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Last Updated: Feb 18th, 2008 - 14:39:01 |
MUSCAT - Draped with black robes, Omani women go for walks each evening during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan to avoid putting on too much weight during the night-time feasts that follow each dawn-to-dusk fast.
The trend comes amid findings that up to 70 percent of women in the oil-rich Gulf Arab states are overweight.
"During Ramadan, I walk for an hour every evening, after dinner, to get rid of the fat and sugar intake from traditional food" served at the "iftar", the meal breaking the fast at sundown, said Kamila bint Ali Ruhani.
The teacher said she had been walking every evening in Ramadan for the past several years with a number of women friends also keen to protect their waistline and health.
During Ramadan, the ninth month of the Muslim lunar calendar, Muslims abstain from eating, drinking, smoking and having sex during the daylight hours, before evening meals and visits to friends and family.
Although Ramadan is meant to be a month of abstinence and piety, Omani families traditionally hold copious iftars, accompanied by sweets and cakes which the faithful can continue eating until day breaks during Ramadan.
As men head to prayers at mosques in the evening, many Omani women recite holy verses at home before heading out for their daily walk.
"Every year during Ramadan, I make sure to prepare many exquisite traditional meals, and then go out to walk," said housewife Hanan bint Hammad al-Husseini.
Small groups of black-clad Omani women, many of them overweight, are seen walking every evening along main avenues and inside public gardens across the capital and other major towns.
In Mussanah, a town north of Muscat, veiled women walk along the main avenue where teenage girls hold group exercise sessions.
"Women may have skipped breakfast and lunch, but they increase their calory intake by eating sweets and cakes in the evening," said Mohammed Shehata, a doctor.
"So they need to walk. It is the only way to fight excess calories and fat," he said.
Last week, a study released at a seminar in neighboring Qatar said that up to 70 percent of women and 50 percent of men living in the oil-rich Gulf Arab states are overweight or obese.
"Obesity occurs much more often in women in Gulf states where it affects 50 to 70 percent of married women and 30 to 50 percent of married men," said the study presented by Qatari expert Issam Abd Rabbu.
Abd Rabbu blamed obesity among Gulf women, in part, on "repeated pregnancies without a reasonable interval" of time.
But he also said obesity was due to poor nutritional habits and lack of exercise by Gulf residents whose food intake habits have been radically changed by the oil booms since the 1970s.
Some 32 million people live in the Gulf monarchies - Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - with foreigners accounting for more than a third of the population.
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