Hello Harriet, I am really impressed with your column and surprisingly I stumbled into your write up last week on The Nation Newspaper. Please I need you to counsel me on what to do; I am 42 years old married with children. Here is my issue; my relationship with my husband is deteriorating by the day all because of my weight which he made clear to me. I have been in denial for a very long time, consoling myself with one excuse and the other. I am tired of my previous yo-yo weight lost program, I love my husband and I don’t want my weight to be an issue in our relationship. Help me.(Mrs. Adewale. Lagos)
Thanks for sharing your situation with us, the issue of weight is a very sensitive one. Some people take it and do something about it, others do not want it mention at all, while some are in denial that you are aware of it and have made up your mind to do something about your weight is a good step I must commend you on that. You are very lucky to have a husband who is sincere about what he want in his wife because some men will not discuss it instead they will start acting up in different ways, others go as far as picking up quarrel all the time even when there is nothing to quarrel about. Don’t forget one man’s meat is another man’s poison – some men like their wives big while some like their wives slim. It’s not fair like some women will say yes I know. However healthy living is the solution to the problem stated above, therefore you will have to change your diet not for a period of time but for life, so you need to see this process as a life style change. It is important to have a plan meal, knowing what to eat, how to eat and when to eat. Healthy diet doesn’t seem to make as much impact on us as the habits we’ve grown up with and yet we have changed. For example, how many of us ate yoghurt when we were children? Probably the only spaghetti most of us ate in the past tends to come out of a tin. A meal wasn’t a meal if it didn’t have a center piece of meat followed chilled drinks, today is different we have broadened our taste buds in the last few years- so the next step should be to make further changes to our eating habit in order to change the proportions of different nutrients, giving us healthier balance. Healthy eating should not be difficult to achieve, especially as there are now varieties of nutritious meals to choose from. There are some helpful guide lines you can follow with confidence: Set realistic goals and target; let your goals and target be that which you can achieve at the end of the day, remember you did not gain the weight in one day so it’s going to take a while for you to shed off the weight.Major overhauls to your meal which involve drastic cutbacks or punishing regimes don’t work. You are more likely to stick with smaller, gradual changes. Frankly, highly restricted diets which involve you going without certain group of foods can even be harmful, unless you do so under the supervision of a professional. Moreover, Stick to two or three moderately sized meals each day, rather than semi-starving yourself for much of the day and having one mega-sized meal to compensate. This is because your digestive system works better on a regular supply of food. Snacking in between meals is fine provided you make your snack healthy. For example a piece of fruit or raw vegetable which provides proportionate vitamins, minerals and fiber will do. Furthermore, increase your intake of unrefined cereals (whole meal bread, pasta and rice) Don’t forget to reduce your intake of saturated fats (the fats mainly found in animal-origin products) Aim to eat five portions of fruit and vegetables each day.Your program is incomplete if you don’t add exercise to it; one of the best ways to keep healthy and keep your weight down is to get regular exercise. You need activity to make it work. Remember, you don’t have to do anything too difficult. A lot of things you do for fun are great exercise, like dancing, swimming or going for brisk walks. Short periods of exercise several times a week will do you better than a fortnight’s inactivity punctuated by a single exhausting afternoon. Aim to get to the stage where you miss exercising if you’re prevented from doing it for more than a few days. You can actually exercise on your own or register with a gym. If it helps, have a fix time and date mark in your diary. Remember you are what you eat so Good luck, as you turn to a healthy life style for yourself and for your marriage as well.
A problem shared is a problem half solved.
