No Thinspiration

Why should a junkie old woman be the thinspiration of young girls?

Victoria Beckham has inadvertently boosted the sales of a new diet book that highlights the current obsession with extreme svelteness.

Posh ‘n’ text: Victoria’s patronage gave a boost to sales of ‘Skinny Bitch’
Until recently, not many people had heard of the American diet book, Skinny Bitch. That is, until Victoria Beckham decided to buy a copy.

The perpetually pouty British singer - dressed in her trademark dark sunglasses - was snapped by paparazzi buying the diet guide in an LA boutique last month. Within hours of the photo appearing on the web, the book had jumped from 77,939th place on the Amazon website sales chart to 209th - a whopping increase of 37,000 percent.

The sassy book - described as a “no-nonsense, tough-love guide for savvy girls who want to stop eating crap and start looking fabulous” - had failed to garner much attention prior to being lifted off the shelf by the rail-thin Posh. Now its authors are reaping in the cash as thousands of readers turn to the unconventional book for quick weight loss advice.

The book was written by two LA fashion luminaries: former model Kim Barnouin, who has a degree in holistic nutrition, and ex-Ford model agent Rory Freedman. “They may be bitches,” the book warns. “But they are skinny bitches.”

Not for the faint hearted, the in-your-face book is loaded with strong language and no-holds-barred advice such as, “you are a total moron if you think the Atkins Diet will make you thin”; “soda is liquid Satan”; and “coffee is for pussies”.

Based on a vegan philosophy, the Skinny Bitch guide encourages women to eat whole grains, fruits and vegetables while urging them to abandon dairy products, eggs, meat and fish. The authors also issue a scathing attack on meat eaters, calling those who choose to eat meat while attempting to lose weight “morons”.
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A centre of excellence to treat a growing number of patients with eating disorders has been relaunched in Yorkshire as experts warn more young people than ever are in need of specialist care.
Chief Medical Officer Professor Sir Liam Donaldson officially marked the landmark at the Yorkshire Centre for Eating Disorders in Seacroft, Leeds.

The number of inpatient beds at the centre is being increased from 16 to 19 as it deals with an increasing number of referrals of seriously ill patients from across the North of England and further afield, treating as many as 200 people a year.

A link-up with the world-leading service provided at St George’s Hospital in London is also enhancing expertise and leading to new research into problems caused by anorexia nervosa and severe bulimia.
Doctors fear increasing pressures on both sexes are leading to more cases amid evidence one in five young women aged 14-30 now have eating binges, one in 20 have bulimia and one per cent are anorexic. A massive 80 per cent believe they are overweight while even girls as young as nine or 10 view their bodies in disparaging terms.

There are also signs more boys are suffering disorders. About 10 per cent of patients treated in Leeds are male.
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Their views on food and body image could not be more different: Susannah Jowitt is the author of Fat, So?, which celebrates larger women. Candida Crewe wrote Eating Myself about her battle with anorexia and bulimia.

So what happened when they met?

Susannah Jowitt, 38, is 5ft 7in, weighs 14 stone and is a size 16 to 18.

She lives in West London with her husband Anthony and children Adelaide, five, and Winston, three. Susannah says: When I was 14, I nicked two pieces of bread from the middle of a new loaf of Hovis, then carefully re-sealed the bag with that fiddly piece of sticky yellow tape to escape detection.

Such extraordinary attention to detail was all in vain. My mother had counted the number of slices in the loaf and confronted me with my crime.

It was at that moment that I should have realised all was not well in our family’s Garden of Eating. How many parents count the slices in a loaf?

Such elaborate surveillance was necessary because I was, apparently, a Fat Child and needed to diet. My brother, on the other hand, was a Thin Child, so he was allowed sweets after tea (that’s how I remember it, anyway).

My parents yo-yoed between being people who loved their food (my mother was a truly great cook) and people who paid for their love of food by eating grapefruit. I inherited their greediness but, to my mother’s frustration, I missed out on the guilt gene.

Looking back at photos of myself as an adolescent, I wasn’t even particularly big - sturdy, yes, and with the same frame as my mum, who, by that time, was fat - but certainly nothing to worry about. But worry she did.
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The struggle for food has long been a drama for millions of impoverished Brazilians.

But these days the nation is transfixed by another sort of starvation: anorexia among the successful and well off.

The deaths of four young women in the last two months from anorexia - a disorder characterised by an abnormal fear of becoming obese, an aversion to food and severe weight loss - have been splashed across the front pages of newspapers. The subject has become a morbid fascination for Brazilians and a theme of a popular soap opera. It’s also touched off a debate within the fashion industry that has long presented the rail-thin model as the paragon of female beauty.

