Dedicated follower of Fashion

Dying to be thin

Have you ever looked in magazines, staring at beautiful models and celebrities, longing that one day you too could have the same seemingly perfect body? After all, the reason they look so happy has to be down to their perfect body, glowing skin and glossy hair, hasn’t it?

Perfection is something that nearly all women strive towards, whether it is through wearing the latest fashion, designer make-up or even turning to cosmetic surgery. However the most popular way of reaching perfection is through dieting. A recent survey found that around 13 million people in the UK consider themselves to be on a permanent diet, trying to achieve the celebrity body. Type ‘diet’ into Google and a staggering 150,000,000 results are found. These results give information on diets ranging from the safe and healthy ways to lose weight, to the quick fix diets claimed to be used by celebrities, including the famous Atkins diet, the GI diet and the cabbage soup diet. Although these are proven to help people lose weight, scientists are concerned that not only are there short term side effects such as bad breath and constipation, there may also be some serious long term effects. So why are so many people resorting to such drastic diets to make themselves thin? The answer is simple. Being thin is believed to bring happiness.

For some people the desire to be thin is being taken to the extreme. According to the medical group, BUPA, around one in 250 women and one in 2000 men get anorexia at some point in their lives. One of the UK largest charities dedicated to helping people with anorexia, beat, believes that there are currently around 90,000 people receiving treatment for anorexia or bulimia. However there may be thousands more battling with the disease who never receive any treatment as they feel they must hide their secret from everyone around them.

Anorexia nervosa is commonly associated with vanity and the need to be beautiful. In a sense, this is true. People affected by anorexia believe that they need to be thin in order to be happy. That carrying a few less pounds will somehow make them a better person. This of course is not true, but anorexia is not simply about someone going on a drastic diet. It is a mental illness causing the people affected to have an obsessive fear of gaining weight causing them to take extreme measures to achieve their goal. Week long fasts, strict calorie controlled diets and taking harmful diet pills all help to shed the weight.

Through extensive research into the illness, many people believe that some sufferers try to maintain an unhealthy low weight as they are afraid of growing up. If they allow themselves to grow physically they will also have to grow mentally, and this terrifies them. Another cause of the illness is thought to be the need for control. If they cannot have control over other aspects of their life then at least they can control what they eat. This need for control overrides the need and necessity to be healthy.

When searching the internet for information, thousands of websites can be found promoting anorexia, knows as pro ana sites. These sites give tips such as how to hide the illness from friends and family, the most successful ways to fast and how to distract your self while fasting. One website even goes as far as to give a list of 57 reasons as to why being thin is an essential part of life, regardless of what must be done to achieve it. Some examples of the reasons are ‘bones are clean and pure. Fat is dirty and hangs on your bones like a parasite,’ ‘underweight aka perfect body’ and ‘when you start to get dizzy and weak you're almost there.’ These websites not only encourage sufferers of the illness to maintain their dangerous eating habits but may also cause young, easily influenced people to develop an eating disorder. By looking at these sites young girls in particular may be led to believe that this is the way in which to live their lives, and that being as skinny as possible is the only way that people will notice them. Many pro ana websites also contain ‘thinspiration.’ This is a collection of images, often celebrities and models, which are designed to inspire and motivate people to carry on in their fight to be thin.

One pro ana website lists a number of diets for people to follow. On it are two particular diets that are extremely drastic. One is the 2468 diet.This consists of 200 calories being allowed on the first day, 400 calories on the second, 600 on the third and 800 on the fourth day. Once the four days are up the cycle begins again with 200 calories.The second diet on the website is the rainbow diet where certain colour foods are eaten on certain days of the week. For example on Saturday the diet says you are allowed to eat 10 blueberries for breakfast, the same for lunch and 10 raspberries for dinner. This means that in one day your total calorie intake would be 40, leading to a total of less than 700 calories in the whole week. This is less than half of the recommended calories needed to be consumed by a woman in a day. By following these unbelievable diets, people are putting their lives in serious danger, which in some tragic cases results in death. In 2006, Brazilian model Ana Carolina Reston died after her battle with anorexia. At 5ft 7in and weighing just 6 stone, Reston, 21, was seriously underweight after living on a diet consisting only of apples and tomatoes. Her death was the second of it kind in the fashion industry with model Luisel Ramos, 22, dying of heart failure at a show in Uruguay.

Despite all the negativity associated with the disease, many sufferers want to recover and gain control of their lives. According to statistics, with treatment around 60% of patients make a full recovery and a further 20% make a partial recovery. The final 20% are thought to remain at a dangerously low weight. These figures give hope to those who want to recover from the illness hoping that one day they will be able to love themselves for who they are.