Burning The Scale

Super Skinny Me: The Race To Size Zero

by Claire on December 5th, 2007

I just saw a documentary on BBC America called “Super Skinny Me: The Race To Size Zero,” the first show in a series about body image. In the documentary, two healthy female journalists (BMI’s around 22 and 21 respectively) go on crash diets made popular by celebrities to lose as much weight as possible in a 5-week period. The goal? To fit into a UK size six (a US size 0).

In my recap of the show, I’ll focus on one female journalist, Kate Spicer.
Kate went from being relatively healthy about food and weight to developing bulimic behaviors by the end of the documentary.

Week 1: - Kate tries the lemonade diet - 3 lemonades a day consisting of lemon juice, maple syrup and cayenne pepper. Although she’s not able to stick completely with it after day three (she eats nuts and raisins) she still loses 7 pounds.

Week 2 - Kate goes to a detox center, where she has 3 fruit and vegetable-filled jiuces a day and two colonics a week. At her next weigh-in she only loses 5 pounds and, clearly disappointed, says “it’s a good effort.” However, by the end of the week her total loss is 7 pounds.

Week 3 - Kate tries the “raw food diet” - 1200 calories a day of only raw food. Two days in she tries on some pants and comments on the “air between her legs.” Gleefully she says, “i’m going to get skinny!” She’s working out with a trainer and asks him to take her to as low body fat as possible - in her words, “nearly dead.” She loses three pounds that week.

Week 4 - Halfway through the week, Kate eats everything in her house in one morning. She ends up gaining three pounds after the binges, bringing her total to 14 pounds.

Week 5 - Kate sees a psychiatrist because of her warped eating patterns, including binging and laxative abuse. he tellls her if she continues on this way, she could become bulimic. She’s not happy with the way it went. She says, “Next time I see a psychiatrist, I’ll lie to him.”

Two weeks after the experiment, both women had gained a significant amount of weight back. Both were glad they could eat normally once again, although Kate had a harder time with it - when she was weighed, she asked not to see the number in order not to upset her. However, she says she feels “reborn.”

Overall, I thought Kate’s performance was fake and it seemed to me like she had read up on eating disorders before she started the documentary. She knew all the right things to say to the doctors, like “Any amount of food seems like too much.” Her barely veiled glee at becoming so skinny was quite obvious, and she put on this “mock serious” face in front of the doctors. I actually found myself hoping she would put all the weight back on!

Did you see this documentary? Let me know in the comments!

Claire

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POSTED IN: Claire