We are aware it’s not summer but the incredible pressure that some people feel to be thin, to be thinner than healthier is a serious problem that will not fade away so exactly like the season do. Sadly, for some people the pressure to abide by this unhealthy lifestyle is always on.
Too much pressure
It makes me sad to the very core to now understand that it’s women, not men, who continue an unattainable skinny body image ideal.
For many girls and women skinny is their idol, starving a religion. They count calories. Some even have a notebook were they write every night: weight, what they have eaten, amount of exercised and how many times they had thrown up. I wonder and continue to ask myself: When did “healthy” take a backseat to “as skinny as humanly possible?”
Really, I don’t understand this and I must admit that sometimes, more than I would like to admit, I have felt this pressure too.
We have internalised the unrealistic idea of perfection.
Lets be honest, the pressure takes it toll. It makes women feel like they’re never enough. It’s not men who are doing the majority of the name calling and fat shaming.
As a matter of fact, women are more critical of other women than men are to women. Why are we so hard on one another?
An exhausting place
It’s an exhausting place to be. It’s unpractical to think that our attitudes towards beauty, self-worth and weight will change overnight. Ok, it’s a fact of life that there is no control over the things that have been rooted in someone’s past. But, people can control the things they choose to believe or listen to in the present.
A basic problem is that we live in a world that has made beauty an obsession. Being this is synonym to beauty and we are surrounded by this concept 24/7. Each year, thousands of people develop eating disorders, or problems with weight, eating, or body image.
Occasionally, sadly, this might mean distancing yourself from friends who constantly tear you down.
At the heart of all of this is anxiety, driven by a culture where everyone feels in competition to be impossibly good looking, and also perhaps a lack of serenity and balance in parents who are caught up with consumerism as well.
It is almost impossible to find a woman or girl who wouldn’t wish for just one second to be thinner; to have a thinner version of themselves. And, a major problem is that there is no “express formula” to achieve this.
Eating disorders
The most common eating disorders are anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. In the case of bulimia, it can strike anyone, mostly young women are affected by it. Sometimes a person with anorexia or bulimia starts out just trying to lose some weight or hoping to get in shape. But the urge to eat less or to purge or over exercise gets “addictive” and becomes too hard to stop.
Furthermore, younger children can begin presenting such symptoms very early on. And, of course, when there seems to be no one around to help them deal with this pressure the problem will augment. The danger time usually starts around 14.
Special attention is needed from 10 to 14, when a girl starts to become her own person. She needs grownups who have soul, who ask her about her beliefs, values and what she stands for, what she wants her life to be about. She needs to develop an interest or an activity that really makes her feel alive.
No one really knows what causes eating disorders. Many people who develop an eating disorder are between 13 and 17 years old. This period of time is fundamental regarding emotional and physical changes, academic pressures, and a greater degree of peer pressure.
Protein rich diets, low carb diets, veggie diets; there are all kinds of diets. Not all of them are healthy and in order to achieve healthy results the changes have to take place gradually. This is not as easy for many people.
Concluding
People start dieting for many reasons. But, although many do it for the right reasons (to become healthier), others do it because they feel they need to change their entire body image, and thinner is a must.
The basic problem is that they don’t change their exercise routine and eating habits gradually, they decide from one minute to the next to stop eating, counting calories and throwing up. Eating disorders are more than just going on a diet to lose weight or trying to exercise every day. They represent extremes in eating behavior and ways of thinking about eating. Basically, it’s a diet that never ends and gradually becomes more and more restrictive.
