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Women, diet pills and warped body image :(


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I used to read this blog as a kid, and recently I dropped by again, perhaps out of boredom. This post that I saw saddened me so very, very much. :(Xiaxue.blogspot.com - Everyone's reading it.: How I lost weight . The worst thing is that the author is keeping the name of her medications a secret to prevent a lawsuit, and is well protected from such by a personal lawyer and publicity agent (her writing style may not look like it, but she used to be one of the most popular bloggers in the Asian blogosphere). She even quoted an article detailing the dangers of privately-purchased diet pills. But everything else that she said was the equivalent of a rave review about them. I'm not even sure how many young Asian girls will read her blog and go hunting for them. I hope none of them encounter serious medical complications.

 

It saddens me that Maxim would ask a 43-46 kg woman to lose weight. It saddens me that this girl genuinely believes that she is fat at that weight, because that is what everyone tells her that she is. It saddens me, that despite KNOWING the potential dangers of the pills, she purchases them off the free-for-all international market. Because to her, being thinner than 43 kg is worth the risk. And it saddens me worst of all, that she is writing an article about them that will implicitly encourage young readers to go for the 'easy' way of losing weight - weight that they don't even need to lose in the first place, and certainly not by taking a diet pill.

 

The article that she quoted ( Asia's Killer Diet Pills - TIME ) rang of truth.

 

"Humans have short memories," sighs Adachi, the Japanese doctor who sounded the alarm over pills containing N-nitroso fenfluramine. "So long as people insist on being thin, dangerous diet drugs will persist." In other words: as long as Asians are dying to be thin, there's a good chance some of them will do so trying to reach their goal.

 

 

We don't even acknowledge what is a normal and healthy weight for a woman anymore. Because the media is constantly pushing thinner, in all forms (this blog, in fact, is party to that), everyone simply believes that that is what is right. And because everyone believes that 'thin' is what 'normal' for a woman should be, girls all over the world strive to reach that ideal. And because all those girls, everyday girls you see walking down the street, are doing so, it reinforces the image in the eyes of other people, thus continuing the vicious cycle. It's probably worse in Asia, but from what I've seen around here, other places are following suit.

 

I feel incredibly sad. :(

Edited by Elswyth
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I've been reading a lot of medical anthropology studies that are slowly building up the theory that our obesity "epidemic" (how I hate that phrase) is at least partially caused by our obsession with thinness. Crash diets, unrealistic calorie counting, diet pills... all of them set people up for failure. Most people who diet gain back the weight within 5 years, and actually turn out HEAVIER than before because they've screwed with their bodies' natural set point so much.

 

And yet you never see these studies discussed. People cling to the "calories in, calories out" "thin is healthy" mantra, when it is actually the very thing preventing our country from approaching a good understanding of our bodies.

 

Instead, news articles publish junk like this. And this, where a socialite mother puts her 7 year old daughter on a diet.

 

I don't know how to stop this disgusting trend. All I can do is educate where I can, and be sad for our future.

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I've been reading a lot of medical anthropology studies that are slowly building up the theory that our obesity "epidemic" (how I hate that phrase) is at least partially caused by our obsession with thinness. Crash diets, unrealistic calorie counting, diet pills... all of them set people up for failure. Most people who diet gain back the weight within 5 years, and actually turn out HEAVIER than before because they've screwed with their bodies' natural set point so much.

 

And yet you never see these studies discussed. People cling to the "calories in, calories out" "thin is healthy" mantra, when it is actually the very thing preventing our country from approaching a good understanding of our bodies.

 

Instead, news articles publish junk like this. And this, where a socialite mother puts her 7 year old daughter on a diet.

 

I don't know how to stop this disgusting trend. All I can do is educate where I can, and be sad for our future.

 

Americans are fat because they eat a lot of disgusting sthi

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threebyfate

It is sad when people use dangerous diet pills to drop weight. But looking at her pics, she needed to reduce the fat percentage on her body even though based on BMI, she was easily in the healthy category.

 

Notice one thing. Even though her after diet weight sounds near deathly in weight, bear in mind she's only 4'9". Also, people should notice how tiny her natural frame is. She's not even close to being as thin as catwalk models with quite a bit more body fat than they have.

 

Quite frankly, I think she's at the right weight for her natural build, post weight loss. Neither chubby or skinny. Looks good.

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She looked much better before (which might be related to the "that was before my second nose job and fixing my teeth" line...)? This from another part of her blog:

 

I did my nose twice. For my eyes I did a semi permanent double eyelid surgery and cut the outer corners of my eyes but seriously those two surgeries made NO DIFFERENCE to my eyes at all. What a waste of money and time. I also have done fillers and botox. If you consider it also plastic surgery I also did invisalign on my teeth and cut my gums a bit higher.

