Cultural Beliefs that hinder fitness/wellness

MeIShouldB

In my Fitness for Living textbook they are talking about barriers to change, and one is pre-conditioned cultural beliefs. I'm wondering what are some cultural beliefs that you all know of that hinder fitness/wellness? I'll stick my neck out there and say that in black culture, it's a belief that a woman is supposed to be "thick" to be sexy. This has become so damaging, because "thick" has gone from having hips and thighs to women being 30, 50, however many pounds overweight, using the "thick" label and being content with that. And it's got women afraid to lose "too much weight" for fear that their husbands won't like it. I have a family member who makes "don't lose too much weight" comments to me. What are some beliefs you know about?....this should be interesting.

bald_navy_wife

i agree with you but I'd have to say my husbands opinion does matter. i originally wanted to get down to 120 lbs but recently changed my goal to 125 lbs(I'm currently 5'2 126.6 lbs) as long as I'm healthy and I'm able to maintain without being hungry or exercising excessively then that's all that matters.

kirili3

In my culture, we just have very calorific food! And we don't practice portion control. Also, people don't exercise much and everybody cares too much about what everybody else thinks so they're embarrassed to exercise in public. Add all that to 6x likelihood to get diabetes, like other South Asians, and you start to see the problem Sri Lankans have!