Super-skinny me?

I just watched a programme on Channel 4 called 'Super-Skinny Me'. Basic plot was that two female journalists, both with plum-normal BMIs and both size 12, underwent a 5-week intensive diet and exercise regime in the hopes of dropping enough weight to become a US size 00 (UK size 2 I think).

The point of this exercise is, apparently, to show how awful a life of extreme dieting is, how miserable it makes you, and how it affects you physically and mentally in an adverse way.

I've watched two of these things before, one a female journalist and a 5-6 week plan to drop weight and get to size zero, and one following Louise Redknapp with the same aim. Both were made with the intention of showing how rubbish it is to be a size zero.

I was jealous. Every time.

I would LOVE to be a size zero, or even just the size that these girls start off at - I would love for a size 10 to fit me, to have a personal trainer to kick my ass every morning, to go shopping and find that everything is too big rather than too small. I would love to have ribs that stick out, to have really prominent clavicles and for my hips to be the widest part of me rather than the fat over my hips.

I don't think this is the idea - we are supposed to feel sorry for these people, but instead I find myself planning exactly what I'm going to eat tomorrow and planning to get up early (I already get up at 6:30am so this will be a challenge) to work out for 30 minutes before I go to the hospital, then to go for a run when I get home.

[I'm told it gets addictive and you eventually get an endorphin rush from running, so I'm determined to get past the stage where my chest burns and my feet hurt and reach this wonderful goal of actually wanting to go running. I do enjoy the moment of mutual sheepish grinning that happens when you puff around the park and pass another runner - it's kind of a, 'yeah, we look stupid but at least we are trying' moment of unfit solidarity!]

So I think that for me, the programme did not fulfil it's intentions. I'm already trying to lose 1kg a week (I thought this was a reasonable goal) since for various reasons to do with illness and medication and sheer lack of willpower I have put on A LOT of weight during university, but this programme provided rather a lot of tips on how to increase that goal to 2kg or more...

Roll on the weight loss!