Staying slim is all in your mind

Press, 4 August 1987, Page 10

Staying slim is all in your mind

JANE DUNBAR

finds some women attend-

ing a Christchurch slimming clinic learn to control their eating habits, while others fail.

Being covered in gel and lying wrapped-up in towels for one hour and a half, is the easy part. The difficult part is, as always, having the self-discipline to keep to an eating programme afterwards.

For those who seriously want to do something about their eating and weight however, "Slim Quik” offers a way to deal with the problem. For Sharon, aged 26, it changed her way of life. Smiling, and two stone lighter than she had been six weeks before Sharon was happy to talk about her difficulties, and how “Slim Quik” had helped her overcome them. "I was a food-aholic” I could eat all day, and never feel full — but I never had time to feel hungry either. “I used to always stop at the cake shop, eat a lot of junk food, and never ate fruit. I was depressed, and started to worry that, by the time I was 30, my eating would be out of control. I just had to do something.” Not believing she could do it alone, she decided to go somewhere else for

help. She chose Kaye Graham’s weight-reduc-tion clinic in Sydenham, one of the two "Slim Quik” franchises being operated in Christchurch. The other is in Riccarton.

She was particularly attracted to “Slim Quik” because it was only a sixweek course. Sharon had never before been on a diet, and hated the thought of it. A gel treatment begins the programme. First, your measurements are taken. Then a natural mineral gel is spread over the body from just below the chest to the upper knee area. The gel contains a natural mineral salt which helps to draw out fluid from the top layer of the skin, says Kaye. It does not break down fat.

You are then wrapped in a cotton body wrap for an hour and a half, and when this is removed the centimetre-loss is measured.

Sharon says the gel treatment was not as exciting as she thought it would be, but it did feel good to have an immediate centimetre-loss, however small.

For the rest of the day only very light food may be eaten, and on the following day a special eating programme begins. Kaye does not use the word diet because of its negative connotations. “A diet usually means a quick loss, which is not later sustained. You then go back to your old eating patterns,” she explains. “With this programme you eat a variety of food, and plenty of it. It helps establish good eating patterns which can be kept up with afterwards, and so there is no need to diet.” The food plan is a high fibre one, which cuts down on red meat and includes a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables. Of course “Slim Quik” does not work for everybody. Alison, aged 46, is a compulsive eater and has a chronic weight problem. She gave “Slim Quik” a try, and for the first three weeks she managed to stay with the diet, and so lost weight.

But Alison’s husband was sick, and by the fourth week, “the food plan became complicated in my head.” “I couldn’t keep up with

it, as well as the problems at home. I began to pick because I couldn’t get the whole meal together.” After that, she gave up. “It was just too complicated.” She did feel, however, that she benefited from the other part of the “Slim Quik” programme — the muscle-toning machine. During the sixweek course, half-an-hour appointments are made each week for a session on the machine. "It helps break down the fatty tissue and also firms and tones the muscles,” asserts Kaye. “It was very soothing,” says Alison. Jane, in her early 60s, is another woman who did not keep to the course. This was because she “wasn’t a committed slimmer," she believes.

Her main reason for going to the clinic was “to get some pointers about a sensible way of eating which could prevent me from putting on excessive weight. “I didn’t keep to the food plan slavishly, and didn’t lose much weight. But I did discover an excellent guide-line for eating. “It is a balanced system, which is easy and has variety, and it is not' hard on the family, I am still following it now.” Kaye herself has had a weight problem, as have the other two women who work at the clinic. She knows how difficult and frustrating it can be keeping to a food plan. She too tried a variety of methods to deal with her problem, and says the support of family and

friends is important for the success of any programme. "It doesn’t help when families scoff at ‘just another diet,’ or taunt the person with chocolate just to see 'how strong’ they are. “Most women who come to the clinic have very low self-esteem. We try to give them confidence, and help them see there are ways they can help themselves.” Kaye knows most of her clients have tried a myriad of diets before them come to her, and stresses that attitude is the most important thing. “Some come along here who just are not in the right frame of mind. They are usually the ones who ask: ‘Can you guarantee me I will lose weight?’ ‘lf you can guarantee me

what you will put in your mouth* is my answer.” Sharon evidently was someone who did have the right attitude. “I really put my mind to it, and now I have done something I never thought I could. I never realised I had the will-power.” “I wasn’t so moody, and I had more enthusiasm for everything. I am finding it a bit hard now I am off it, but I hope to control myself. I have learnt how to eat sensibly, and I will continue that now.” Maybe Sharon will sustain her weight loss, and may be she will not. The important thing, however, is she now knows that with healthy, regular eating, support from people around her, and a bit of determination, she can control her weight.