Fertility and Fat
Here's something in the "not truly surprising but nice to see validated" department. If women are "too" thin, and cut too much fat out of their diets, they might end up being infertile. Now, the natural shape of a woman's body is supposed to be slightly fat. Hold your horses, folks - it's all true! Women have more body fat then men, on average. And even small amounts of weight loss can affect things:
'What I found most astonishing is that there is a razor-thin borderline where losing just 1.3 kg in weight can tip a normal-sized woman over into infertility without any outward sign at all that such an enormous event has taken place,' [Professor Rose Frisch] said.So those interested in dieting down to a slim figure might find that they've also dieted their way out of being fertile.
Smoke and Be Thin! | Big as Life
Posted by paul on May 30, 2002| citymama |
June 10th, 2002 | Link |
i don't know if this
i don't know if this statement of thinness and fertility is true but i can share my story. i was diagnosed w/PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome) about 5 years ago. pcos is the number 1 cause of infertility and many of the women suffer from obesity and excessive bodily hair (due to the high levels of testosterone).
anyway, i share this because of the comment made here. i understand the struggles of weight and yet i totally know i feel like everything in my life would be so much better if i was thinner... and if i didn't have this HAIR issue... i spend endless hours keeping overly busy in the hopes of not having to deal with myself. i ignore and abuse my body because i really HATE IT! i get angry and take it out on my body.
as a young girl who was quite athletic, i was a bit chubby/chunky. since i was a dancer who needed to deal with "weigh-ins" and was constantly made fun of for that extra weight, i found starvation a viable option. when i went away to college at the age of 17, i was about 125 pounds (height 5'2") - a month later, i had dropped to 115 pounds and then by thanksgiving break, i was close to 105. when i got off the plane and was picked up by my folks, i remember their expressions of horror. this was always an issue but now, unsupervised on the opposite coast, i had been able to exercise maniacally and eat scarcely. BUT THIS HAS TOTALLY CAUGHT UP WITH ME!!! my metabolism is at a freaking crawl's pace. last year i went to a center to deal w/my health and hormonal issues -- i was under 24 hour medical/exercise/nutrition supervision and even there, i couldn't lose weight. i had all the doctors scratching their heads after the first of my three week visit. then they looked at my caloric intake and said i had to INCREASE the amount of food i ate and couldn't skip snacks. i was eaten 6-7 times a day and guess what? i lost a pound
the following week. then an exercise physiologist talked to me about weight training being more important for women w/pcos than cardio/aerobics. THIS was NEWS to me!!! he explained it and it all made sense -- so i tried it and week 3, i gained a pound. i was so annoyed. but after the 3 weeks were thru, they did another body composition test (to compare it to when i first got there) and it had decreased by 2 percent, which is QUITE good. so, the moral of this story is that we have to eat healthy (and often due to the insulin resistance) and must try and remember we are connected to our bodies. internal hate and negative self-chatter is no way to heal ourselves.
so if my starvation DIEt for all those years has caused this potential infertility issue, i wanna cry cry cry!!! all this BODY IMAGE drama and now, years later, this is the deal?!
hope that makes sense. i was up all night and my mind is all over the place right now. take good care of yourselves and those around you.
peace, paz, paix, shanti, shalom and salaam,
geeta citygirl
--
Geeta Citygirl, Artistic Director
SALAAM! (South Asian League of Artists in AMerica)
http://www.SALAAMtheatre.org
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