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Mirror, mirror on the wall…

PHOTO: PTI

TRYST WITH ‘SIZE ZERO’ Kareena Kapoor

Kareena Kapoor’s tryst with ‘size zero’ stirred a hornet’s nest. The film-star slimmed down to a reported 48 kg.

However, she insisted that she’d gone about her weight loss in a healthy manner — eating right and exercising even better. Soon, her peers in Bollywood were desperately trying to follow suit, in an attempt to look ‘hot’.

‘Size zero’ is a women’s clothing size in the U.S., the equivalent being a U.K. size 4. International ‘size zero’ models have been banned after the reported deaths of some who, along with being ‘size zero’, were also anorexic.

Remember Diana, Princess of Wales, who went public with her personal fight against bulimia? Grounded by her own traumatic experience with the disease, Diana raised a campaign against eating disorders.

She stated that, “Eating disorders, whether it be anorexia or bulimia, show how an individual can turn the nourishment of the body into a painful attack on themselves and they have at their core a far deeper problem than mere vanity.”

Consultant psychiatrist Srinivasan says that an eating disorder is most “common among women, especially from adolescence to the age of 40. However, India is yet to be completely hit by eating disorders,” he says.

Delhi-based psychiatrist, Alok Sarin, says that “in developing countries, until a few decades ago, eating disorders were relatively unknown.

However, recently, they are being seen in metropolitan, urban populations”.

Doctors believe the numbers will only grow. And, that factors such as urbanisation, growing anxiety on matters related to obesity, and changing perceptions on what constitutes as ‘good looking’ will contribute towards this increase.

A person with an eating disorder showcases severe disturbances in eating behaviour, whether it is an extreme reduction of food intake or extreme over-eating, compounded with feelings of guilt, shame and distress about body weight or shape.

Anorexia nervosa leads to emaciation, along with the harsh pursuit of thinness and reluctance to maintain a ‘normal weight’. Dr. Srinivasan states that a distorted perception of the self is followed by a Body Mass Index (BMI) far lower than normal.

While a BMI above 25 is considered overweight, anything under 16 is a serious case of anorexia, and anyone with a BMI between 16 and 18 is usually considered anorexic and malnourished.

Some anorexics obsessively lose weight through diet or exercise (or both).

On the other hand, someone with bulimia nervosa experiences severe bouts of binge-eating, followed by self-induced purging either through vomiting or using laxatives.

The bulimic individual experiences a lack of self-control, and upon binging, feels a severe sense of guilt and shame, which leads to the self-induced purging. Bulimics, unlike anorexics, may fall under the ‘normal’ range of BMI. But, they too, face an obsessive fear of gaining weight.

Then, there is the growing concern over binge-eating disorder, which involves recurrent binge-eating episodes. However, these are not followed by purging, excessive exercise or fasting. And so, many people with binge-eating disorder are obese.Eating disorders are results of complex psychological issues. Biological issues, such as hormonal imbalances, could also be reasons. Doctors suggest psychotherapy as cure.

“The initial basis for anorexia could be Body Dysmorpho Phobia,” says psychiatrist Ponni Muralidharan. It is a skewed perception of the self. And, it takes self-love and being grounded in reality to escape the trauma that eating disorders entail.

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