Some causes of Love handles a.k.a wangeci syndrome in young women

                     

“Have you noticed the growing number of teenage girls with love handles nowadays?” read the email from a colleague.

‘Love handles’ are just a polite name for a potbelly  if you’re wondering.

It was interesting because I too had noticed this. Young, flawless faces, but when your eyes dropped to the midsection, the shock of protruding, sagging bellies that looked out of place in an otherwise young-looking body.

I forwarded the email to a couple of colleagues and friends and surprise, surprise; they too had noticed the increasing number of young women struggling to cover bellies that threatened to spill over from the waistlines of their trendy jeans.

“Blame it on junk food, alcohol, our nyama choma(barbecue) culture and what I call the couch potato syndrome

According to my opinion, most of today’s young people have embraced an unhealthy lifestyle, a disastrous menu of junk food, too much red meat, excess alcohol and fizzy drinks coupled with inactivity.

And how true that is. Wander into any pub in the city centre on a Friday or Saturday evening and you will notice groups of young girls, most of them in their late teens or early 20s downing bottle after bottle of beer.

Nyama choma(barbecue) is no longer the elderly man’s meal, so they will have already had their fill of roast meat to ‘line’ the stomach as they prepare for a long night.

Most of them would also tell you that before popping into the pub for the ‘main course’, they had passed by a fast food joint for a plate of chips and fried chicken.

Exercise is, of course, a foreign word in their vocabulary.

“Fat tends to be stored around the waist in women,” says doctor Waf.

Forget aesthetics for a moment, most of the body’s vital organs are found here, and too much fat deposit around this section interferes with their proper functioning.

Unknowingly, while these young women meet every weekend to “do Nyama” or join the long queue of predominantly young people who take advantage of a weekly offer to ‘buy-one-pizza-get-one-free’ at a popular fast food restaurant in the city centre, they are setting themselves up for future infertility, and diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, obesity and a host of cardiovascular diseases.

It is also worth noting that the rate of metabolism in men is higher than that in women. According to Nutritionists, men break down fat faster than women.

This means that when women in their early 20s compete with their male companions for the two kilos of nyama choma and ugali, which they then wash down with several bottles of beer, the damaging effects of this deadly menu are likely to show themselves sooner in the fairer sex.

Nutritionists points out that though your average young woman is conscious of her looks, this does not make her immune to the lure of junk food, which, besides being tastier, is also cheaper than nutritionally-healthy food and therefore friendlier to their pockets.

“Generally, most young women are conscious about their looks and will do just about anything, including starving themselves to portray a certain image.”

Take bulimia nervosa for instance, which Doctors  singles out as common in young women. It is characterized by recurrent binge eating, which one then tries to compensate for by fasting, vomiting, or over-exercising. It, of course, does not work because the damage is already done.

What is the way out then? There is no short cut to losing weight unfortunately, or getting rid of the dangerous fat around the waist. You just have to eat healthy and exercise.

Unless young women embrace a healthy lifestyle now, the problem will be much more than an expanding waistline.

Ladies please note this

If I asked most of our Kenyan ladies how long it should take before a lady engages in sexual intercourse with her newly found boy friend or fiancé, I will hear so many strange stories. Some of you ladies would prefer to take at least a month, a year, or even as in this abnormal case, where a lady tells her boyfriend that they should never have it until they get married. Girl! Up your game, who told you in the first place that he will marry you? Enjoy life in the present; never see tomorrow when you don’t even know what the next second is going to bring you.

Ladies please don’t lie to yourself, it’s never about how long you make a guy wait before you sleep with him, that makes the man love you or follow you. It takes more than just that. Before I go on, let me just elaborate on something here, sex is never an issue in Nairobi as well as other developing towns in Kenya and abroad. If I may zero down to Kenya I know a few places in Nairobi where men can get cheap sex and of any quality, in Hurlingham we have Ethiopians offering sex anywhere between Ksh 400 to Ksh 1000, at Parklands area, its only Ksh 700, Karumaindos is as cheap as Ksh 50 just to mention but a few. What am I trying to tell our beautiful ladies? Am trying to instill in you never to use sex as  weapon to make a man chase you because there are plenty of alternatives that men can run to, as a remedy to your so called ‘hard to get’ game.

Coming back to my point, I was saying you should never pretend because for sure I know most ladies can get laid on even the first day of meeting though I fully back and congratulate the few who can comfortably do that. Most ladies pretend just to make a man perceive her as being hard to get. But whenever a lady does that she must be sure of her tactics if she really wants that very man she is pretending to that she is hard to get, the chances are that she may lose that man to other swift ladies who never miss any opportunity given half a chance.

I have always warned ladies that if you feel a man for real and you really feel it, go for him, avoid the many pretences ladies use, if he asks you for a sleep over, go there, relax and get to learn him that time and if you feel he is really making you feel like you want to, please indulge and enjoy any of the romantic surprises that may come along. It’s pretty unfair to pretend you don’t want what you really want just because it’s your first visit. Please silence that voice at the back of your mind that tells you, getting laid on the first day of meeting a person is a curse because that is a culture that existed many decades before the millennium bug.

I think ladies you must know or have heard of stories where a lady meets her husband in a pub, slept together the same day and stayed in relationship for like three or four years before finally getting married. If you have never heard these stories then you are so nice you don’t gossip even a little like the rest of us.

It is high time we come out of these limiting factors that make us live without lovers and blame it on the universe. Men are there and ladies are there too so let’s enjoy and utilize anything that will give birth to your happiness.

And please ladies, never be shy or ashamed that a man will think or say you are loose regarding what I am urging you to be. Let it be clear that no man, if there is, it’s rare, no man at that time would take you for being cheap, if that’s the case, why is he begging you to sleep