Ok. I obviously watch way too many weight loss tv programmes, but I'm addicted! They're good motivation.

Did anyone watch this last night?

I don't think she sold the whole suffering thing particularly well. She was still so nice to everyone, despite being hungry all the time. I wanted her to be really bad-tempered, but we didn't really see any of that. I think she's just such a lovely person in real life , that she doesn't 'do' snappy! I sat through it thinking, "I could do that!" (if I could lose half as much weight in a month as she did, I'd be really happy).

That said, the thing that really deterred me from crash dieting is that the doctor (from celeb fit club) said that the reason that you gain more weight (and fat) after eating normally again is the whole starvation thing.

1. crash dieting makes your body think it's in a starvation state
2. starvation = weight loss (BOTH fat and muscle = not good)
3. lower weight = need less calories to function normally
4. once you start eating normally again, calorie intake increases
5. EXTRA calories (i.e. above that which you need to function which is lower than before crash diet as you now weigh less) = STORED AS FAT (as body's response to starvation)
6. you end up fatter than before!

I don't have a nutritionist to advise me on how to eat after I've lost all the weight I want to, so I'm not even going to go down the dieting route! I'm just going to eat healthier than I do now, eat less calories and exercise more. Definitely will never crash diet! Never!

I saw it too.

She is such a beautiful looking girl. It was only at the end of it when she tried that tiny dress on and she turned round and you could see all her bones in her back and see how skinny she had got.

The other programme that I watched the other week with a taller heavier girl was more interesting, and that showed you how awful the crash dieting thing was in more detail. Louise was tiny without crash dieting just seven stone 10lbs.

I love eating too much to do any sort of crash diet.

It was very sad seeing those girls in that clinic. Girls all from a clearly middle class background with parents that can afford to pay for their daughters to get the help they need. When I used to do my volunatary work in the psychiatric unit there were two girls with anorexia there. I always used to think what on earth are they doing here this surely cannot be the right environment for them but who knows.

Michele

Very interesting programme. Her diet was so restricted and couldn't possibly have contained the right balance of nutrients. I know that was the point, for her to lose weight very quickly and show the effects and dangers of crash dieting, but all the same I have no idea how she even did it!

She was slim at the beginning but looked awful afterwards , so guant. Why do some women aspire to be so very thin? As was pointed out it is very dangerous to be so thin. There is a balance to be had.

[QUOTE=cammii;1602235]

I don't think she sold the whole suffering thing particularly well. She was still so nice to everyone, despite being hungry all the time. I wanted her to be really bad-tempered, but we didn't really see any of that. I think she's just such a lovely person in real life , that she doesn't 'do' snappy! I sat through it thinking, "I could do that!" (if I could lose half as much weight in a month as she did, I'd be really happy).
[QUOTE]

As an undergraduate psychology student i think that programme was extrmemly unethical and could seriously have had an adverse effect on young girls who may have watched the programme.

They really could have protrayed the whole size zero culture and its adverse effects in a better way. It was extrememly unethical as Lousie Rednapp put her health at risk. She doesn't know it but some young teenagers will watch that programme and think 'in one month to get to size zero, i can do that'. The fact that she made it to size zero is actually scary..bcos others will say she did it so can i. I think Louise had good intentions however...she did it the wrong way.

On a lighter note, did you see that Barry said she looked great!!and he wasn't even alarmed that she wanted to be size zero!!LA must be some strange town!!

Yeah, I noticed when Barry said that too! She looked like a (albeit attractive) skeleton! I completely agree with you regarding young girls watching it. She really didn't sell the negatives of trying to be a size zero.
What's the big deal having a cold when you can be thin?
Vomiting! Yay! I'll be even thinner!
Who needs an immune system when you can fit into the teeniest of dresses?

Young girls don't think about health consequences of anything! There are far more important things to worry about, like clothes and boys and being thin etc. If a show addressed the mere superficial negative aspects of trying to be a size zero then it'll probably be more successful.

I really liked the BBC version of this show. You actually felt that presenter's pain! And she didn't make it to a size zero (she WAS bigger than Louise to begin with) and she made fun of the modelling world.

I haven't seen it yet (too busy watching fame academy) but I worry every time I watch stuff about eating disorders about the effect on vulnerable people watching (like SlimmingWorldChick said) I mean there is no way I'm ever going to starve myself but you do wonder how many people watching want tips on how to do it.

I think Louise must be desperate for work to do it.

I full understand the affect this sort of programme might have on young impressionable girls but there is also another issue here.... you think you can get away with crash diets (or yoyo dieting) when you are young but such restrictive nutrition really impacts on your body as you get older.

I just WISH that the people making this kind of documentary would study someone who had lived their life doing these stupid diets and take a good look at the long term health problems this kind of dieting causes.... blood pressure problems, osteoporosis, etc.

I know by personal experience (no, I don't want to be in a documentary!!)

I saw the pictures in the paper - we don't have a TV.

I thought she looked better in the after pictures (maybe that was just the pictures) STOP! WAIT! DON'T SHOOT ME YET!!!!! Because before hand she looked skinny-fat, but after she was just skinny and didn't look flabby. Now if she'd just gone to the weights room in her gym then she wouldn't have to have starved herself OR been unhealthy. She could've actually eaten some real food and looked a heackuva lot better!

