Something Disturbing

Lately, I've been spending a lot of time on the Internet. Forrest is working (he's ski patrol, and stays overnight, so he's gone for two to four days at a time), and Julia has now officially left, plus all this snow has me going pretty much bonkers. I love snow, don't get me wrong, but its only cool for like two or three days, and then I'm tired of slush. Therefore I get sucked into the internet. The internet is a great invention, don't get me wrong, but at the same time, it can reveal some pretty disturbing things.
Like I already mentioned, the lovely writer of a blog I read is about to have a new bebe. She looks great, she's absolutely glowing in all her pictures and couldn't seem happier. But on one of the comments, I saw a woman who seemed frantic about how to stay thin during her pregnancy. Just curious about how common a complaint this is in a image based society like the States, I googled "how to stay thing while pregnant" and a vast list of sources came up. The first one I clicked on was an article about how New York women are obsessed with weight during their pregnancy. What? You're body is growing because you have A BABY inside you. What you eat, the baby eats. If you're starving yourself, how do you think this poor little child relying on you is going to do? Another thing, even the women who tell themselves they're eating "healthy" are sorely confused. Eating mini-servings of good foods like fruits and veggies, they forget all about protein and calcium (even though you can get calcium from kale and broccoli, its nothing compared to the vitamins you can get from one glass of milk. Its not that hard people, I promise). Worst of all, they're drinking diet soda. I would rather have someone just drink plan old soda than this crap. The chemicals in diet soda mix with enzymes in your stomach and turn into formaldehyde. Thats right, the stuff you used in your high school biology class to preserve the piglet your dissected. That stuff.
So then it got me thinking, if these women are pregnant and worrying about their weight, what is the rate of eating disorders now? Well folks. Go look it up for yourself. I don't want to think about this, but the statistics are saying that girls as young as six are being rushed to the hospital because of malnutrition. In the United States alone (sorry to be ethnocentric), 11 MILLION people are battling these psychological disorders. What is this? Is it my aunt? My baby cousin, is she going to be next? And the sad thing is, unless people start embracing that not everyone is built with size zero hips, no boobs and a six inch waist, this is going to keep happening. I'm not saying I'm totally comfortable in my body at all times. My family has a history of obesity, I have to be conscious. But I definitely could not do this. If you know anyone who you might think could be in danger of this, please try and help them. This isn't an infomercial folks, its about lives.

Love,
Maren