Hindrances to exercise (Ladies edition)

Exercise is linked to everything a woman wants. A relaxed mind, strong bones, toned muscles and good old fashioned nice ‘body shape’.

There is also a lower rate of heart disease and diabetes among those who exercise regularly. Menopausal symptoms are also ameliorated with exercise while anxiety, mild depression and stress are relieved by exercise.  Since women are generally go getters, why have they not all embraced an active lifestyle? Some do and some don’t. Speaking to a few people who don’t, a pertain emerges.

Self- image

With advancing age, depending on the culture where a lady finds herself, she starts to live out a pre-ordained image. After the age of forty some women change their walking style especially if they have children. In Nigeria she loses her name and is called Mama – (insert name of first child). The loss of identity always seems to be followed by a loss of fitness.

Since women are expected to look after the children, who in turn grow up expecting to be looked after for life, a mother’s world becomes one long arduous task of being the care giver to children who never seem to grow up. Some women take up residency in the kitchen in their twenties and are still there in their sixties. When you see yourself as a cook and cleaner that works all day and is on call all night, it is hard to see yourself as an athletic mum.

Standing in the kitchen is hard but it is not exercise. You can grow fat doing very hard things.

Life nowadays is all about CHANGE. Change your self -image and your body soon follows.

Repeat this affirmation after me, ‘I am as fit as Serena Willams’.

He loves me the way I am

Na so! (Yeah right). Moving on…

What will people say?

Someone asked me this question, ‘What will people say if they see a fat woman trudging down the street with all her moving parts flapping in the wind?’

She was a big lady and had told herself that an obese person walking was a better sight to behold than a running obese person. Now who cares what the people think?

My sista, juss tek wrapper tie yuasef like body-magic abeg. (Wear a well fitted sports bra and you would be okay). People will always talk.

Women are more sensitive to comments about their bodies than men. Call a woman a poor woman and the offence taken is small. Call her fat and it is war. Men are the ones who struggle with cruel comments about their financial status. Call a man obese and he is not as bothered. He might even smile as he remembers the juicy food and drinks that created his big belly. I digress.

Stroke and heart attack is not my portion

Sorry but Aunty your portion of eba and oily soups are larger than the prayers and faith you are professing. Large ladies cut their cloth according to their size but forget to adjust their faith to their portion sizes.

Why drink sugary drinks all day and pray against diabetes?

Exercise is hard and requires effort, while eating fried foods come naturally to us all. Discipline is needed and there is no prayer for discipline. You exercise discipline.

Which one is bind and loose the fat in the food again?

By the way Elijah the Prophet; a man of faith,  ran for miles and overtook a chariot.

I don’t like being sweaty in public

Ah! Aunty I saw you at the wedding last week rolling your waist as you were being sprayed Dollars. You were sweating buckets. Excuses, excuses.

I am not a small girl

Ah! Aunty, why state the obvious? We can never confuse you for a small girl!

You are a big girl in every sense of the word. But things can Change. First of all cut your age  (at least in your mind).

Next thing is to join a gym.

Now some ladies belonging to some cultures or Faiths  and would not like to share a gym with men. That is ok. A group of women can also press for a ladies hour in their local gym. Better still why not build a ladies gym. There are so many women societies in Nigeria that troupe in to social functions in matching attires. Their societies should have a fitness and health faction within their organisations. Rolling waist at parties is not exercise unless you can roll for thirty minutes daily vigorously.

Where there are no fit and healthy ladies as public role models then the ladies emulate the fat ‘women of timber and calibre’ who eat large portions and lament the health problems without doing anything about it. Well, if you find no role model, then be the role model. Being fit is not the preserve of the ‘small girls’.

 I have better things to do

Ha! Aunty. Bottled groundnut, Gala and four part Nollywood movies are better than exercise? Ok o.

Why not get the gym manager to put Nollywood in front of your exercise bike and you can cycle while watching the people in the film open the gates (People are always opening gates in Naija films).

I will wait till the fat is plenty and do my Lipo-suction

Dollar is now expensive. It is cheaper to reduce the Eba from that Everest format to the new and improved Zuma Rock format. Daily walks and stretches will add to producing the new you.

It is the children

They are all in University, so you cannot blame the pregnancies for today’s bulging belly.

Being the madam that calls a house help on the phone to come and get you a glass of water is the height of laziness. The madam syndrome is making many to balloon up. They just sit in one spot and send drivers, laundry men and ‘special assistants’ on endless errands. Any surprise that the staff members are all slim and madam is bloated. Next thing madam says the special assistant is trying to snatch her husband. No, it is the husband who cannot lift madam that is trying to snatch the lighter special assistant. Daz all.