 

Where the hell have her parents been?

 

I agree, incredibly sad.

Edited by denise_xo
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It is sad when people use dangerous diet pills to drop weight. But looking at her pics, she needed to reduce the fat percentage on her body even though based on BMI, she was easily in the healthy category.

 

Notice one thing. Even though her after diet weight sounds near deathly in weight, bear in mind she's only 4'9". Also, people should notice how tiny her natural frame is. She's not even close to being as thin as catwalk models with quite a bit more body fat than they have.

 

Quite frankly, I think she's at the right weight for her natural build, post weight loss. Neither chubby or skinny. Looks good.

 

She's 4'11", I believe.

 

She looks great at her current weight. And if she came by that weight naturally (eating healthy food as her hunger guides, getting lots of healthy exercise), I'd agree with your last paragraph.

 

But she depended on diet pills to become this weight. How can this be the right weight for her natural build if she couldn't attain it through healthy lifestyle?

 

I disagree that she needed to lose fat. She could be perfectly healthy and beautiful at both her previous and current weights, if she achieved it by healthy means. What she needed in the "before" pic is a more flattering outfit :o

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threebyfate
She's 4'11", I believe.
You're right. She's 4'11". Got lazy and used a crappy online metric converter which converted 150 cm to 4.92126 which would need the further manual conversion of 0.92126 of a foot to ~ 11".

 

She looks great at her current weight. And if she came by that weight naturally (eating healthy food as her hunger guides, getting lots of healthy exercise), I'd agree with your last paragraph.

 

But she depended on diet pills to become this weight. How can this be the right weight for her natural build if she couldn't attain it through healthy lifestyle?

What did my first sentence say? This type of selective quoting, then misrepresentation is annoying. It's as if people fail to read or understand what's clearly stated.

 

I disagree that she needed to lose fat. She could be perfectly healthy and beautiful at both her previous and current weights, if she achieved it by healthy means. What she needed in the "before" pic is a more flattering outfit :o
We'll have to agree to disagree on this. In her before pic, that's quite the roll of unnecessary fat under her tank top. Covering up the roll won't change that it exists and just from sitting naturally (with poor posture), instead of scrunched over.
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You're right. She's 4'11". Got lazy and used a crappy online metric converter which converted 150 cm to 4.92126 which would need the further manual conversion of 0.92126 of a foot to ~ 11".

 

What did my first sentence say? This type of selective quoting, then misrepresentation is annoying. It's as if people fail to read or understand what's clearly stated.

 

We'll have to agree to disagree on this. In her before pic, that's quite the roll of unnecessary fat under her tank top. Covering up the roll won't change that it exists and just from sitting naturally (with poor posture), instead of scrunched over.

 

I quoted your entire post. There was no "selective quoting". I simply disagreed with you.

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threebyfate
I quoted your entire post. There was no "selective quoting". I simply disagreed with you.
It's fine to disagree. We agree that it's sad that someone would use diet pills. To suggest otherwise, is to misrepresent.

 

Where we completely disagreed is that she did or didn't need to lose weight. My position was that she did, your position was that she didn't.

 

Bear in mind that her choices were based on being in the entertainment business which requires a more streamlined look. With this in mind, her choices were to have two rhinoplasties and use diet pills to lose weight. Both are pretty dumb from my perspective but that's her choice of career. Quick fix superficiality.

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I disagree that the lower weight is the right weight for her natural build if she is not able to maintain that weight through natural means (healthy diet and exercise).

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Eternal Sunshine

She lookes better on the after pics.

 

However, I am sure she was healthier with a roll of fat around her middle than after dropping all that weight using diet pills/eating one meal per day.

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I've been reading a lot of medical anthropology studies that are slowly building up the theory that our obesity "epidemic" (how I hate that phrase) is at least partially caused by our obsession with thinness. Crash diets, unrealistic calorie counting, diet pills... all of them set people up for failure. Most people who diet gain back the weight within 5 years, and actually turn out HEAVIER than before because they've screwed with their bodies' natural set point so much.

 

And yet you never see these studies discussed. People cling to the "calories in, calories out" "thin is healthy" mantra, when it is actually the very thing preventing our country from approaching a good understanding of our bodies.

 

Instead, news articles publish junk like this. And this, where a socialite mother puts her 7 year old daughter on a diet.

 

I don't know how to stop this disgusting trend. All I can do is educate where I can, and be sad for our future.

