EZUIN

TWEENS STARVING FOR PERFECTION

People with anorexia have an extreme fear of gaining weight, which causes them to try to maintain a weight far less than normal. They will do almost anything to avoid gaining weight, including staving themselves or exercising too much. People with anorexia have a distorted body image. They think they are fat (even when they are extremely thin) and won't maintain a proper weight.

From what I know, this happens to teenagers of 15 years old onwards but what concerns me now is, it is now hitting ages between 8 and 10 years old. Why? This is due to the bombarded by product and media images who are slim, svelte and pouty. They are too influence by the skinny models and are inspired to be like them when they grow up.This is beyond dangerous for young kids to suffer from anorexia. This could lead to serious problems such as a smaller and weaker heart, damaged kidneys and loss of bone mass as stated in the article. Apart from that if they are too fragile, they may be could not make it in life as they have no meat/muscle to protect them from unexpected incidents.

This article reminds me of myself when I’m in secondary 2, 13years old. I was diagnosed with anorexic. This happened when I could no longer fit in into my secondary 1 school skirt. I refuse to buy a new one and resort to losing weight by only drink a cup of soya bean a day for meal, few mineral water and going for exercise. My family have the habits of preparing breakfast for us. And when that happened, I used to take a Ziploc bag from the kitchen’s drawer secretly, stuffed whatever food that is prepared into that bag, then, threw it into the main bin and claimed that I’ve eaten all that. Sometimes, after we (me and family) had our meal together, I will go to the washroom, put my fingers to my throat and force myself to throw up to get rid of the food I’ve consumed. Since I was a school prefect, I was required to stand to do my duty. I often fainted and was brought to the sick bay. I lost like 10kg in less than 2 weeks and despite that, I wanted to lose more. Finally, all this thought of wanting to be skinny came to an end when one of my school mates realized how gross I looked and knocked some sense into me to stop whatever I am doing that I thought its okay. He educated me and changed my habits. One sentence that I could recall is “As people grow, they gain weight. This is healthy! For instance, if baby weigh X grams, u can’t expect them to maintain that weight as they grow right? And, by not having a proper meal, your metabolism rate will decrease and tendency of gaining weight is faster”. Apart from that, my parents too had work together to change my eating habits to a healthy one. I am so thankful that I managed to put a full stop at the unhealthy anorexic’s habits and adopt a healthier lifestyle. I am now a healthy person, with a right BMI, with a right nutritious portion of food consumed and a right exercise workout every week.

My advice to those people out there is, appreciate how you look. Admire yourself in the mirror every day and praise how beautiful you are as you are doing that. By becoming anorexic is not the healthiest way, perhaps, it is NEVER a healthy way of losing weight. To lose weight healthily, individual must have a balanced diet and exercise.

Below, I’ve attached 2 videos on anorexic. Hope you guys will have a second thoughts of becoming one.

http://youtu.be/uKUSGOB-0V8

http://youtu.be/VS2mfWDryPE