slimming clubs and feminisim

[upsydaisysexstylist]

Posting on here because I have done some self analyis on why I am becoming demotivated and uneasy at slimming world and it seems to be the corporate branding and competitive element. I've lost 3 stone about half of what I thought I would like to lose, but my list of reasons for losing weight can mainly be ticked off. Get clothes in standard shops, have enough confidence to go swimming with kids, have more energy, run round after kids, be healthy role model. Now eating plan is sensible and fits in with making meals for decidedly on skinny side toddler and I can mainly stick to it long term, but and it's an increasingly bigger but getting a certificate for loosing more weight last mnth than the other members of the group makes me feel uncomfortable. I'm not in competition with a pensioner with arthritis and she is going to struggle to lose weight at the same rate as me, who is able to exercise and breast feeding 2.

Basically it's a few years since I read fat is a feminist issue and I saw a great link to a blog on this board by someone who works in fat studies, but I can't remember the topic. Am also wondering if I have never liked high heels, don't buy womens mags or desire to dye my hair, what exactly I aspire to body shape wise. If you got to the end of this mammoth op thanks

Sorry yes nothing spectacular, just fewer reps of higher weights, rather than lots of reps of light weights, IYSWIM, plus pushing myself more on cross trainer etc.

Laughing at how fit this makes me sound, I am NOT at all :o

When you say pushing yourself more on cross trainer, do you mean to raise your heart beat more?

The cauldron thing is mine Elephants though tbf, my thought processes may have been heavily influenced by : Room on the Broom, Meg and Mog at Sea, Winnnie the Witch...

teiTua Working the land was men's work and still is, but if women got involved (as with that poor woman digging vegetables) you can be sure they wouldn't get much credit for it.

The Chinese symbol for "man" literally means "field-strength". You can look it up.

This is absolute bullshit. Sorry, it really is (apart from the chinese character)
Tilling, hoeing, planting and yielding crops has always been women's work. YOu should see the backs of the old women in the Japan, bend double, practically crippled from planting rice, which is labour intensive.
Now, of course, machines do it, and when tractors came about men took them over, while their wives continued to do the labour intensive drudge. You really have to be in denial (or not read very much about it) to say that men have produced crops and continue to do so today. It's women.

sorry if my reaction there was a bit over the top. IT's just that I know that in order to re-write history like that you must have come across some website telling you that men carried out the crop production. Producing crops, the food that sustained people on a day to day basis (I'm not talking about meat) has always been, and still remains, women's work. Meat was most definitely appropriated by men once farming began, because of course, there was profit in it.

I would agree with all the slimming clubs and pushing you into eating disorders. I went from just being a bit chunky, to being slim but with binge eating disorder through dieting, and now I'm back to being chunky, but with binge eater disorder thrown in. Lovely.

I need to lose some weight, because I'm a runner and the extra weight means I'm an even slower runner than I was (and I was never fast), and that bothers me.

But I like to eat sweet stuff, and can't stop at one - I'll stuff it in until I'm sick.

That's slightly besides the point though.... if you need to lose weight for perfectly valid reasons, how do you do so without screwing yourself up and buying into the diet industry?

wrt the CHinese character, the symbol of FIELD means wealth. My surname has two symbols GETTING LARGER/INCREASING and FIELD

This is a fortuitous name because "INCREASING FIELDS" literally means, getting richer.

The symbol power and field could mean nothing more than it was men who held the wealth and power in their hands. It possibly had nothing to do with physically working on the land

to clarify, the symbol representing man does not literally mean field-strength. It's made up of two components: power and field. Those two characters combined = man

Thanks for all your replies they have really helped me clarify my thoughts about slimming world. I could have written your post NacMacFeegle, you have done amazingly well to get this far. The issues around women not being able to trust themselves to regulate food intake really resonate for me.

I think seeing the fb challenge for my group is the final straw ( missed this week and spent child free time writing out pros and cons) make soup with top 11 superspeed foods, including pickled onions and tomatos. There are no fucking magic foods, only foods with less calories in that are more filling. Also there are a couple of women in the group who get upset about the slow weight loss when they look perfectly fine as they are and do lots of exercise, I really want to tell them chasing that last 10 pounds should not be that all consuming.

This thread has reminded me why I want to lose some more weight and I spent much less time thinking about food yesterday, which has to be good, And also that I have the nutritional knowledge to do so without sticking to a made up set of rules.

Upsydaisy - I find it strange who people do not understand that weight plateau is natural. Our body needs these natural physiological mechanisms to help maintain energy balance relatively quickly. It is only recently that people in Western societies have had access to an abundance of food. It is difficult losing weight. Generally we are not designed for it.

I find it interesting how the Williams sisters are so often portrayed negatively despite their achievements in tennis and they are said to resemble men by many women.

Slimming clubs do not really want you to lose weight. If you diet you may be subject to yo-you dieting. I always assumed that slimming clubs wanted your long term custom and this was a way of getting it, getting you obsessed with food and diets. I also do not get public weigh ins. I have never done one, but I always found the state where people say rush from work to get weighed in a bit pointless.

upsy- so glad that you spent less time thinking about food yesterday