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Still worrying about my weight
 Jeanne
Davis ponders on dieting at a certain age
I’m seventy-three years old and I still worry about my weight.
I study each new ideal weight chart featured in the popular press.
Recently the numbers revealed that I was at the top end of a healthy
weight for my heightand one pound over would have tipped me into the
overweight category. For the first time in sixty years of
weight-watching, I seemed to be in danger.
On closer inspection, and with second thoughts, reassurance prevailed.
The chart was concerned with ideal weight for my heightand build. I
was not in danger of the serious health consequences of too much
weight –increased risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, colon,
breast and endometrial cancer. On the other hand, I know I
do have an extra ten pounds on my middle
that can’t be excused if I want to present to myself and to the world an
agreeable form.
I grew up in a culture where being slim was a top priority. My
mother founded a modelling /finishing school in the 1930s. Classes in
posture, exercise, carriage (walking ‘tall’), wardrobe (choosing the
right clothes), make-up, ballroom dancing, diet and nutrition were a
constant in my growing up. My siblings and I lived in the building that
housed both the school and some of the students who boarded.
While many of the young women came to
bolster their self-confidence, a number were eager to be models. But
everyone yearned to be slim, though not as I recall as bony as some of
today’s icons.
Fat was something that could be conquered.
Mother, a graduate of Boston University’s Sargeant School of Physical
Education and subsequently head of the Posture Clinic at the
Massachusetts General Hospital, did not accept the excuse that fat
people were fat because of some genetic fault. In most cases, it was
simply too much food, and especially fat-making foods, in conjunction
with not enough exercise. That’s what she was teaching seventy years
ago. It is still the only solution to keeping weight down or losing
weight. Quick-loss diets have not changed much in fundamental rationale
since my teen years.
The low-fat diet, the low-carb diet, the
low-calorie diets, were as popular then as now. But most of us know that
such diets don’t work long term.
Dr. Ian Campbell, Specialist in Weight
Management at University Hospital, Nottingham, and his team recently
completed a study of four of the most popular quick-loss diets – the
Atkins, Weight Watchers, Rosemary Conley and Slim Fast. “Over the first
three months,” says Dr. Campbell, “those on the Atkins lost more weight.
But after six months the weight loss was the same for all four diets.”
And most people quickly put the pounds back on.
So quick-loss diets don’t work long term.
What does? “The trick,” Campbell says, “is keeping it off. There are
two major reasons why we regain the weight in the long-term. First: you
lose focus, go back to the old habits, start to eat a bit more, exercise
less, and then forget about it.
“Second: what the experts think now is that the body fights back.
Physiologically, natural influences lead to increased appetite and a
reluctance to be more active.”
The way to counteract these trends is to
make eating healthily a lifelong habit. We need to focus on the amount
of food we eat and we need to exercise. The number of calories taken in
versus the number of calories expended in physical activity is still the
basic formula to lose weight and to maintain an ideal weight.
There are normally two major phases in a
woman’s life when she can gain a good deal of weight. Pregnancy and
menopause. I was carrying my first child in the United States in
1959. My obstetrician would not allow me to gain more than 20 pounds in
the entire nine months. It was not difficult to go back to my normal
weight of 114 pounds. My cousin, giving birth in England, was advised to
eat for two. Which she contentedly adhered to. She gained close to 40
pounds and never lost it.
For me, it was after menopause that the
ten new pounds crept on. Gradually but inexorably. At sixty I
adjusted to the 130. I didn’t look too bad. And still had a waist. I
could find clothes to fit flatteringly. But now I am really appalled at
139 pounds (9 stone 13oz). Nothing attractive fits. I’m small boned,
height5’4”, and my waist has thickened to 35 inches.
I now recall my mother’s mantra. “Walk
tall.” It does make you look trimmer, and more lithe. Women as they age,
in their late 60s and 70s - even if thin - tend to slump, and become
round-shouldered. A session or two a week of Pilates strengthens the
spine and keeps you straight and tall.
So my new year resolution is to walk
tall, and to remember, what goes in must expand out. And forget the
Atkins, the South Beach, the cabbage soup diets. They didn’t work years
ago and they don’t work long-term now. It’s the same old human body.
