Women Let’s Consider Losing Weight

We live in a cruel world. As a baby, it is very acceptable for new-born to be chubby. A fat baby is testament of good feeding by its mother. When a baby girl becomes a chubby teenager she is considered to be a cute, highly pampered girl with affluent parents, who have perhaps over-indulged her.

When this teenager becomes a young woman, she is expected to lose some of her teenage fat so that she can snag a husband and make her parents proud – never mind that her husband may be rotund or have a beer belly or several chins or no neck at all from being too fat.

The young woman then goes on to produce the desired number of offspring, this time to make her husband proud. It is usually after childbirth that people start to notice that she has become very flabby or fat.

I have a very pretty friend. She is lovely in every way. She has naturally long hair, an acne-free face, pretty pouting lips and a very voluptuous body. She used to be very confident about her size but she has recently been very worried about her looks and she said she is thinking of doing something very drastic to lose weight. She confessed that her husband has been passing snide remarks about her weight and now she just feels like a beached whale.

So what options does a woman have if she decides to lose weight and should she lose weight to please someone else? Let’s consider losing weight. The first option is expensive, dangerous and frankly not worth the trouble. It is cosmetic surgery and as you can probably tell, I don’t agree with cosmetic surgery.

I don’t understand the intricate details of the different procedures cosmetic procedures but I know that they range from face lifts, breast enlargements, bum boosts to tummy tucks. But why go through all that trouble and expense to end up with hard breasts like coconuts or a rock solid tummy like you swallowed and digested a metal serving tray?

There is also the possibility of ending up looking like a scream-Halloween mask if you have a face lift. The fact that there may be serious medical complications should be enough to put people off this form of self-improvement.

However, it is hard convincing people that cosmetic surgery is not the best option when some women have actually succeeded in ‘turning back time’ like American stars like Cher, Dolly Parton and Joan Rivers. And let’s not forget our own home-grown indestructible in Africa.

The second option would be to go on a diet and stick to it. It is not about missing breakfast and lunch and then eating enough pounded yam to feed five starving children in the evening. Neither is it about cutting out biscuits and sweets and then filling up on groundnuts, cashew nuts, gala and fried snacks .

I must admit that diet programmes, if you are determines, work. I went on a diet three years ago and although it was effective, it was a big struggle. My husband was very supportive because our grocery budget went down, since I had to buy less food – no more pizzas, cakes, biscuits, pies and coca cola. I ate like a rabbit- carrots, apples, oranges, bananas became my snacks while, pounded yam and the likes became celebration food. I could only eat them once in a while. I love my new size but my hubby was a bit disappointed at first when my chest went considerably flatter. I lost the weight for me, not for him, so I didn’t mind. I wanted to be healthier and wear nicer clothes. I also did not want to be the fattest person in my office.

The third option a woman has is to leave the fat, leave the flab and just get on with life. Why can’t a woman be happy with rolling hips, a bum that can accommodate several bottles of Coca Cola on it in an upright position and breasts that clear queues without the owner using her hands to push people out of the way?

Why can’t a woman have a neck is couched in so much fat that it looks like she has several rolls of necklace on? Besides, some men actually like voluptuous women. While one might argue that life is too short to waste time worrying about the size of one’s backside, life will indeed be too short if one person’s weigh as much as three adults.

I think the most important thing is being comfortable in one’s own skin. My friend needs to do whatever she thinks she needs to do to feel good, not because her husband wants it. After all, she may have cosmetic surgery to please him but he may still leave her, have an affair or find her totally unattractive after the procedure.

She wants to have a tummy tuck after the ravages of four very heavy boy-pregnancies which is understandable. Personally, I think a diet and proper underwear like girdles and strong support bras can do a lot to lift, tuck and streamline a woman’s body, but who am I to tell her which method to chose?

Ladies, take care of Number One. If you chose to lose weight, do it because you want to. Do it for your health, to feel or look better.

Lose weight the way you want to, not because someone has forced you to do so. If you decide to remain large, do so because you are happy being a voluptuous woman.

Let the men do whatever they like. Who said they are perfect, anyway? Women love men despite many of them being pot-bellied, bald, barrel-chested, thin-chested, hairless, hairy, bow legged, K-legged, bracket-legged, man-boobed, high bummed, moustached, buck–toothed, whatever.

Perhaps men should lay off pressuring women to look a certain way and look at the beauty inside.