You Can Die From Dieting
By Suie Wan
How to measure the beauty of a woman? A common answer is one’s weight.
In the past few years, the idea of beauty has been distorted by the mass media. The trend of being slim has spread all over the world rapidly. Nowadays, slimming advertisements are everywhere. We receive tons of information everyday, mostly regarding the idea of the advantage of being slim. It is not hard for us to figure out the sliming advertisements while flipping through a magazine or newspaper. Bring slim today becomes the new index of beauty. Advertising agencies promote the slimming idea via the ambassador who is beautiful and thin. This promotion strategy forms a new idea of the standard of beauty. However, the new fashion icon “To be slim” is an invisible murderer who will lead the dieters to the brink of death.
Kathy Wong, a 22-year-old University student, suffered from anorexia two years ago due to an excessive dieting.
“Every girl wants to be slim and pretty. I was really fat two years ago and wanted to get thin. My boyfriend always said I became fatter and fatter. Therefore, I made up my mind to diet and started to cut down on what I ate. I even tried to self-induced vomiting in order to retch what I had eaten before. Finally, I became thin, extremely thin.” Wong said.
Two years ago, Wong was 1.60 meters tall with 59 kilogram (kg), but she was only 44.5 kg during the peak of her anorexia. Sometimes, Wong even didn’t eat anything and “drink water only”. Wong said that she lost 14.5 kg in three months due tp this eating disorder.
Anorexia is a kind of physiologically and mental illness. It refers to an eating disorder including Restricting Type and Binge-Eating/Purging Type. Anorexia usually have difficulty to keep their body weight in a normal range. They even cannot keep their weight above a minimal weight level which is considered to be healthy. People who suffer from anorexia are very skinny but still convince that they are that they are overweight. Actually, anorexia can also lead to many sequels such as stomach ulcer, melancholia, etc. Anorexics attempt to achieve, weight loss in many ways. Some of the common techniques used are excessive exercises, retching, intake of laxatives and not eating.
Several months after starting dieting, Wong was sent to a hospital due to severe pain in her stomach. “I thought I was dying at that time,” Wong said. She was told that her stomach suffered hemorrhage and perpetual injury. The doctor suggested her stopping dieting immediately.
When I recovered from consciousness, I found my mother crying beside me. I noticed that I really had done something wrong,” Wong added, “I had never thought dieting would almost take away my life.”
In fact, anorexia is not only harmful for body but also for the “emotion”. Wong used to think her world was “blue” and lack of energy to do anything after suffering from anorexia. “The only thing in which I was only interested was how to make myself to be slim,” said Wong.
Afterwards, Wong tried to recover and now she is in the normal weight range. However, it is not easy for an anorexia to get meals the way common people do due to the sequel of anorexia.
“I can’t eat much due to the problem of my stomach and I need to avoid eating something stiff. My stomach cannot digest them due to the permanent injury of my stomach,” Wong said, “I really regret dieting.”
