Monday, May 19, 2008

Weight Loss Issues

I've had body image issues for as long as I can remember in my adult life. It's awful when I look at my pictures from junior high and realize how thin I look -- yet I can remember that, at the time, I fancied myself terribly fat.

I've only gotten bigger since.

Tonight I watched this BBCA show called "Super Skinny Me," which is a documentary type show where they took two female reporters and put them into the field of trying to lose weight. Mind you, these girls are not huge by any stretch to begin with, but they're both, for the sake of this show, trying various diets, routines, etc. to lose further weight.

One woman is truly going over the edge. She's trying way too hard: effectively starving herself, going on crazy diets, working out excessively, etc. And she's loving her results. She just asked a personal trainer down to absolutely no body fat. The trainer told her that he couldn't, because if she went down to zero body fat, she'd be dead. Her response: "Well then just this close to dead?"

The other woman, thankfully, has a decent head on her shoulders, and she's realizing that she's not enjoying losing all this weight. She misses her "womanly curves" and her boyfriend doesn't like snuggling with her and feeling her ribcage. She met an actual anorexic chick and realizes that she can't see herself thinking that Nicole Ritchie is actually healthy.

I watched this show because I thought it would be interesting to see these perspectives on these women's relationships with food. And I was hoping that it would present a picture of how awful body image issues are and how unhealthy it can be to monitor your food intake so zealously.

But then as I watch this show, it hasn't really done a good job in painting eating disorders as bad things. Hell, seeing this chick go through what she's doing, even though she is kinda miserable, I kinda find myself thinking that the watercress diet seems kinda doable for a week or so.

Because I'm fucking crazy. And I do want to lose weight.

Meantime, I baked a batch of chocolate chip cookies tonight to take with me to the office. They taste all right.

Because I'm fucking crazy. And I just love food. I mean, really.

1 comment:

duanemoody.com said...

My lunch buddy brought up this show over lunch today. It makes me remember the time I was anorexic, but worse, it makes me wish I could do it again; only not as long, and as out of control.