Have you ever been in this situation when you are clearly over weighted but for some reason some relative of yours, and sometimes even your children, have the opposite type of weight problems? It’s hard enough to deal with an underweighted wife that never has enough strength to do anything and is always feeling sick, but when you have the same problem with a child things get even more complicated. Unfortunately, I had to deal with such an issue, but happily it didn’t involve my son. It was about me and my cousin. Of course, I was the one who had many extra pounds and he was the one needing some. If only things were so simple to just give away pounds from yours to some other person…

But there is actually a way to do this, even if it’s not with brute force, and not taken literally. While he was visiting, I decided he was way too underweight, especially when I compared him to my immense dimensions. While I was right about the fact that he was a bit under normal limits, don’t imagine that he was ill or suffering from something. He was just not eating right, and I was doing the same thing, only that different circumstances affected us differently.

So, in my quest of helping him to gain weight I managed to find out a bit about how to lose weight in my case. The two concepts are not that antonymic, as opposed to popular conception. Gaining efficient weight without affecting the normal functioning of internal processes includes the same principles as weight loss. If we simply get someone 10 meals a day with unhealthy cooking and force them to eat all type of fats and fired meat we will not be helping them in any way. They will not gain the weight we want to make them gain, and if they do they will feel constantly sick. Their liver and kidney functions will get affected and we can’t reach our purposes this way. Sweets are not a solution either. Eating too much sugar gets you diabetes when you are not accustomed to it, and we don’t want that either.

So, I decided to question him a bit about these eating schedules. I was VERY surprised to find out that eats the same junk I do…he doesn’t exercise at all and pretty much has no alimentary schedule. So, in the two weeks I spent with him, we took turns in cooking meals and made a pact to include only natural ingredients and stay away from fats. We were basically looking to get accustomed to a healthy eating program rather that finding how to lose weight or to gain it in his case. We were sure that part of the problem in both cases was the stress we both had because of work issues. So, we decided to also get into aromatherapy and relaxation techniques that are explained by aromatherapy materials. I’m not sure if any of the “wonder aromas” did any wonders, but I did feel more relaxed, but again, this might’ve happened because now I was aware I had a stress problem.

For two week, we eat a normal intake of 1800 calories a day. Given the fact that I was much bigger than him, 1800 calories was in fact less that my body cells needed and for him it was more. So, what better prove can there be that eating healthy can help both ways? It’s also important to mention that we gave up on meat altogether, and eat fish instead, lots of it. Also, to avoid feeling hungry, I replaced many morning whole cereals with boiled rice with fruits…it tastes delicious. We didn’t stay away from milk, but we avoided the fat one, we only drunk partially degreased milk. In addition, because there were two of us, we successfully went to the gym daily for 30 minutes or even one hour.

The so called diet we had worked wonders for us both. Not only that he has gained 10 pounds, but I had lost 12! For me, this was a wonder because I didn’t feel like dieting at all. I simply felt better and more alive. It’s a definite plus for eating healthy…it beats any diet.