The most recent victim was Beatriz Cristina Ferraz Lopes Bastos, 23, whose death on Sunday at a hospital in Jau, 300kms northeast of Sao Paulo, was reported by national television news programmes.

Local media reports said she was 1.57 metres tall and weighed just 35kgs.

“Another victim of anorexia,” the Globo newspaper said on its website, alongside a glamorous photo of the blonde-coiffed Bastos. An English teacher and a skilled piano player, Bastos was an amateur historian and wrote a literature column for a hometown website.

Folha de S. Paulo newspaper reported that she described herself as “thin” on an internet discussion group and friends said they had to “fight with her to eat”. A former boyfriend, Leandro Murgo, told reporters Bastos was a chubby teenager and became fixated on losing weight.

Brazilians were shocked at the November 14 death of 21-year-old model Ana Carolina Reston, who died of generalised infection caused by anorexia nervosa. She was reportedly 1.72 metres tall and weighed about 40kgs.

Two days later, college student Carla Sobrado Casalle, 21, died in the southeastern city of Araraquara, also with symptoms linked to anorexia.

She was 1.74 metres tall and weighed 45kgs. A third anorexia victim died later in the month.

Vía: Gulfnews.

Pandeblog shows us the faces of the dead skinny girls

With statistics showing the rate of anorexia in London youth may be 10 times higher than the national average, a London centre is taking its message to younger pupils.

London Community Foundation has donated $8,000 to Hope’s Garden Eating Disorders Support and Resource Centre to expand its educational outreach, which includes elementary schools.

“The younger children are showing so many of the precursors to developing an eating disorder,” said Kathy Berg, the president of Hope’s Garden board of directors.

“If we’re going to do early identification and prevention work, we really have to go to the Grades 3 to 6 because that’s where these behaviours are starting.”
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More than half the people diagnosed with eating disorder anorexia never fully recover, 20 percent remain chronically ill and five percent die, the British Medical Journal estimates.

Here are some key facts on the disease:

WHO IS MOST AT RISK?
- Anorexia has the highest fatality rate of any psychiatric illness, with 13 to 18 percent of sufferers dying, most commonly due to heart disease or suicide, health experts in Britain say.

- Eating disorders are generally more prevalent in industrialized countries, among young women or adolescent girls.

- An estimated three percent of young women experience eating disorders. In Britain, about five to ten percent of women aged 14 to 24 suffer from some form of eating disorder.

- Eating disorders are more common among competitive athletes than the general population. Female gymnasts, ballerinas, figure skaters, and distance runners are at high risk, as are male bodybuilders and wrestlers.
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After Cibeles (spanish catwalk) rejected some extra skinny models, anorexic girls still can work in some other countries without problems.

One of the world’s most famous fashion designers yesterday became the first to speak out against the use of stick-thin models.

Giorgio Armani urged the fashion industry not to use ’size zero’ models in an effort to curb the rise in eating disorders among young women.

Anorexia nervosa is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes an eating disorder characterized by low body weight and body image distortion. Individuals with anorexia often control body weight by voluntary starvation, purging, vomiting, excessive exercise, or other weight control measures, such as diet pills or diuretic drugs. It primarily affects young adolescent girls in the Western world and has one of the highest mortality rates of any psychiatric condition, with approximately 10% of people diagnosed with the condition eventually dying due to related factors.[1] Anorexia nervosa is a complex condition, involving psychological, neurobiological, and sociological components.[2]

Anorexia is a life threatening condition that can put a serious strain on many of the body’s organs and physiological resources. A recent review of the scientific literature outlined a number of reliable findings in this area.[3] Anorexia puts a particular strain on the structure and function of the heart and cardiovascular system, with slow heart rate (bradycardia) and elongation of the QT interval seen early on. People with anorexia typically have a disturbed electrolyte imbalance, particularly low levels of phosphate which has been linked to heart failure, muscle weakness, immune dysfunction, and ultimately, death. Those who develop anorexia before adulthood may suffer stunted growth and subsequent low levels of essential hormones (including sex hormones) and chronically increased cortisol levels. Osteoporosis can also develop as a result of anorexia in 38-50% of cases,[4] as poor nutrition lead to the retarded growth of essential bone structure and low bone mineral density.

Furthermore, changes in brain structure and function are early signs of the condition. Enlargement of the ventricles of the brain is thought to be associated with starvation, and is partially reversed when normal weight is maintained.[5] Anorexia is also linked to reduced blood flow in the temporal lobes, although as this finding does not correlate with current weight, it is possible that it is a risk trait, rather than an effect of starvation.[6]

Via: Wikipedia