This Sunday at 10 PM on BBC America the Documentary “Super Skinny Me” (http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/OnCall/story?id=3935938) will be premiered. Think back to “Super-size Me” and then invert it. Two journalists, Louise Burke and Kate Spicer spent 5 weeks trying radical diets along with extreme exercise. Over the course of those five weeks both women put themselves through the rollercoaster effects of dieting and exercise. Louise, who started her journey weighing 129 pounds ended up as a size zero after shedding 14 pounds. Kate went from a size 12 to a size 6 after loosing 17 pounds. Kate also went into a very dangerous bingeing and purging phase during the 5 weeks and was told that she needed to drop out of the experiment because she was dangerously close to developing bulimia. She held on during the last week but was very troubled by the severe effects of just five short weeks.
I’m really excited to tune in and watch this program and see the scary transition that these women will make. The dedication that they have to their profession is laudable although clearly there are huge risk factors involved. For me, I think the hardest part about watching this documentary will be the realization that this is the reality of life for so many women and men. They are willing to put their bodies at risk to loose that extra 5 pounds. I understand wanting to look good and feel satisfied with yourself, but there is a right way to go about changing your body and there is a wrong way. Fad diets and extreme exercise programs do much more harm then good in the long run, even if they help you shed a few extra pounds.
Besides the health issues at play here it is also important to understand what these tactics say about a person psychologically. I think a much more effective documentary would try and tackle the issues behind the dangerous habits, instead of just experimenting with the dangerous habits themselves. Talk to women and men and find out why they are so obsessed with weight and fitness. What drives them to these severe measures? Are certain people predisposed to push limits in regards to their health? Although I still have these questions I’m sure the documentary will be interesting and startling and I hope some of you can turn in to watch it.
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4 comments:
It's amazing how far people will go in order to look their best. The soup diet, the vegan diet, the drink diet, the fads will never end. Exercising and eating right sto stay healthy is always a good thing. A show called Intervention sometimes has women that have eating disorders, the worst of the worst. People look up to celebrities for how thin they are and they try to imitate but that imitation can lead to loss of confidence and a bad body image of themselves. Good post, I would like to watch to see what it's about.
It was totally fascinating. I was able to see it and although it was a bit different than I expected it got its point across very well. One of the journalists even had to stop the experiment early because she was becoming so consumed by the dieting and exercise. You're right though, the diets the women went on were insane. There was one where they just drank lemonade with maple syrup for a week. I couldn't believe it.
I was going to bring up Intervention as well but Ketch beat me to it. The one from last week had a woman on it who was anorexic, and it was fascinating. She had an identical twin sister who was doing so well in life and it was crazy to see the difference between the two and how much damage eating disorders can cause an entire family.
This is an interesting topic that needs to be addressed more in the media. However I do not think it is productive for journalists to risk their health just to show what people often do to change their physical appearance. I think it would be much more affective to have actual people who suffer from many of the different eating disorders and have for many years to be featured on the show instead of the reporters who have dieted and starved themselves for 5 weeks.
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