Lock down has proven to be a challenge: with the confinement to only one accepted outdoor exercise a day coupled with the lack of things to do, toxic thoughts surrounding weight gain and laziness began to resurface in my head almost as soon as lock down was enforced.
Last night, as I was scrolling through my social media feed, I stumbled across a post from national charity Beat, who were announcing that they were keeping their hotlines open until 11pm that night due to a new show being aired on BBC 2 at 10pm. Of course, I immediately followed the link to discover that Fred Sirieix and Zoe Williams were launching a program entitled: "The Restaurant that Burns Off Calories."
I was stunned.
If you do not know Fred, he is most famous for his role in Channel 4's show First Dates as well as accompanying Gordon Ramsey and Gino D'Acampo on their culinary adventures around the world. Someone so positively associated with food and the dining experience surely would not have partaken in a show such as this?
The premise of the new show it to demonstrate how the regular dining experience is causing us to eat more calories than we are burning off. Underneath the restaurant is a team of "fitness fanatics" primed to burn off the amount of calories eaten by the diners upstairs.
I was horrified.
This was the mindset that saw me hurtling on a downward spiral, straight into an eating disorder ward. I had downloaded a calorie counting app and I soon shortly realised that if I burnt off more calories than I ate, I would loose weight faster. This mindset escalated to a point where I was burning off around 1,500 calories in the gym every other day of the week but only eat 70 calories in a day.
My weight plummeted and my heart almost gave out. Eventually, I was banned from the gym due to legal reasons which could have them shut down if I died on site.
Seeing this mindset being emulated on live television broke my heart. My relationship with food can still be rocky at the best of times and I still avoid certain foods because I have deemed them to be "unhealthy" or "bad". Now seeing that the mindset that causes me to struggle with every day functioning being promoted only makes it harder for people like me in recovery to let go of these behaviours and thoughts.
Bake Off’s Ruby Tandoh commented that people already struggle so much in their relationship with food and that, if anything, reducing calories is a joyless, unhelpful way of thinking that only leads to disordered eating. I would know.
When you start engaging with this mindset, it sends your brain into overdrive. All you can do is think off food, what you're going to eat, what you must avoid and what you must do to compensate afterwards.
If we start encouraging this mode of thinking, we only encourage a binge purge culture which is the sticky beginnings of an eating disorder.
We need shows that encourage a healthy attitude towards food and weight, creating balance rather than extreme and reducing the guilt around food.
As always, please contact Beat if you need help or if you think a loved one is in need: 0808 801 0711 or 0808 801 0677.
Yeates, C. (2020) "Fred Sirieix’s new BBC show The Restaurant That Burns Off Calories sparks uproar." Metro. 21/4/2020 Available at: https://metro.co.uk/2020/04/20/fred-sirieixs-bbc-restaurant-burns-off-calories-uproar-12585110/?ito=cbshare
Comments