Wednesday 7 March 2007

The Size Zero debate- yawn

Steve's always saying to me that "he's never known a girl to enjoy her food like me" which I take as a massive compliment, rather than a thinly veiled 'fat comment'. And he's right. I love food, I often think about my next meal within 10 minutes of my previous one. When I picture myself at my happiest, it's usually when I have a large plate of yummyness infront of me, and contrary to some people who hate the 'full' feeling, there's nothing I like more than flopping on the sofa after gorging my face and rubbing my rotund tum, like a proud mother to be. Sometimes when I'm hungry, I have dreams about eating which actually wake me up, and I become a terrible grump when I haven't eaten for a short while.

So I'm intrigued by tonight's ITV programme examining what it takes to become Size Zero. The very gorgeous Louise Redknapp (FHM's Sexiest Woman of the Decade) is the guinea pig, spending a month eating pulses and sucking on lettuce leafs, exercising like a fiend army style, and attempting to fit into a UK size 4 by the end. Louise as we all know, is a tiny little thing anyway. Her resting weight a UK size 8, 7 stone 10 pounds. To put it into perspective, the last time I saw 7 stone on the scales was in my early teens, before the 'growing pains' and thigh chaffing began.

What happens is no surprise. Her health is dramatically affected, when she stands, she has to fight against fainting, she looks gaunt, basically her body takes a massive battering. It's a hellova task to take on for a month, and I'd be scared about any potential long term health risks, especially on such things as fertility. But I would hope that, as a fairly high profile footballers wife, her 'case study' will have a fairly strong impact on any kids out there, wanting to emulate such figures.

Granted, there are those amongst us who are naturally and effortlessly thin and can eat what they want. Of course we all hate these people, but to starve yourself to the point of illness, for the sake of achieving this look? It's perverse because it's obviously an addiction or disorder. Surely. La Beckham can't now 'balloon' to an average size 10 because she'd appear to be overweight, such is the extreme of her current size. The press would embrace the curves one second and then call her a fatty, abit like Charlotte Church has faced.

I for one, have 72 hours before I am going to be in a bikini for 10 days solid. I have been on an anti-diet, eating twirls, curly wurlys, pies (savoury and sweet), pizza, curries, chips and I'm off out for pizza for lunch. We all know that we pile on the pounds on holiday, so we might as well give ourselves a head start. I'm looking forward to squeezing my curves into my size 12 bikini. :)

4 comments:

Jonathan said...

Me and Vic once saw Louise Nurding signing records in an embarrassingly empty HMV in Brighton (we didn't go there for this purpose). She was properly, properly tiny so if she can't get down to a UK size 4 then I'm amazed that anyone can (or would want to). Programme looks interesting, although there was a comparable one on recently where a normal sized girl tried the same thing, which was perhaps a little more realistic. Not meaning to criticise the Nurding prog though, it sounds interesting, and will probably do some good.

She's pretty, too - utterly irrelevantly.

Tickledpink said...

I hope one day I will find out why people are so quick to jump on the size zero bandwagon.

The fact that SOME of these girls are annorexic is nothing to do with the debate. From the general public it seems to be more of a skinny bashing. The only sympathy I hear is from the healthcare proffesionals which leads me to believe that the reason people ( mainly not slim people) get so obsessed is another reason.

Not jealousy persay but the frustation that most women cannot control there weight or be naturally thin like these models do seems to lead to a "they shouldnt be allowed to be on television skinny" uproar.

We need to concentrate on the amount of overweight people in the west as there are 10 times or some such overweight people to your size zero girl.

Ali P said...

It goes back to my thoughts the other day that we villify all the extremes. Too fat, lazy, too thin...you have some kind of media-fuelled-copycat perversion- neither of which are necesarily true. Agree overweightness is an issue though, of course it is. Seems funny to me though that all these TV programmes are devoted to losing weight and dieting, when we all know a balanced diet and some decent exercise will allow you to maintain a fairly stable weight, whether that be 8 stone or 12 stone. Both as healthily as each other.

Anonymous said...

Why there are so many comments in this blog?