I wanna talk about losing weight. I suppose many people agree that this is such an important topic for girls in Hong Kong. You can tell by the number of advertisements in the MTR stations, magazines and even on TV promoting the importance of it… in your everyday life.

If you walk in the streets in Hong Kong, you will find that the majority of women are fairly skinny, maybe skinnier than they need to be because I guess if they are not in good shape, they know that if they are not in good shape, they’ll be considered ugly or in general not attractive at all. There was a piece of news that a girl in high school had committed suicide because she was considered fat and had been consistently teased by her peers or been called names by her peers, and she couldn't take the pressure and I guess she had the concept of being fat is generally a sin.    In fact I myself have tried different ways of losing weight. The first method that I’ve tried was go to beauty salons regularly and there are of course pros and cons of doing that. One of the pros is that it’s really fast and it’s quite effective in fact. Of course the biggest con is that it’s quite costly - it can cost you from say 5000 grand to more than 10,000 grand depending on how many days or how many courses you open. And the other con is that it in fact rebounds quite quickly if you don’t go to the beauty salons on a regular basis. And other than going to the beauty salon, you can also control your diet by eating less than you usually do but it can really be a killer if you are a food lover like me and it’s sometimes hard to maintain the diet.

And the third method that I tried was to sleep earlier than I usually do, which is around, say 11pm. I think it is really a good method or it’s really good for your health because it keeps your metabolism going. And also to sleep late, say 2 am, usually you’ll get hungry and you’ll grab a supper too, meaning that you will consume more food than you really need to. And the fourth method that I tried, that I finally tried, which is by far the most effective method was to work out, or to go to the gym regularly, not that it helps you to achieve your goal – to lose weight and it is actually not difficult to do because if you go to the gym or run for like every day for at least half an hour or say just half an hour, you can achieve your goal within one month. And also noticed myself getting healthier because it improves my blood circulation, substantially I would say, and I guess less tired and I start to perform well or better at work as well. And people say that your brains produces (produce) what I call the happy hormones after you finish your work out and I really like the feeling of being happy especially if I go to the gym after work and it’s a great stress reliever.

And in summary I think that it is not a bad idea to lose weight on a regular basis because you get a better appearance by doing that, and that generally does boost one’s self-esteem. And also if you work out to lose weight, obviously you get a healthier body, which is one of the, or I say the most important thing for life.