 

I agree with most of what you said, though I don't think it's the primary cause for the obesity epidemic. Frankly, I think the rat race in which people spend 10+ hours a day performing sedentary activities, and the fact that extremely greasy fast food is the cheapest and most convenient food available, is the primary cause for obesity in developed countries. But I think your point does contribute.

 

:(

 

She wasn't fat before - she looked just fine.

 

I agree, and not just in terms of looks. At her 'fattest' her BMI was 17, which is actually underweight.

 

It is sad when people use dangerous diet pills to drop weight. But looking at her pics, she needed to reduce the fat percentage on her body even though based on BMI, she was easily in the healthy category.

 

Notice one thing. Even though her after diet weight sounds near deathly in weight, bear in mind she's only 4'9". Also, people should notice how tiny her natural frame is. She's not even close to being as thin as catwalk models with quite a bit more body fat than they have.

 

Quite frankly, I think she's at the right weight for her natural build, post weight loss. Neither chubby or skinny. Looks good.

 

Based on her BMI, she was underweight at her 'largest'. That is probably waived by her small build and lack of muscle, though it does not put her in 'overweight' either. People often demonize BMI, but it is still accepted in medical science as the best and easiest weight guideline for the average population (SE Asia, where she resides, has slightly different guidelines, but 17 is still underweight there). Note that the key word here is 'guideline', and where it comes to assessing health in terms of weight/body fat, a guideline is all you need.

 

Body fat vs health risk is not a linear correlation in which the more body fat you have, the unhealthier you are. Body fat only starts being detrimental to health after it exceeds a certain level. Having estimated people's body fat and BMI based on looking at them for over a year, I can tell you with certainty that no doctor in the world (except perhaps one pushing liposuction) would ever diagnose her as 'needing to lose weight' for health reasons.

 

And this is the reason for the thin-obsession, IMO. Viewpoints like this. Humans do not need to maintain perfectly flat or concave stomachs for medical reasons - we store fat for survival. When someone exceeds the amount of fat the human body can physiologically store without complications, THEN there is trouble. But there is a fairly large margin there. Current research has shown that a large factor in heart disease risk is waist:hip ratio, which remains the same over a rather large weight range in premenopausal women.

 

She looked much better before (which might be related to the "that was before my second nose job and fixing my teeth" line...)? This from another part of her blog:

 

Where the hell have her parents been?

 

I agree, incredibly sad.

 

I agree :( She did perform all those jobs above the age of 18, though even then I think it's sad that she lives with her parents and she never said a thing.

 

I'd like to know where she got the money. I think she looks great ... except for the pink hair.

 

Blogging (and all the associated publicity such as media appearances, etc) used to be a fairly lucrative job. It's really almost the same thing as modelling, in her case.

 

She's 4'11", I believe.

 

She looks great at her current weight. And if she came by that weight naturally (eating healthy food as her hunger guides, getting lots of healthy exercise), I'd agree with your last paragraph.

 

But she depended on diet pills to become this weight. How can this be the right weight for her natural build if she couldn't attain it through healthy lifestyle?

 

I disagree that she needed to lose fat. She could be perfectly healthy and beautiful at both her previous and current weights, if she achieved it by healthy means. What she needed in the "before" pic is a more flattering outfit :o

 

Agreed. I don't think there's anything innately wrong with her current weight, especially given that BMI isn't entirely accurate at extremes of the scale.. except for the manner in which it was attained. Sadly, that is a huge issue, as the thousands of deaths proved.

 

She lookes better on the after pics.

 

However, I am sure she was healthier with a roll of fat around her middle than after dropping all that weight using diet pills/eating one meal per day.

 

I guess the bolded is what I feel sad about, here. Granted, the individual pill-poppers (and the people who sell them) cannot completely be exonerated from personal blame. After all, they made a choice - to pop pills as the easy way to the aesthetic ideal. And they suffer the consequences.

 

But the fact remains that motivations don't exist in a vacuum. When things start to take a disturbing trend, it is worthwhile to examine the root cause of it. And I think the root cause is that media, and perhaps by extension some parts of society now, believes that a woman has to have not a slightest bit of visible fat on her to look attractive. This is complicated further by people buying into that mentality and even justifying it by calling any body shape that is 'not thin' unhealthy - a claim that medicine itself has never made.

Edited by Elswyth
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I agree, and not just in terms of looks. At her 'fattest' her BMI was 17, which is actually underweight.

 

150 cm and 46 kg is BMI 20ish (her highest weight).

 

Correct?

 

A lot of tricky math on this thread :laugh:

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I agree :( She did perform all those jobs above the age of 18, though even then I think it's sad that she lives with her parents and she never said a thing

 

I see. She looked (and wrote) like a teenager to me.