New Year Resolution – No. 2
My journey to fitness
 Sarah
Frankel begins a diary charting her progress
10st 4lb (fat and flabby), alcohol units 4, calories: don’t dare
count!
Standing at my open cupboard I wondered which of my suits would fit. The
black suit was too ‘officey’, the brown too ‘wintery’ . The red seemed
perfect. Always thought I looked rather good in red. With some surprise
I stared at my reflection and saw that this old nugget was squeezing me
rather too noticeably at the waist. A top to disguise the bulge was
needed. I discarded about ten before I found one with suitable cover-up
potential.
Sitting opposite the cardiologist I held my
handbag strategically on my lap, the bulge out of sight. He was all
smiles when he told me that there was nothing seriously wrong with my
heart except that I was making it work too hard.
“Well, it’s been broken so many times,” I
laughed. “I don’t think that’s the problem,” he smiled, and then
delivered the punch-line: “You’re overweight.”
Overweight? A bit plump perhaps but surely
not overweight? Edna, who was with me weighed, 14 stone. She was
overweight. I was plump. Women in their fifties should be plump. We
looked better with fat globules filling out the wrinkles. “I want you to
lose two stone,” the cardiologist demanded. He explained that my
breathlessness was not helped by the weight I carried, and that if I
didn’t lose it I would be an invalid. He also mentioned the dreaded word
‘exercise’ which I promptly tried to forget.
Walking down the road in the sunshine, Edna
and I laughed. There was nothing seriously wrong with my heart. We
decided to celebrate by going to John Lewis for tea. I stood at the
self service counter listening to someone whisper inside my head,
“overweight, overweight, overweight”.
“Shall we share something?” I tentatively
asked.
We decided that I would go to the dietician
and then we would diet together. Edna told me that she couldn’t find any
clothes in the shops to fit her. Even size 20 was beyond her. “Well,” I
reasoned, “they cut them really skimpy these days”. I used to wear size
12 and now I have to buy size 14 and sometimes 16.
Silence. In our hearts we both knew the
truth.
Still 10st 4lb , alcohol units 6 (how many calories do 8 chocolate
marshmallows have?)
All right, so I joined a local gym, and it’s
not easy. I was definitely the granny in the pool today. Everyone else
looked as though they were training for the Olympics.
My doctor too had insisted that I exercise.
He advised me to swim since my medical problem appeared to be my lungs.
So it was a workout in the gym and then into the pool. Except that I
couldn’t swim, and having a paddle would be no good with all those
‘Olympians’ racing through their lengths.
I wasn’t too sure about the workout either.
Was it my imagination or did the trainer give a couple of covert
sighs as I clambered onto bits of equipment and then collapsed in a
feeble heap? “Be patient, it takes time,” he said.
I joined some members in the lounge and
started telling a young Aussie girl about my fear of water. “I’ll teach
you to swim,” she said. I stared at her. “Yeah! I’ll teach you,” she
said again. So we struck a deal. Julie, who was from a small farming
town with no theatre (Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw at school,
then nothing but movies and television) would teach me to swim, and in
return I’d take her to the theatre.
We drank to the new deal. “Wine?” I
quizzed. “Yeah! Fattening! Cut down on the alcohol,” she said,
replenishing my glass.
So it was off to the dietician who agreed
with Julie (a nurse who knew what she was talking about). “Try gin or
vodka with diet tonic. You’ll find that you will drink less of this than
wine so you will have fewer calories.”
I liked this lady. She let me eat and drink
things that I enjoyed although there were some pretty drastic rules:
stick to 1,200 calories, no fat, no sugar, very few carbs. Read what’s
written on the packets and never get hungry.
Next month: see how Sarah makes out with her swimming lessons and
her dieting..
SARAH FRANKEL... Born in New
Zealand, Sarah now resides in the UK.
Since the late 1980’s Sarah has been writing poetry, short stories
letters a quasi-humorous diary of the first Gulf War as seen through the
eyes of a woman and mother dealing with day-to-day difficulties under
the onslaught of missile attacks.
Over the next few years Sarah continued writing for pleasure whilst
working full time and studying part time. After reading her assignments
on scenarios of a future world, her university professor advised that
she was in the wrong profession and should write.
After graduating with an MBA, Sarah won first prize in an amateur
writing contest. She took early retirement and has now begun writing
professionally.
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