Popular diet among Japanese women
What can you learn from the Japanese to lose weight

By Eimi Graham

Among young women in Japan, being slim is really cool despite the fact that they are already quite slim by global standards.  Slim models, idols, and actresses appear on TV all the time talking about how they are able to stay slim.  In order to cater to the desire of Japanese women desperate to lose some weight, you see numerous advertisements about dieting in Japanese magazines for women.  In most of these advertisements, the main message is the same - TV talents and stars who claim to have tried the product and then reporting how many kilograms they have lost and that they are really happy getting a perfect body.  

The diet boom in Japan is impacting not just the adults.  Nowadays, even high school girls and junior high school girls try to go on a diet.  Interestingly, most of the people who try to diet are not so obese in the first place if generally accepted medical standards for obesity are used.  Japanese women and girls try to diet because they want to wear the most fashionable clothes in Japan.  

I was curious about this, so I conducted a rather unscientific survey on the streets about this.  Here are some interesting findings from my survey for the 18-40 years old group:

Among the women with height ranging 149 cm and less, 79% of the women have their waists in the range 56 cm to 58 cm and the weight is in the 35 to 39 kg range.  In the 150 to 159 cm height group, the weight range is 40 to 45 kg and the average waist size is 61 cm.  For the 160 to 164 cm height group, the weight range is wider with 97% of the women reporting it to be between 40 and 49 kg.  However, among really tall Japanese women, that is 165 cm and higher, 86% of the women have their weight between 46 and 49 kg.  (Related article:  Book review of "Why Japanese Women Don't Get Fat")

These statistics clearly show that Japanese women are obsessed about how slim they look.  Compared to other oriental women, they might very well be overly slim already despite the fact that the younger generation may have a better body built than the previous generation.  This is in contrast to other cultures, especially the US, where the concern about being slim is only modestly strong.  In some other cultures, being a bit chubby is actually appreciated.  (Related:  Diet makeover)

I asked them another question to better understand their perspectives on what weight they consider to be high enough to describe them as fat (Why am I fat?). To my shock, 68% of the women think that 52 kg or above is too much weight for a Japanese woman.  Some 20% of the women even go to the extreme to say that 50 kg is the limit for a Japanese women before they would get concerned and go on a diet.

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