Are Gyms Necessary to Prevent Obesity? Blog by Marissa Gard (FGCU)

30. September 2009 by student.

I have just read an article about how French women stay thin without going to the gym and I must say, it was quite interesting. The article was by a bestselling international author named Mireille Guiliano. Her article describes how French women stay thin. Guiliano has learned that Americans are not always eager to go to the gym and usually women only go to the gym as punishment for indulging in a desert they had the night before. Yet, when most Americans think of the French, they think of great, French cuisine. So how do the French women do it? How do they avoid the gym? Guiliano mentioned that many of the high-rise building in France do not have elevators and one must endure flights of stairs to reach their apartment, but us Americans cannot ban all the elevators. It was mentioned in the article that French women eat small portions and frequently throughout the day.  I know for a fact that the French never “super-size” their meals. I went to a French restaurant and I had a seven-course meal, but eat portion was about the size of a human hand. In the end, my appetite was fully satisfied. Americans always see the weight loss programs on television that promote eating smaller portions and I am a firm believer that they work. If you think about it, eating large portions and trying to burn it all off by doing an insane workout at the gym will only give you fluctuating weight or the “yo-yo” effect. And that just seems aggravating. Another thing mentioned in the article, was that French women get an ample amount of sleep. Many women in the US stay up eating dinner late or getting up for a “midnight snack.”  I believe that eating an early dinner and going to bed will help a woman lose weight because she does not have that food sitting in her stomach, wasting it’s energy by sleeping, and in turn, the food becomes extra weight. This article took on a touchy subject for most women. Although we know that obesity is a rising problem in the US, we should know that gyms do not need to be used for punishment to your body and they sometimes do even need to be used at all.  Americans should know that all your fat cannot be burned by just running on a treadmill for thirty-minutes. Having smaller portions more often during the day instead of “super-sized” portions can help your diet, greatly. So whether you’re French or American you can avoid the gym by simply having regulation in what you eat. Hopefully this word will spread and we can tell our kids the importance of regulating their diet to perhaps prevent childhood obesity? But I think that’s for another blog. 

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