But yeah, what everyone else said - it's mental that she looked like a stick (albeit a non-flabby stick!) at the end! And she will gain back even more fat when she rebounds! I bet she's well and truly messed up after that! I hope she gains weight sensibly AND gets some muscle since she obviously didn't have much to start off with, and now she has even less!

I don't think a documentary will encourage more people to starve themselves. I think if you're going to do it, you're going to do it. I did it once, but then I got happy Fortunately I gained back weight but at the same time I discovered the weights room. That was actually quite lucky with hindsight!

I think the BBC docu sounded more realistic and shocking.

I had a friend who was anorexic - later bulimic. These were the results of weight loss so far as she told me:

teeth rotted (bad nutrition, then vomit eroding the enamel)
spotty skin/acne
difficulty in keeping friendships (compulsion to visit you then vomit in your bog meant she didn't have many friends)
oh and the final, most wonderful one:

death. Yes. She was dead before she was out of her 20s.

I think excessive obsessing on anything related to this - not only diet, but also exercise - is extremely unhealthy and leads that way in the end.

Would be more instructive to young girls to show them the reality. Ironically, at the time my friend was alive, I weighed less than 7 stone, and ate like a pig and did no really conscious exercising (although I walked and rode a bike a lot, but you wouldn't catch me wasting time in a gym if I could be eating chocolate biscuits!) In her bulimic phase, my friend was possibly a size 14 at her 'biggest' - in 1983 that was larger than most but still nowhere near 'fat'. Amongst young girls today she's look positively skinny as they all seem to be the size of houses.

Think that young girls have very distorted body images - but it's not about dieting down to a dress size, or exercise becoming the focus of your life - the fat ones wear really unflattering clothes, as if they've no concept how bad they look which is as delusional as the rest of them trying to look like sticks when nature hasn't made them that way. Education of young girls should be firmly in the area of useful, purposeful exercise (riding a bike, not sitting in a gym) that is 'real' - and healthy nutrition, not 'diet'. I was a size 6 (That's US 2) most of my teenage years and young adult life, and I'd have thought girls who tried to get down to that size who weren't naturally there with no effort were prats, basically! We need to address the underlying body dysmorphia - and give them a healthy but relaxed attitude. And teach them to see people who focus too much on diet and exercise as mentally ill. Harsh, but true - people were much fitter generally when we didn't have the media telling us size 0 is attainable.

Phatphoenix - I'm so sorry about your friend

I had to laugh when Louise left her phone in the fridge.


I had a penpal when I was 15 who told me she was 6 stone, at the time I was about 12 stone. I still wonder about her and if she was/got ill.

It's OK, Sarah. We knew it would happen - she really was very very ill by the time she got to university. She'd had a very religious (christian) upbringing that had screwed her up big time. She was one of my closest friends - although I'm really phobic about sick and found the throwing up hard to cope with. I like to pass on her story as if it stopped just one girl, reading this, she won't have died for nothing.

Think rather than some footballer's wife, they should have followed round a real anorexic/bulimic - not a pretty stick insect in designer clothes, with the sort of lifestyle airheads aspire to - but the hard, dirty reality of size zero.

I didn't have scales in my house for years after my friend died and although I had them a year or so ago, have stopped weighing myself because I realised it was getting unhealthy.

I just think that all those women who do extreme dieting will have terrible health problems when they are older - or even before that. It will show in their face and no amount of wonder anti wrinkle cream will keep it at bay. They will all be scrawny necked chicken in wheelchairs!

I would not stay "nice" I would be a complete cow - I have been in the past when dieting. Iremember after my diet soup I was sitting down watching day time tv and my mum who hadn't wanted any lunch came in with a pack of choccie bix and proceeded to eat them in front of me. In my then current mood it did not register that she did this often - I took it way too personally and nearly killed her!!!!

I once had a friend who was anorexic - except that, at the time, we didn't really have a name for it. It was when I was first married to my ex - about 30 years ago - this girl was about the same age as me but married to a real (who she adored) who put her down the whole time - usually by telling her she was a fat cow.

Poor Charlotte started off probably a stone overweight and over the space of a year or so starved herself down to 5st but instead of getting proper treatment she was sectioned in to a mental hospital. (I think thats what they did in those days.) What really annoyed me was that her beloved husband was STILL calling her a fat cow, even when she was little more than skin and bone. After she was sectioned he didn't waste any time at all in divorcing her and finding himself another plump girl to be his willing slave.

I watched this documentary as well, and I completely agree, it does prey on the vulnerable. There were reports in the papers that aneroxic website chat rooms were discussing the dieting tips they got from the programme, and while I recognise that Louise Redknapp was trying to portray the downside of the whole journey, the reality is that some people only focus on the end result and figure that if she can do this in such a short time, so can they.

Although I'm with you peacock 2, in that I would be like a demon if I had to subsist on those morsels and try to do exercise on top of it! Really glad I dont live in LA as well, how anybody could look at Louise and say that she could do with losing some weight is beyond me. Madness!