Spring into Shape
by Sheila Grant
In the spring a young man`s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. Since women are at their most tempting in the warm weather this could well be true. Plunging necklines and flashing thighs are surely more provocative than red noses peeking from behind layers of winter woollies.
But that would bring to question another spring ritual. THE DIET.
After Christmas the women`s magazines and Sunday supplements positively scream at you on how to “get rid of all those unsightly pounds you have put on over the winter”.
If you are a really serious slimmer you have to study the market very carefully before you commence what is going to obsess you for the next few months.
Oh yes, you may have to buy your chosen publication for several weeks to get the whole diet.
The first chapter will have the before and after tales of the testers. You only hear about the successful testers and even then only about six women who literally fill the first pages in shapeless and all-enveloping kaftans, pinafores or overshirts, looking sufficiently desperate.
Turn the page and these same women are portrayed wearing skin-tight, revealing clothes and smug expressions.
There will always be one case history that you can identify as akin to yourself and your problems in losing weight. They have invariably all “tried loads of diets and never succeeded until this one” or “ put on weight after the birth of their last child and never been able to lose it”. That` s the one that strikes a chord in me. I have been trying to lose the weight put on during my last pregnancy for 26 years!
On my first diet I lost weight, probably more weight and more quickly than on any other diet. I ate two eggs and half a grapefruit, not necessarily in that order for almost every meal for a fortnight. Although the diet was not expensive the abundance of air fresheners strategically placed throughout the house cost a few pounds.
Saturday night was the high spot of the week. I could eat as much fruit as I liked and I liked. The waste-bin overflowed with skins, seeds and apple cores.
Next day it was not a case of the bottom falling out of my world the world seemed fall out of my bottom!
But it was the spring and the new fashions were in the shops and here I was looking so svelte.
I swanned around with my perfect figure pushing my perfect child in the perfect pram.
For a short while I was one of those smug successful slimmers.
But there was a problem. I had lived on a tedious diet for two weeks and I now wanted to live a little and I did – with relish!
The following spring found me avidly reading the same magazines with the same headlines. GREAT NEW DIET. GUARANTEED WEIGHT LOSS. EAT AND LOSE WEIGHT WITH NOT HUNGER PANGS.
THE NO DIET DIET. Is that possible?
Same before and after success stories and probably the same diets. The years pass and the pattern remains the same. Magazines lead with “wonder diets”; women flock to join slimming classes and pays to be told they are overweight.
They know they are overweight. That is why they are there.
All year round people try to lose weight, particularly women, but the trend is more pronounced in the spring.
Can it be the anticipated onset of hot weather and the thought of displaying that too ample flesh?
Could it be the sight of all those pencil slim models strutting their stuff in the new fashions?
Or could it be that in the spring it is a young woman’s fancy that turns to thoughts of love?
Or has woman found a way of turning all those seething hormones which well up at the sight of a new born lamb to something that can be to their advantage?
Sex is supposed to make you lose weight, doing it that is, not just reading about it. It sure is a lot more fun than jogging or working out in a gym.
And if it is the “wonder diet” does that mean the other Easter goody, chocolate eggs, can be consumed freely and worked off with glee later?
I remember when Easter Eggs were cardboard and the same egg turned up every year filled with sweets and a few novelties.
Have you seen the range of Easter Eggs now?
There are truffle eggs, toffee eggs, and white chocolate eggs, to name but a few.
OK, having one small egg does not play that much havoc with the spring offensive against flab but the bigger eggs at the luxury end of the market are quite another story.
When the young man`s fancy is roving around seeking fulfilment he might try some inducement, a sweetener shall we say.
What better way can there be of pleasing his idol than by buying her an Easter Egg? Not for him a paltry bag of sugar coated mini eggs. He makes the grand gesture.
An enormous chiffon draped concoction not only fill with luscious chocolates but surrounded by them.
Totally irresistible.
Imagine his surprise when after his ladylove has eaten the egg she jumps on him and proceeds to work it off with great gusto.
Everyone`s a winner.
I haven`t seen that diet published yet but I sure am going to have fun trying it out.
Roll on Easter.