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Mme. Chaucer

Meth also works for that.

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I see. She looked (and wrote) like a teenager to me.

 

Yeah, Asians tend to do that. :laugh: I think she's 27, if I'm not mistaken.

 

Shhh, MC, don't give them more ideas!

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Body fat vs health risk is not a linear correlation in which the more body fat you have, the unhealthier you are. Body fat only starts being detrimental to health after it exceeds a certain level. Having estimated people's body fat and BMI based on looking at them for over a year, I can tell you with certainty that no doctor in the world (except perhaps one pushing liposuction) would ever diagnose her as 'needing to lose weight' for health reasons.

 

And this is the reason for the thin-obsession, IMO. Viewpoints like this. Humans do not need to maintain perfectly flat or concave stomachs for medical reasons - we store fat for survival. When someone exceeds the amount of fat the human body can physiologically store without complications, THEN there is trouble. But there is a fairly large margin there. Current research has shown that a large factor in heart disease risk is waist:hip ratio, which remains the same over a rather large weight range in premenopausal women.

 

But the fact remains that motivations don't exist in a vacuum. When things start to take a disturbing trend, it is worthwhile to examine the root cause of it. And I think the root cause is that media, and perhaps by extension some parts of society now, believes that a woman has to have not a slightest bit of visible fat on her to look attractive. This is complicated further by people buying into that mentality and even justifying it by calling any body shape that is 'not thin' unhealthy - a claim that medicine itself has never made.

 

The media <-> viewpoints is always such a difficult thing to untangle. Is the media just reflecting what society already thinks, or does the media create the unhealthy belief in society?

 

I've been trying to read Body Acceptance blogs lately, but it's so difficult to avoid the attitude that "thin = healthy = beautiful." It's literally EVERYwhere you go. I am intellectually critical of someone who uses extreme measures to attain weight loss (diet pills, crash diets, warped body image leading to disease, surgery, etc.) but emotionally, I envy them and wish I had the "strength" to do so as well. I feel myself creeping ever closer to an eating disorder, and yet I can't seem to make myself stop. "I want to be thin, I want to be beautiful." It's impossible to go anywhere without seeing a trigger to this thought process.

 

I am not optimistic we'll ever dig out this attitude towards women's bodies. I see a future in which everyone is unhealthy thin and unhealthy fat, and shaming each other and ourselves into further acts of body destruction.

 

I know, I'm a ball of sunshine today...

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The media <-> viewpoints is always such a difficult thing to untangle. Is the media just reflecting what society already thinks, or does the media create the unhealthy belief in society?

 

I agree that it's a chicken and egg thing. But I guess I never bothered figuring out which was which, because I'm mostly interested in results and effects.

 

I've been trying to read Body Acceptance blogs lately, but it's so difficult to avoid the attitude that "thin = healthy = beautiful." It's literally EVERYwhere you go. I am intellectually critical of someone who uses extreme measures to attain weight loss (diet pills, crash diets, warped body image leading to disease, surgery, etc.) but emotionally, I envy them and wish I had the "strength" to do so as well. I feel myself creeping ever closer to an eating disorder, and yet I can't seem to make myself stop. "I want to be thin, I want to be beautiful." It's impossible to go anywhere without seeing a trigger to this thought process.

 

And this, precisely this, is why I try to intellectually fight the idolization of thinness. :( I've seen many women go down the slippery slope, having worked with some anorexic/bulimic people. And your posts definitely reflect that you're going there. What you need to understand, though, is that ultimately you pay the price for what you do to your own body - it won't be the media and society suffering if you become anorexic, or ill due to a diet pill, it'll be you. It isn't easy, but IMO women themselves (as evidenced by TBF's reply here) are also sometimes proponents of this misconception. And, by having your body suffer to fall in with their perceptions, you unwittingly support it. The more women learn to accept their own bodies and not mistreat them solely to gain societal approval, the higher the chances of the societal attitude crumbling.

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And this, precisely this, is why I try to intellectually fight the idolization of thinness. :( I've seen many women go down the slippery slope, having worked with some anorexic/bulimic people. And your posts definitely reflect that you're going there. What you need to understand, though, is that ultimately you pay the price for what you do to your own body - it won't be the media and society suffering if you become anorexic, or ill due to a diet pill, it'll be you. It isn't easy, but IMO women themselves (as evidenced by TBF's reply here) are also sometimes proponents of this misconception. And, by having your body suffer to fall in with their perceptions, you unwittingly support it. The more women learn to accept their own bodies and not mistreat them solely to gain societal approval, the higher the chances of the societal attitude crumbling.

