Color Me Fit: weight loss, fitness, exercise

Something that crossed my mind, not so long ago, as I was idly discussing sports matter with my boyfriend (he likes playing squash, I do too, things are perfect with this): it may just be me, but I have a feeling that when it comes to weight loss, men and women often don’t have the same approach at all.

This doesn’t spring from articles, news sources or whatever “official”, and I realize that it is NOT a 100% accurate observation – just something I wondered about, regarding how people I know (mostly offline, in fact) react to the whole “diet/weight loss” thing. As a sidenote, people I talk to online – people I’ve met through weight loss-related websites, among other things – seem to be more open-minded and have more encompassing views about it all, perhaps (probably?) because having access to various sources and experiences from other partakers tend to broaden our knowledge.

What happened (still does, in fact) is that when I chat about these matters, my male friends and my female friends (or family) don’t seem to consider it the same way. With women, it’s all about calories-counting, the “diet” word, restricting food, and so on: what comes first is the relation to food, while exercise isn’t necessarily mentioned (or comes second). With men, their primary focus to lose weight goes toward exercising first, and then only toward seriously restricting food.

I see this with my own mother, who asks me about advice regarding food, but doesn’t seem to grasp it when I repeat that walking 30 mins a day only would already help tremendously, compared to “nothing”. Then, my sister, who wants to gain some weight (but this is another story) considers it in terms of “gaining fat through eating”, and doesn’t want to hear when I tell her that eating better and gaining some in muscles rather than fat, through weight-training, would make her look better than eating sugary crappy things – and running the risk of taking everything on the wrong spots.

On the contrary, my boyfriend tends to increase exercise when he needs to drop a few pounds. Of course, he also tries to improve his eating, but he does it using different means, through stopping snacking on candy and chocolate, and not necessarily restricting whatever he eats “much”. He doesn’t obsess about food itself (calories and the likes), not the way I do, not the way my female friends do. In fact, the thought of taking pills to suppress hunger wouldn’t even cross his mind, when for years I’ve seen my cousin and aunt talk only about this and how it was necessary to being successful in their diets.

I’m not sure if my perception of this is skewed, but if it isn’t completely – what does cause this? Why don’t we necessarily consider it the same way, at least at first? In theory, after some basic research, we all know that the “secret” to permanent weight loss is healthy eating combined with regular exercise (that’s a very simplified version of it, alright), and I also know that our attitude regarding “dieting” may and will likely change once we have this lightbulb moment about what works for us. When it comes to practicing, however…

Is this because we get constantly plugged with the”3-weeks diet plan before summer” or “lose 5 kgs to be pretty in your swimsuit” articles, in our magazines for women? Is this that comparatively, women are more concerned about their weight than men (mostly through peer pressure, I’m sure: health is the same for everyone, but men don’t get the “be lean to be sexy” attitude shoved into their faces nearly as often as us)? Is this that this very “must-be-lean” attitude itself pushes men to think that diets are for women, that “real men” don’t have to diet, and thus they use other means, such as exercise, that may seem more “worthy” (some men my age sure do consider it this way, speaking of diets in terms of “it’s for sissies”)? Is this that we’re simply different in our morphologies (women having more potential for fat from the start because of The Potential Baybee To Feed, yadda-yadda), and that women know that they’ll have it harder to lose weight than men no matter what?

Mmmh, I realize that this may all seem full of narrowed views, but I swear it isn’t that. I mean, I’m not buying into the whole “men must behave in a manly way, women are fragile little things” crap. I’m just wondering what are the possible influences on the way a good amount of “dieting” people I know offline do consider their weight loss, because I’ve sure found this matter to discuss a little. And I’m also wondering if, all that simply, these things don’t stem from simple ignorance? As mentioned above, I find the “narrow” attitude less engrained in people who’ve already done research on the matter.

- Kery