Junkfood Science: Week one of the 30-day challenge

June 01, 2007

Week one of the 30-day challenge

Last week, Mama Vision proposed a 30-day No Proana Challenge to her readers and about a hundred young women reponded.

They’re chucking the scale; turning off the television and news; ditching the fashion and Hollywood gossip magazines; distancing themselves from diet and weight talk; and staying off the internet and away from sites with weight concerns, restrained eating and encouragement of thinness. They’ll be trying to cleanse their lives “of all the detrimental, brainwashing crap” that’s gotten them into such a painful, harmful place. As they work towards recovery, they’re spending the month doing all sorts of other things to discover and enjoy life.

This sounds like a pretty good idea for all of us.

As Mama Vision told her girls, as she calls them:

We are all realistic, this 30 day time out is not going to get rid of your eating disorders… all the struggles and feelings are going to still be there. I guess when we really get down to it, I posed this because I believe ProAna sites are detrimental anyway you cut it.

I just am not convinced that any positive can truly come from reading and posting on a proana forum. Its like slowly, stepping into quick sand, once you are in, you can’t get out, you just get sucked deeper and deeper because you are intentionally surrounding yourself with others exactly like you. They are too weak to help you.

The response and intensity in the posts demonstrate just how hard this is proving to be for these young women and how much they want to get better. Today, she encourages them with a reminder:

There is no failure here. Many of you were so quick to jump to “I failed.” Enough of that, if you try, fall off the wagon, you get back on….got it? It seems that the ProAna surfing and posting is so much a part of your day, you are bored without it. Time to open your eyes, there is a huge world out there waiting for you to explore, why are you all huddled down at your computer looking at the same crap everyday? ... It’s the weekend. Please all go out and have some fun. Get away from your computers and FORCE yourself to get involved in something else….No more posting, checking or commenting. Just shut the machine down and leave it, you will survive for a few days trust me.

Wishing all the girls a happy, healthy month and hope more young women join the Challenge.

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