicious chicken skin harm anyone?

You take a woman for dinner and she shifts in her seat and declares halfheartedly, “I don’t like carbos after 7pm, so I will have a salad,” which is fine only problem is she will be staring hungrily at the steak in your plate the whole evening!

Salads
The problem with these lifestyles is that women can’t sustain them. It’s a common fact that it’s harder for women to shed off weight than men.

But also, women are less disciplined in weight loss; they fall off the wagon faster because they always have high and unrealistic expectations. They want quick results to weight (pun) problems. If it took you three years to get a blob on your lower thigh surely you can’t lose it in three weeks, unless you ask Dr. Yusuf Dawood to chop it off.

So you have a woman who has been eating salads and drinking some awful juice mix and walking the treadmill coming up to her man after three weeks and asking (I use “asking” loosely here), “Si I have lost weight?” then when the man – who owes her honesty- hesitates, she feels like he is not being supportive enough.

Losing weight, ladies, is not about being a vegan or drinking red wine or eating salads or buying new and matching sports gear.

It’s a complete lifestyle change something that should be done quietly and privately not with that frenzied and showy fanfare that it has come to be.