Careful what you wish for!
Glad the election is over? Fed up with hollow-sounding promises from so-called experts who sound more like slick salesmen or tv game-show hosts than responsible guardians of our well-being and health? You may think it's all over but, if you are overweight or obese, this is what life is like all the time. You live in a world where you are continually reminded that your life is an empty shell and you face a daily bombardment of hollow promises from the diet industry that "things can only get better" if you buy into the latest product or programme. They sell the twin lie that losing weight is 1. easy and 2. that it solves all of life's problems and suddenly creates wealth, happiness and success! We should be as sceptical of those promises as we are of politicians and their pledges. Even as someone who, in the end, bought into the surgical solution to my weight problem, I can assure others that it was not the easy path it promised to be. I have had to learn, over several years, how to eat differently, exercise despite a natural antipathy to the gym, and create a new lifestyle for myself! As patron of The National Obesity Forum and running Fat Happens (my weightloss website community) I talk daily to other men and women who're desperately trying to get their bodies under control. But every so often, I am reminded of just what an emotional journey it is - and how weight is so often a symptom of something much larger in their lives that's perhaps more difficult to shift. The other person that's dragging them down. The parent, wife or husband who's possibly blaming their loved one's weight - fat - for everything that's going wrong in their lives. One of my Fat Happens buddies writes triumphantly this week that she's nearly at her target weight, exactly a year after a banding operation. Yet her feelings of joy, relief and even self-congratulation are tempered sadly by the new knowledge her slimmer shape has brought. She's realised that the problems in her marriage have not been cured by her weight loss - as she thought they might. He doesn't fancy her any more since she's lost the four stone she thought was weighing them both down. And so, now she realises he doesn't love her at all. It took her staggering success on the scales to prove it to her, though. Because every fatty blames the fat first. Society tells us to, and our hearts concur. And so my buddy waited for the miracle that would come with a new figure - the return of marital love. Painfully, it did not come, despite all her efforts. The truth is often hidden deeper inside the layers of fat - waiting to be exposed! It also reminds me of the dire warning I have often heard from other bandsters and by-pass patients - that success on the scales can often lose you your spouse. I remember being shocked when I found out how many (particularly women) slimmers quickly became disillusioned with their marriages, and sought divorce. Some started to look at their husbands critically, thinking "well, I've gone through hell to find a new body, why hasn't he?" Others found their husbands became super-jealous now that their wives were being noticed by other men. Slobby husbands actually quite liked the fact that their wives were undesirable and even unattractive. Fat kept Her in her place, and also kept Him cosy in his no-effort nest. I found that most newly-slim women discovered a re-birth of confidence and zing in their old libido - and wanted to go out clubbing, holidaying or even taking up sports and activities that would exploit their new energy and show off their new shapes. Whatever their stories, the net result was a bigger change than most barely dreamed of. Exciting new horizons, yes, but also divorce, fights over custody of the children, splitting up homes, decimated finances and loss of family security. I often say to would be-slimmers contemplating surgery: Be careful what you wish for, and buy into. Rather like the floating voter, wondering whether he wants the status quo or the promise of change...beware what you desire. You just might get it.
This article was written by Anne Diamond for Nursing Standard Magazine May 2010
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