Eating Away at Self Esteem
Kate Spicer writes in this weekend's Sunday Times 'Eat normally, love yourself...and whatever you do, do not diet'. This is in response to a 16 year old who having seen Kate attempt to become a size zero in an excellent documentary for BBC3 wants to know how to do it!
Despite Kate having shown how bad this is for you, the medical risks and how it left her with her 'eating habits in a mess for months afterwards' this 16 year old girl had edited all this out and just wanted to know how to achieve the figure of Nicole Richie, Victoria Beckham, Lindsay Lohan et al.
Some food for thought (pardon the pun)from the Mental Health Charity Mind:
Some 1.1m people in the UK are believed to suffer from an eating disorder
6000 cases of anorexia nervosa were diagnosed last year alone
Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (Ednos) is increasingly appearing on many woman's medical notes
But it is not the just the women who have developed the full blown eating disorder that concerns me. It is the scores of women who have lost the middle way of true authentic hunger and spend hours in an ongoing debate of what is 'good' or 'bad' and when they inevitably stray into 'bad' find plenty of negative self talk to punish themselves for it.
Kate Spicer recommends and reviews a book called 'Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters' (Published by Piatkus) written by Courtney Martin. Courtney says the title of her book 'is an apt description of the way in which today's girls feel compelled to chase after the dangerous delusion of perfection...'
For many women like myself we feel we can never even aspire to this goal of perfection. The size zero (UK size 4) debate seems miles away from our daily 'Bridget Jones' lifestyle where a size 10/12 figure is our holy grail and the reality is many of us hover above the average UK dress size which is actually now 16. We may not be starving ourselves, at least not on a daily basis - we try it occassionally when our trousers don't do up, but daily we question and fret about whether the food we eat today has been a good day (we might lose a 1lb) or a bad day (we might gain 3lbs!)
Despite Kate having shown how bad this is for you, the medical risks and how it left her with her 'eating habits in a mess for months afterwards' this 16 year old girl had edited all this out and just wanted to know how to achieve the figure of Nicole Richie, Victoria Beckham, Lindsay Lohan et al.
Some food for thought (pardon the pun)from the Mental Health Charity Mind:
Some 1.1m people in the UK are believed to suffer from an eating disorder
6000 cases of anorexia nervosa were diagnosed last year alone
Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (Ednos) is increasingly appearing on many woman's medical notes
But it is not the just the women who have developed the full blown eating disorder that concerns me. It is the scores of women who have lost the middle way of true authentic hunger and spend hours in an ongoing debate of what is 'good' or 'bad' and when they inevitably stray into 'bad' find plenty of negative self talk to punish themselves for it.
Kate Spicer recommends and reviews a book called 'Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters' (Published by Piatkus) written by Courtney Martin. Courtney says the title of her book 'is an apt description of the way in which today's girls feel compelled to chase after the dangerous delusion of perfection...'
For many women like myself we feel we can never even aspire to this goal of perfection. The size zero (UK size 4) debate seems miles away from our daily 'Bridget Jones' lifestyle where a size 10/12 figure is our holy grail and the reality is many of us hover above the average UK dress size which is actually now 16. We may not be starving ourselves, at least not on a daily basis - we try it occassionally when our trousers don't do up, but daily we question and fret about whether the food we eat today has been a good day (we might lose a 1lb) or a bad day (we might gain 3lbs!)
posted by Rachel at
8:51 am
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