super skinny me

so i watched this special on BBC America the other night entitled 'super skinny me.' the basic premise consisted of taking two mentally/physically/emotionally stable, healthy female reporters and setting a goal for the two of them (size 6-8, probably) to go down to a size 00 in about five weeks using any and all of the crazy diets, fads, exercises, etc out there. sort of taking a real person and putting them on all the extreme measures that celebrities take to get thin quick. these included the watercress soup diet, the cayenne pepper/lemon/maple syrup 'diet' (fast), the protein shake diet (along with 2hours of working out, DAILY), colonics, juice fasts, etc.

reeeeeeally interesting results. both women were miserable. one pretty much cracked, kind of becoming a true anorexic, things from her young adulthood rearing their ugly heads for the first time in years and years. both were seeing a doctor every week to track their 'progress' for lack of a better word and the one was asked to continue seeing the doctor even after the experiment was over (and even after she had been asked to end the experiment early because people were so worried about her.) the other girl, the one who seemed to be a bit more healthy, who was working out excessively and drinking protein shakes all day lost weight really fast, but hated it. she was over-emotional, she couldn't go out, she couldn't do anything, she had nothing to talk about. she lived with her boyfriend and while interviewing him, HE looked miserable too!

people forget that eating disorders affect so much more than just weight. it truly is a lifestyle. you are limited, completely. you don't go out, you don't socialize, you don't have anything to talk about because all you think about is what you aren't eating and how many calories you're burning and how many pounds you've lost and how many you still want to lose. no one wants to hear about that mess.

it was fascinating, really. and i don't care how many times all the celebrities tell us they're not anorexic, that's just the way they eat or something, or whatever they say (victoria beckham, i'm talking to you), it's still anorexia. just a bit glorified.

i'm just glad i surround myself with healthy, strong people now. it's easy to sort of get sucked into that sort of thing, which is precisely why it's so widespread, but let's suck people into the trend of being awesome.

live.it.up.
em.