Articles of interest

Weight, it is either a curse or a blessing, those who do not have it often desire it and those with excess wish it gone.

Weight is a subject that has long held a fascination for me, my mother 'subdued' hers in the 1960's with a rubber roll on corset, made by Playtex, and I believe referred to as a 'Roll on", and guaranteed to make you appear slimmer.

Living in East Africa at the time, the corset,once it arrived in its long cylindrical tube, courtesy of my grandmother in  England, was well talcum powdered and  rolled and then my mother disappeared into her bedroom and attempted to insert herself into it.

Now with humidity being what it is in tropical regions it did not take a great deal to be a problem, and much hilarity on my part when answering her anguished yells I found her with both legs firmly encased in a wide rolled rubber band, and little way of moving either herself or the said rolled ' rubber corset' one way or the other.

Suffice to say she did not find my hilarity amusing, nor my suggestion that we should 'cut it off her', I who did not see my mother as needing a corset could only wonder why she would go to such lengths to change her shape. The African women prided themselves on their protuding posteriors, the larger the better, as child bearing hips and a large rear meant not only a good Bride price but also contributed to a sense of self. they were also 'jiggled'at every opportunity in walking dancing or simply rocking my small sister to sleep tied to a broad back above an even broader rump.

My wonderful grandmother in England, a Junesque lady of ample proportions subdued her weight with a 'whale bone' corset which she called her 'stays' a huge garment  with ties down the back and well remembered as often on overnight trips to Nan's as a small girl I  assisted in "lacing her up" in the morning.

Small wonder I grew up with a fascination for weight and shape.

As a Vibrational Kinesiologist I learnt that the Cranial plates or the bones of the skull  can have a good deal to do with weight, right from the moment of birth, and prior to that our genetic ancestral line, all of those people who have gone before us, can also have a huge impact.

How often have you heard 'You have great Grandma's hips", or " My Aunt Betty had a shape just like yours", and "of course you can never be slim, fat, rounded, padded or whatever becuse you are just like !!!!!"

My own weight fluctuated over the years, five children and ill health in a short period of time saw me go from one end of the weight spectrum to the other, 13.5 stones at the end of my first pregnancy down to 8.5 stones after the fifth. I could on some days go from a size 12 to a size 16 in a matter of hours, small consolation to know that a famous country singer had the same issues

A long period of incapacity which restricted my movement to being wheel chair bound and I again tipped the scales at 13.5 stone. When I started walking again an expensive and restrictive diet program took me down to my ideal weight, 'too thin' according to my children, and over a period of months I put it all back on again and more.

Hypnosis became another fascination of mine, and my weight  adjusted back down again, I liked this idea, I could have some control over how my body was  behaving, I studied it long and hard, and my daughter, a slim pretty teenager who had ballooned after the birth of her son was a willing subject. From size 28 to size 14 in 18 months, and she looked great. more success stories followed and yet...

Still for me there had to be more, why did some people have a weight problem, and others not, why could some people eat anything and never put on a ounce. of weight. Metabolism I was told, so I looked at eating programs and diets, I walked and exercised