Living SLIM

Choosing To Be Fat

Maybe you just enjoy food so much that every meal is a party and you eat more than a body needs to stay slim and healthy. Maybe you put yourself on such stringent diets that you feel deprived and end up bingeing. Maybe you constantly tell yourself how fat and disgusting you are and how much you hate yourself, and use food to blot out the image this presents. Whatever - you are CHOOSING to be fat.

Think carefully about this because I know your natural response will be "How could I be choosing that ?!" I'll tell you :

• Every time you eat a chocolate biscuit instead of an apple, you are choosing to be fat. No, one biscuit won't make you fat but it will certainly influence what you eat later - and it reinforces that, for you, the choice is always the chocolate rather than the apple.
• Every time you break off a chunk of cheese from a block in the fridge and pop it into your mouth, you are choosing to be fat. No, cheese is not a calcium-rich, healthy snack. It is a lump of flavoured fat - and saturated fat at that.
• Every time you drink an extra glass of wine, which might weaken your resolve and influences your choice of food (and you know very well that it does that), you are choosing to be fat.
• Every time you slump in front of the television on a bright, sunny evening instead of going for a walk, you are choosing to be fat.

So you see, it takes quite a lot of organization to be fat. You have to actively work at it. You are NOT genetically programmed to carry around an excess amount of blubber, forcing your heart to work that much harder to pump blood around your body. Everyone has a natural set-point of how they are meant to look, based on their genes. Although there are some hereditary factors that will influence your shape, such as wide hipbones or thick ankles, you are NOT predisposed to carry VAST amounts of weight around to the detriment of your health.

You can only be fat if you have created an environment that over-rides these factors and supports being overweight. Here's how to tell if you are doing it :

• You keep a 'chocolate biscuit' cupboard in your house (for the children? Those grown up children who left home five years ago? Or those little children who will eat whatever you give them?)
• Your desk drawer at work resembles a sweet shop
• You think low-fat crisps are a healthy option
• You feel cheated if you don't have dessert in a restaurant
• You have 'no time' for exercise
• You get up late and have a chaotic life
• Your social life is defined by food instead of activity
• You are too tired after work to cook a healthy meal
• You are contemplating taking one of those products that stops your body assimilating fat - making it OK to eat that plate of chips because the fat it contains will not be digested (dream on!)

"If you keep cakes in the house, sooner or later you WILL eat them" - Lee Janogly