Please, Refer Sandra For Much Needed Help!

This is not a planned post. But feeling sickened reading today’s NY Time’s article by Sandra Tsing Loh, entitled Taking a Leap of Faith Onto the Scale, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/fashion/09MIRROR.html?_r=1&ref=health

I simply couldn’t remain silent. The damaging content just can’t go without a corrective response.

I was drawn in by the promising first line, which ended with “…I can say I am at least one of the few American women who is not obsessed with her weight.” Really? Dear readers, is it me that needs a reality check? Please read this article and confirm that I haven’t missed a bad joke.

After cleverly acknowledging her healthy relationship with her scale, suggesting a healthy relationship with her weight and body, I was horrified to read what follows. That she’s crafted an eating regimen for weight control from a variety of sources—Pritikin, Atkins, Zone, etcetera. And that, (brace yourself eating disordered readers, for what follows can be triggering),”the secret is to eat just one meal a day. I…ingest nothing but coffee starting from the time I get up until…the magical time of 5”(as in PM). And yes, she acknowledges, she’s “pretty hungry” by then.

She then describes how full she felt on her Spa vacation, eating prawns and jicama (trust me, hardly calorie dense), feeling the need to get home to be able to slim down. Did I mention this was a healthy, fitness focused SPA vacation?

Throughout the article, this “not-obsessed-with-my-weight” writer obsessively describes her weight, describing numbers as “depressing” and “terrifying” that are within the range for any healthy, 5’8” female. She further describes herself as a "...circus-elephant-like 147 1/2 pounds..." And she ends with her New Year’s Resolution—“Back to black coffee!”

So why spend my Sunday afternoon ranting about this? Because if you are at a vulnerable place and happen to stumble upon this (or other such pieces), it is very likely to set you back. Seeing things in print somehow makes them trustworthy, even if the content if outrageous, unhealthy, disordered, distorted.

So question what you read. And get angry, please! But direct that anger not against yourself, but in a rebuttal to the source. 

Please feel free to share your reactions here as well. I truly welcome your comments! Thanks for hearing me out! I needed to vent!