 

I suppose it's rather like suffrage.... some women had to chain themselves to railings, get arrested, and forgo all social connections (no husband, no family, no "respectable" ties) just to get all women the vote.

 

Some of us may need to endure the scorn of society and other women, and abandon our hopes of romantic love, to change society's preoccupation with how a woman's body looks. But I confess, I'm not always sure I have the strength or the resolve to be one of the trail blazers. I would much rather turn vengeance on my body and make it suffer for its crimes, and if I'm lucky, eventually become the idolized Skinny and Beautiful.

 

I don't know how one circumvents wanting societal approval.

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RiverRunning

I weigh just over 200 pounds. I am about 40 - 50 pounds overweight for my height. Body fat percentage is right around 33%. I haven't lost as much weight as I would like, but I can wear Medium and Large shirts and I can wear size 14 jeans (after losing only 5 pounds, I dropped from a size 16 to a size 14 and lost a few inches. Proof that weight doesn't REALLY matter?).

 

I feel like we're all wandering around in an eating disordered society. I don't think that kicking back devouring junk food, not exercising, etc., is good for you at all. But I also think this, "You HAVE to be thin to be healthy" thing is garbage too.

 

My glucose, blood pressure and cholesterol readings are all very normal. I know that by having a higher body weight, I DO increase my chances of those three being higher as I age. But I'm tired of being overfat being represented as though it's the #1 cause of heart disease, high cholesterol, etc. There is a correlation there, but there are tons of studies now illuminating the fact that poor eating and poor exercise habits are much more likely to kill you than extra body fat.

 

I feel pulled down into the abyss myself. There are so many days when I sit and feel ugly and unworthy. I have thought, in the past, about killing myself because of how I look. I have had days where it seems like my whole life is a game of "calories in" versus "calories out." I wake up, obsess over everything I eat, go work out, and then feel immense guilt and depression if I eat something 'bad.' Then I'm calculating and plotting how I can avoid ruining my diet too much later in the week by adding in extra exercise.

 

I've also seen the studies where the HAES approach (Health at Every Size) has helped a lot of people. Some of the studies surrounding it show that while people following HAES don't lose weight over time, they do tend to improve their lifestyles. Meanwhile, most folks who do lose weight end up gaining it back and even more.

 

I know that I am fairly healthy (I say that almost anywhere and it's like people descend on you like a pack of jackals: "But you're fat, so you can't be healthy."). I went in for an exam after losing about 50 pounds in a year and my NP descended on me like a bat out of Hell, ripping me on my weight and shoving papers in my face about how to lose weight (didn't check my records, obviously). Being fat is the worst thing that's ever happened to me. Not because of 'health,' but because of how other people treat you.

 

Did anyone realize that the woman in this blog was sitting down in the first photo, and leaning forward at that? It's an unflattering pose and of course she's going to look 'fatter.' I would have loved to see her standing up, as I don't think she was anywhere near approaching overweight. I think she looks ok in the latter photos - I don't think she looks underweight, but she does look thin.

 

I just don't totally buy into the BMI. Each individual is different, with a different bone structure, a different way of holding fat, different body compositions. Since she claims to love food and hate exercise so much, I do wonder if this is actually going to stick? She'll do more damage to herself by repeatedly gaining and losing weight.

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I would much rather turn vengeance on my body and make it suffer for its crimes, and if I'm lucky, eventually become the idolized Skinny and Beautiful.

 

I don't know how one circumvents wanting societal approval.

I personally believe it starts with finding peace and acceptance within one's self.

 

In my experience, and I've experienced some body dimorphic issues along with eating disorders (mine and close family/friends as well), it was recognizing patterns of self abuse and attempting to correct these with a combination of actions.

 

One was to keep a journal specific to these thoughts and a calendar to track progress. Eating well and exercising may be, in my case, the biggest influence though, because it enhances my mood and fuels a positive fire instead of a negative one.

 

I've also stopped watching tv (been tv-less for over 10 years now) stopped looking at magazines and when I'm really down stop looking in the mirror. I have also slowly been surrounding myself with people who have similar positive attitudes as me, that I can relate to, and that I do not feel threatened by. It could be old people, young people, close friends/family, strangers, etc...

 

I wish you all the luck in the world, even though I'm not so sure luck has anything to do with it. It's easy to feel as though there's no hope, we probably all have been there at times. Don't be hard on yourself, there is always tomorrow and there are people here and everywhere eager to help you through this. You are not alone in these kinds of feelings.

Edited by brokenTom
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