Slender is A Status Symbol

This is Part 2 of a series
Part 1: So Where Are The Thick Romance Heroines?
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Slender Is A Status Symbol

I’ve been thinking a lot about thick vs thin lately.  I spoke about this the other day – thanks to the new “thick girls” idea, it’s sitting at the front of my brain.

It’s a personal issue for me, as I carry my fair share of weight and always have.  A recent bout in hospital has added to my woes.  My recent hospital stay, though, uncovered an underlying cause for my lifetime struggle:  a cranky thyroid.  But that doesn’t take away the hard work involved in dropping, and then maintaining, my weight.

Of course, after a lifetime of struggling with weight control, I know a lot about the subject:  diet, exercise, nutrition, you name it, I can sit down and give you forty minutes of expert testimonial on it.  I have rotated through raw food – veganism – vegetarianism – and was forced back to eating meat just recently (hospital, again).

I also know how bloody expensive it all is.  In order to seriously lose weight, you need to spend six months to a year making weight loss a focus of your life, so that you don’t drop the ball and start gaining while you’re busy doing other things.

It means at least joining a gym, or buying equipment for working out at home.  Home workout DVD’s just don’t cut it.  But even the workout DVD’s cost money.  You can’t last a year doing just one workout.  Mental boredom or muscle stability would set in after two months doing the same thing over and over.

You’ll need exercise clothing – at the very least, a decent pair of runners or cross-trainer shoes.

Once you get into dieting and exercising, you’ll find yourself in the wonderful world of sports supplementation.  Protein powders are the very least of it.  And they’re not cheap.  Everyone, whether they’re dieting or not, should be taking a good multi-vitamin anyway.  But there’s others you might want to consider once you start working out heavily.  For women, a decent B-vitamin helps a lot.  Glutamine, too.

And then there’s the food.

Crap food is cheap.  A family of four can eat sausage meat, hamburgers, and spaghetti for next to nothing.

But as soon as you start trying to eat clean — chicken breasts, lean meat and salads and bottled water – your grocery bill skyrockets.

Getting to thin isn’t cheap.

I often read with amazement and some envy about Hollywood stars who check themselves into a spa for four weeks to drop twenty pounds.  Or how they are on a special diet supervised by a team of medical specialists, with the food prepared by their personal chef.  Or how they work out seven days a week for four hours a day in order to get in shape for an upcoming movie…or just because.

They eat not just salads every day, but organic, freshly-made, whole-food salads.  The chicken they eat is free-range, and as lean as possible and cooked to perfection.  Their meals are prepared, weighed and served just in time for them to eat so they never have to step inside a kitchen or peer inside a fridge or pantry and be tempted by sinful indulgences sitting next to their diet preparations.

And yes, this sort of pampered existence is for the very top of the A-list lifestyle.

Most people live far more realistic lives and still manage to maintain – or regain – slender silhouettes.  They may not be eating hand-fed-and-petted chicken breast a la chef my-own in order to drop their weight or maintain it, but they will certainly be eating better cuts of meat and lots of fresh vegetables…in other words, expensive stuff.   They may even spend money on a weight loss system that provides the food, and those are really expensive. They’ll also be spending money on working out and staying active in some form or fashion, and spending more money on taking care of their health in either preventative or restorative ways – health supplements, prescription medicine, physical check-ups, etc,

There is a price tag attached to being thin.  A thin body is expensive.  A thick body is far cheaper to maintain.

Slender is becoming a status symbol.

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