Lifestyle

Brick Wall – Samantha Brick and ‘that’ article

Samantha Brick is being vilified via Twitter once again due to an article published in the Daily Mail, where she chooses to share the secret of her slim(ish) size 12 physique. Her piece kicks off with the mundane revelation that she has spent the last few decades on a perpetual “diet” which pretty much encompasses her entire adult life. Quite the opposite of recent remarks by Joan Collins, who says she never diets, just eats in moderation. The merits of both methods are interesting to debate but the nitty gritty nux of contempt from the keyboard warriors is her concluding declaration that nothing signifies failure in life more than being fat. Her French husband has declared he would divorce her if she were to gain weight and consequently become unattractive to him which, in her words, deems her a failure.

In actual fact, she’s not following a “diet” so to speak. Dieting is recognised as a specific eating plan followed for a set period of time until the desired amount of weight is lost. We have been informed via endless weight related articles that for self-preservation purposes, our bodies store calories when denied enough food so we all are aware that when we stop restricting food intake, any weight lost returns as quickly as our old eating habits.

If you want to control your weight long-term, the non-rocket science secret is eating nutrient rich, unprocessed food the majority of time, with the occasional indulgence. If you overeat on any given day, the incomparable recourse is to eat small amounts of low calorie food the following day. If you are used to eating balanced portions and then overfeed, you usually find you aren’t nearly as hungry the following day. In contrast, if you are constantly overeating, your body grows accustomed to feeling unnaturally full which is why, when starting a “diet”, it’s hard not to feel hungry and nigh impossible to stick with.

Samantha discloses that she didn’t allow herself even a teeny weeny morsel of decadence over Easter, denying herself chocolate and other calorie laden goodies and follows this mantra at all foodie festivities. Her discipline is admirable considering our culture means food is available anytime, anywhere and always at social gatherings when it’s particularly hard to deny oneself food placed in front of your face and everyone around you is indulging.

In her quest to stay slim, Samantha invented the “no-food whatsoever” diet by choosing to live in a house without a kitchen. An extreme weight loss method admittedly, but plenty of people keep empty fridges for precisely the same reason. Empty fridges are impossible to raid late at night when tempted after a few glasses of the old vino and exploits the adage, “spoilt for choice” to her advantage by refusing to allow herself any.

She tells us that her healthy eating (we’ll bypass her polo mint only eating university days) by way of self-restraint made her feel fantastic and no doubt more appealing to the men she was looking to attract. Who can deny that to take control and care of ourselves is surely the first step to inner happiness, without which, it’s hard to achieve positivity in a world that lauds perfection.

Newspapers and magazines are filled with diets to compensate for the 12 days of overeating during the Christmas and New Year holidays. We seem to lurch from the sublime to the ridiculous, from TV stations producing endless shows on 100 different ways to bake a cake to 100 different tips on how to lose weight in the most unrealistic time possible. It usually takes a good few months, if not years for noticeable weight gain yet we sucked into the belief that we can lose substantial amounts within days, even weeks.

However resentful and discriminated against it may make us feel, hence the Twitter trolls Samantha has been subjected to, fatism surely does exist. Numerous studies have highlighted that fat people are routinely bypassed for jobs and promotion. Just recently, Samoa airlines announced it intends charging overweight people more to travel as they take up extra space in aeroplane seats.

Quite rightly, we view smoking as negative and the majority of smokers will tell you they would do anything to give up. Fat people are evidently regarded with the same feelings of negativity and lack of self respect, not just in the eyes of society but in their darkest innermost judgement too. Samantha’s policy is single-minded and suffice to say, one (wo)man’s success, Dawn French, is another (wo)man’s success, Kate Moss. No, it’s not a typo, it’s that just like love, failure is all in the eye of the beholder.

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