Issue No.588
Living
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30 May - 5 June 2002 Issue No.588 Living |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Summer shrinkage
As the summer approaches, and swimsuit season butts its ugly head, Yasmine El-Rashidi discovers what is weighing people down
In Cairo, it usually comes as quite a surprise. One day it's cool, and suddenly, it seems, the heat beats down. Summer, the policemen's white uniforms inform, is here; time, once again, to bare the flesh.
Getting out the summer wardrobe may sound like an easy enough task -- a mundane yearly routine that everyone must face. It isn't, however, quite as simple as it may seem. For in the lives of many -- men not excluded -- the coming of summer is a tumultuous time.
"I much prefer winter because I can wear layers and hide the fat," says Sara Ghoneim, a student at Cairo University's business college. "In summer everything shows."
She is certainly not the only one who feels this way.
"I started coming to the club about three weeks ago," says Mona Hakim, a housewife and mother of two teenagers. "We always go to the seaside in summer, so I have to lose weight."
It's the same story, she says, year after year. As the summer sun begins to dim, and the cooler airs envelopes the city, Hakim retreats to the warmth of indoors -- her local club track becoming a distant summer memory.
"Of course as soon as it gets warmer, and the kids start asking where we're going this summer, I start to realise that I've put on weight and need to do something about it. My friends are all exactly the same."
Hakim is circling the 400-metre track with four companions, all of them, they confess, trying to undo -- in one month -- six months worth of damage.
"I see it all the time," says dietitian Mahmoud Hussein, who runs his own private clinic in Heliopolis. "All these women who come to me just before the summer and tell me they 'have' to lose weight before they go off to Sharm El-Sheikh, or a European summer shopping trip. The numbers surge in the few months before summer," he continues. "And in winter I get a drop. Everyone thinks it's easier to diet in the summer, because it's hot and it makes you less hungry."
Hunger is not a word Hussein believes in.
"Most of these women go on crazy crash diets, or go to dietitians who prescribe 'chemical' or fad diets," he says, his tone indicating his appall at the practice. "No wonder they're hungry. What they're given is basically starvation! All these diets are so unbalanced, so unhealthy. They are the prescription for weeks of bingeing -- they drive you to overeat in the end."
They range from 700-calories-a-day diets, to regimens that enforce the consumption of a grapefruit before each meal to "burn fat"; or no fat, no cheese, no pasta, bread or potatoes formulas. There is the egg diet, which basically, comprises of four to six eggs a day, a slice of toast, a bit of salad, and occasionally, a piece of fish, chicken or steak. The cabbage soup diet involves the consumption of copious amounts of a special cabbage soup, coupled with one day of fruits, one of vegetables, one of fruits and vegetables, one of fish, and on. Or, of course, the infamous chemical diets, that prescribe specific foods of exact quantities; if not followed "exactly" to the T, dieters are warned, the results will be detrimental to the waistline.
"I don't trust myself with these chemical things," says Ghoneim. "I don't have enough will power, and I'm scared of what will happen if I mess up."
Like many other women -- and an increasing number of men -- Ghoneim is trapped in every 'dieters' cycle of doom.
"I try to starve all day," she confesses, "but I just end up eating like a pig at night. I worry, though, that if I start eating from the morning, I'll just overeat all day."
Her concern is not unfounded given a track record in the past, and it is one, unfortunately, which is a mirror to the minds of many.
"I don't know anyone who's not on a diet," Ghoneim says. "All my friends are trying to lose weight. And most of my mother's friends too. Everyone is on a diet."
She is, according to Hussein, right in what she says.
"There aren't statistics for Egypt," Hussein shares, "but in some countries, research has shown that 70 to 80 per cent of women are not happy with their body image. Most of them would like to be about 15-25 per cent thinner. In Egypt the concern with "thinness" is increasing."
We are subscribing, he believes, to western perceptions of beauty.
"The main problem," he says, "is that people don't do it the right way. Everyone can be lean, but they need to go about losing the weight in a healthy, balanced -- and slow-- manner. These extreme diets are short-term. It's common knowledge that the majority of those dieters end up gaining back all the weight they've lost and more. And they shouldn't be surprised. You can't maintain those kinds of eating habits for long. Like I told you, it's starvation. And the body has certain nutritional requirements that these diets fail to meet. Your body craves them, and you end up bingeing to fulfil those needs. Fat," he stresses, " is the prime example. You need fat to function, and you need it to burn. Cut it out of your diet, and I guarantee you won't see the results you want. Balance and moderation are the only ways."
So for all the hundreds, or thousands, of men and women who are now hitting fifth gear in their quest for a sizzling summer shape, it may be best to slow things down slightly. There is no fast path to lasting weight loss plus the added vantage of health. Those two luxuries, Hussein says, are long-term work. Work, however, which is a lot less work than dieting. It is, in essence, a lifestyle.
photo: Medhat Abdel-Meguid
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