“Once upon a time in the land of perfect dreams, I was a beautiful princess and I lived in a castle and could eat anything I wanted.” Quotes Simply Sarah. Teenagers with eating disorders, specifically Bulimia, often desire one thing, perfect body. They believe that being overweight is the cause of all their misfortunes, and if they could only loose the fat, all of their problems would disappear as well. When in fact most of them aren’t overweight, and are around normal size for their age. When they loose the desired weight, they don’t appreciate it and keep going until it becomes an obsession. “Simply Sarah” and “Fat Chance” are two stories that have many similarities and differences, for example, What motivated them to start purging, what encouraged them to continue, and how they overcame their weight conflict. Their both teenagers fighting to loose weight, when it becomes a battle for perfection, and inevitably the struggle between life and death.
In the fictional novel Fat Chance, Judi realizes on the first day of a new year at school that she is the heaviest girl. While analyzing her life, she makes three goals for grade eight: to find out what she wants to be when she’s older, have a boyfriend, and to be the skinniest girl in her grade. In the non-fiction selection SimplySarah, Sarah starts off counting her daily calories and normally just watching what she eats. As the school year proceeds for Judi, one very aggravating boy in her class Tommy Aristo, makes constant fun of her weight and seems to always incorporate it in to every joke. Judi takes charge of her life and starts small diets, which lead to starvation. Though starvation was successful, she couldn’t keep it a secret from her mom, who made sure her growing teenager had three balanced meals a day. The most popular girl Nancy Pratt, Judi’s pencil thin inspiration, teaches her how to make her self throw up. The thought of purging never crossed her mind, but being naive to the consequences, Judi hesitantly follows her idol. Nancy constantly gets the attention of the boys and everything seems to always go her way. Judi believes that if she had “creamy thighs and amazing cheek bones that look like I’m always sipping through a straw” everything would go her way too and she would finally get asked out on a date instead of Nancy.
The Essay on Dieting Makes People Fat
A lot of people strongly believe that they have to starve themselves in order to reduce their weight. In fact, it is true that it may help them to reduce some ounces in a few days. However, dieting with an expectation of getting quick results is most likely to have serious consequences as rapid weight loss is not sustainable (FoodTalk, n. d. ). The outcome of dieting is not just weight loss alone. ...
Judi’s English teacher unknowingly motivates her to loose weight because she is obese and all of the students including Judi make fun of her. This scares Judi, she believes that by the rate she’s growing at, she’ll be just as big as her, or even bigger. Sara felt undeserving of food, just like she was undeserving of love, because her boyfriend broke up with her, later when some kid called her fatass, she realized that she was what they were calling her and it was her fault she was getting picked on. Unlike Judi, Sara didn’t have anyone to instruct her on how to purge. One day she just went over her daily calories and decided that it had to come back up. Little did she know that it would become a meal ritual. Inside, Sara felt proud of what she was doing, though she kept it from everyone, but Judi was constantly badgering her self about how digesting sticking her fingers down her throat was, and was always wondering what people would think of her if they ever found out. Though both girls truly believed that they were fat and need to loose and excess amount of weight, Name-calling and put-downs contributed a lot , because they both seem to want to prove the world wrong.
Unlike Judi, Sara actually has boyfriends, but they all seem to brake up with her. She connects it, like every other problem to her weight. “the toilet bowl was always there for me in a way that a person could not be. It did not ask questions, it did not judge me, it just stayed still as I emptied all my problems into it.” Quotes Sara. Every time Sara had a problem, she would run to the toilet, even if it had nothing to do with weight. For example when she was 16 and her grandpa died, her best friend, the toilet, held her through the night while she grieved. She found an unknown comfort in the bathroom as her problem was getting out of control. Purging was a way of getting relief from her problems, not resolving them. Sara lost the weight she wished, but continued to purge, for food was the enemy now. Soon enough throwing up after she ate, wasn’t good enough. She started cutting out certain foods, then entire food groups eventually, first she became a vegetarian, then a vegan, then she wanted nothing to do with sweetened or white flowered foods. Just because that meant fewer choices. Judi on the other hand, was innocent to this eating disorder. She did it for the sake of loosing weight.
The Essay on What Is Junk Food
WHAT IS JUNK FOOD? Junk food is defined in Elook.org as food that tastes good but is high in calories having little nutritional value. This definition paints junk food as something that has no importance to everyday lives. Some examples of junk food as cited in Answers.com are soft drinks, hamburgers, potato chips, and French fries. These foods are high on calories. But calories are not bad for ...
Once she noticed that she was loosing weight fast with this method, her crush asked her out. And she believed it was only because the weight she lost made her more attractive to him. But she couldn’t stop there, she set a goal of how much she had to loose before the date, so she would look perfect. It turns out on the night of her date, that he only asked her out to get closer to her best friend Monica, who is extremely skinny. When Judi turns to her new popular best friend Nancy for advice, she encourages her to loose more weight. Judi finds a new crush that she will be meeting up with again soon. Nancy makes a new goal of weight loss for Judi, so she will look even more perfect this time. Judi, though she feels very guilty and disgusting inside, follows everything Nancy tell her to do, because she would do anything to look like her. Sara has a deeper problem, more then just losing weight, while Judi just follows what she’s told. Sara’s motivation is her own misfortune with the world, while Judi’s motivation is a broken heart, her icon guiding her and influencing her, and a set date of weight loss so she will finally get a date. All of these reasons kept them going, and changed their reality, so that there number one priority in life was to loose weight, and then to loose some more weight.
