It is amazing how much you see when you open your eyes to the world around you and stop obsessing about something. One of the biggest things I have noticed recently is how much society has messed up our views of "normal". Granted, because I work in the fitness industry, I am exposed to a lot more of it than I was before, but it is still shocking to see how easy it is for people to fall prey to these lies.
There is always the occasional woman at the gym who is so obsessed with getting that perfect skinny body, that she spends two hours or more a day doing cardio. This is not necessarily always a bad thing, but when a woman is overexerting herself and not replenishing correctly, there is a certain look that their muscles and body take from this lifestyle. Not only are they hurting their bodies internally, they aren't progressing. When you do the same workout every single day, your body adapts to it and the benefits of the workout diminish.
The biggest shock to me so far is what people consider to be an acceptable amount of food. I lived for a couple years trying to stay under 600 calories a day and making sure that I ran every day. Granted I only probably stayed within that limit 50% of the time. But I was very "good" at planning my days out. If I knew I was going out to eat that night, I wouldn't eat anything during the day to save up for later and I would generally try to split meals with someone or order sides as a meal (broccoli, salad, corn). When I did splurge I felt SO guilty that I would make sure to get some extra running in and eat as little as possible for the next few days. I literally lived by the scale.
As a personal trainer I am exposed a lot more to people that overeat than under eat. Occasionally there is the person that has restricted their diet too much for their activity level, but that is rare and its not as much of an eating disorder as a lack of understand the body. Today I was reading a blog about a woman's weight loss journey and her extreme success. Of course I was interested in reading about this plan I had never heard of before. But within the first paragraph I realized how dangerous this diet was. Not only was it an HGC diet, but it had a calorie restriction of 650 calories per day! This was not the shocking part, I've read and researched such diets, and of course as I said before, I lived off of this little myself. The shocking part was that this woman and so many other woman that were reading and commenting on her blog think that this is perfectly normal and all just really good self-discipline! After reading through a good dozen comments of people congratulating her or asking questions or commenting on how they had also been doing something similar, I finally came across a few comments make by some nurses who stated their concern and the damage that these women are unknowingly inflicting upon themselves.
This is a great example of women who have been tricked into an eating disorder. All of these women defended themselves saying that the plan had been "scientifically" proven and that they had been backed up by their chiropractors and such. These women are choosing to believe the crap that they are being fed and are unknowingly developing eating disorders. And unfortunately these types of diets are becoming more widespread which is causing the number of eating disorders to rise. Although the life expectancy of our generation is higher than the generations before us, that could change rapidly if the number of people with eating disorders continue to rise. If a change is not made in our generation, what is going to happen to the next generation, to our children and our grandchildren?
If you had the ability to make a difference now that could save someone you love, would you do it?
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