Belly Fat

Is it Womenzwerk to obsess about belly fat?

I've been contemplating belly fat today. Which is not to say I've been contemplating my navel, who can see it anymore anyway? I see lots of men walking around with much larger bellies than most women I know, yet I rarely hear them sitting around talking about belly fat like it's one of the amazing wonders of the world.

Middle age women are particularly prone to ponder the rolls around their middles. My fellow moms on the sidelines at baseball games had a theory about this particular placement of pudge. One of them, a medical professional by trade, told us that it is a scientifically proven fact that worry and anxiety causes us to secrete hormones that go right to our middles. As we anxiously watched our sons in tense games, we could literally feel our bellies grow. It was comforting in a way to know that it was caused by such a noble thing as caring about our children.

Another woman friend of mine recently told me that it is all water weight and there are pills for that. She, too, offered comfort in the form of a firm solution for a problem that only menopause could create. Nothing to worry about. Just a natural symptom of my life stage.

I really doubt that the men I know even discuss their bellies with each other, much less actively pursue theories about why they have them.

But then I read an article in the October issue of More magazine (yes this is a plug...great magazine, interesting articles) that really startled me. It said that nearly half of the women coming in for issues with eating these days are middle aged women. They come in with aneroxia and bulemia but more often for something called disordered eating. Many of them start by getting serious about healthy eating or cooking healthy foods and start to obsess. Some of them start with diet and excercise routines. One story told of a woman who could not eat lunch. Another of a woman who could only eat three or four foods.

True confessions here...I'm a recovered anorexic which I don't think I've written about here (but maybe I have). It hit me when I was a teen which is the more typical than hitting women in middle age. I remember every bit of it distinctly. I knew exactly how many calories every activity burned up and how many calories every bite contained and my life was a constant mathematical equation to balance the two. Pounds fled off me without me even trying, or so I thought. I was far gone before I knew what was happening and it took years in the 70's for anyone to diagnose the problem. Had I lost much more weight I would have likely not survived it. And now I hear that women my age are going through this and it makes me very sad.

Because I know that belly fat may be a trigger for disordered eating but it's not the cause. No matter what the doctors think, eating obsessions have alot more to do with feeling out of control, overwhelmed and hopeless. Food becomes the only thing that can be controlled in life. And nothing feels more out of control than middle age as we physically, mentally, and emotionally juggle the responsibility for so many people. Our mothers used to sneak a midday martini, and I'm sure many women fill the void with too much wine still these days. But this new phenomenon of disordered eating is scary to me. Because it isn't happening to men. What women are experiencing at midlife is a different stress, a different out of control situation and a lot less hope. And that's just not right.

So what can we do about it, ladies? Let's make it Womenzwerk to turn this trend around!