Odds and magazines are stacked against diet success

Georgia says:

12:26pm | 20/10/09

Soo true. Look at how quickly men lose weight simply by giving up drinking - it just drops off them and oooh, how smug they get. If I stop drinking, sure I’ll lose a kilo or two but not enough to encourage abstinence for any length of time. Same with dieting. Men have it much easier.

Siobhan says:

12:50pm | 20/10/09

My husband has to work bloody hard at getting rid of excess weight. This includes some serious self-discipline come Thursday night which is usually reserved solely for planning what beer specials he will take advantage of at the bottle-o on Friday afternoon. Come spring time the range whittles down to low-carb options only. The temptation practically kills him when he enters the cold room.

Barry says:

01:02pm | 20/10/09

Losing wight may be easy for blokes but on the downside we’re walking wallets alienated from our families in a never-ending, increasingly stressful corporate hell, defined by our titles, unable to make a meaningful human connection before we die, sobbing, in our late-50s of a heart attack, alcohol-related illness or both. So what if we can get into size 32 pants?

Trjn says:

01:15pm | 20/10/09

Men’s magazines don’t focus on weight loss because men don’t focus on weight loss, they focus on muscle gain. A chubby man who is 6 foot tall and 90kg would probably be fine with staying at that weight if the fat was turned into muscle (admittedly, they’d be slimmer, but you get the idea). The magazines are writing to their readership and if you look back over them, that’s what pretty much all of the articles are about, turning fat into muscle, building muscle, being able to work out for longer and all other things like that.

I’ve no doubt that the testoterone thing is true, but when you walk into a gym and see the women on treadmills and the men lifting weights, you tend to get the idea that they have different goals.

Kirsten says:

01:18pm | 20/10/09

When I was growing up my father used that looking after one’s weight was easy: eat less, move more. He was saying this to my mother so it was less than sensitive, but it made sense to my young ears.

Except that it matters what the ‘less’ is and what the ‘more’ is. There were times in the Seventies when my mother seemingly existed on cantelope, cottage cheese and grapefruit, then rewarded herself with gin and tonics. I’m not sure if her diet books explained that her day’s starvation amounted to naught once the bottle was opened, and that the body goes into some weird typeof shock when you feed it this way. And the exercises of the time involved equipment that seemed to do little more than jiggle around the fat… You moved, but to no great effect.

Seems extremely sad that so many women regard their bodies as forever imperfect. Not everyone can or should be skinny, not all clothes look better on a bean pole, not all men - not any men really - should be allowed to comment on a woman’s weight.

stephen says:

02:00pm | 20/10/09

Yeah, women gotta go get pregnant too ; makes ‘em real fat.

Mr Pastry says:

02:31pm | 20/10/09

Its so simple - here it is:

Eat less and exercise lots.

Don’t want to exercise - there is your problem.
Don’t want to eat less,  exercise even more.  None of this bobbing up and down in a heated swimming pool, do some proper exercise with profuse sweating.

There you are, it didn’t really need the purchase of a book did it.

Budz says:

03:42pm | 20/10/09

@TRJN: Yes the girls are on the treadmills and guys are on the weights. So what is a way to increase your testosterone and metabolism? By increasing your muscle mass!

So girls, get on the weights too and before you know it your metabolism will improve and you will be using more calories while you are sitting on your bum watching TV!

Also some other tips, eat small frequent meals. Don’t miss meals and have breakfast as soon as you get up otherwise you will destroy your metabolism.

And finally, make a healthy lifestyle a fun thing to do instead of jumping on the dieting bandwagon. Find friends to play sport you enjoy doing, or go for a walk with friends.
Remember there is a reason you feel like crap after you eat some greasy take away or have a big night out. Just think of the aftermath and you might stop yourself!

John says:

01:02am | 21/10/09

Just getting off the track slightly…when you talk about women’s magazines, the first that pops into my head is make up, cosmetics, anti-wrinkle/aging creams. I do a lot of international travelling, and everytime i pick up the duty free magazine on board, half the magazine is full of womens cosmetics! The next few pages are of mens’ creams and lotions etc.
So what is it with women and cosmetics and diets? Ok the age thing comes into it naturally, and weight becomes an issue, wrinkles become an issue, and so on and so forth.
Just accept it…we eat, we sleep, we get old. But at least we are happy. Aren’t we? Maybe this is the key. Stay happy to stay young!