This isn't funny

This blog will not be funny in any way shape or form, I'm warning you now so you can stop reading it if you want to. It is honestly not funny - but I need to vent.

Continuing from yesterday's theme - I have spent the morning trying to find positive stories in the news about diet pills so I can turn up to my meeting and be able to help them sell more to people. Unfortunately I've hit an impasse in that I've sickened myself with the thought that I might somehow contribute to an industry of insecurity. I don't really know what to do.

The last article I read explained how there is a controversy over diet pills as they've been proven to cause tumours in rats. The manufacturers say this is irrelevant to humans. Thankfully, someone dishing out licenses says this is not irrelevant. However, it's not that these pills are then not on sale; it's that they are not allowed to be a medical subscription. Are you kidding me?

The forums for these pills are filled with people praising the diet pills for helping them lose up to a stone per week. This is a thoroughly unhealthy amount of weight to be losing through crash dieting. Diet pills just suppress your hunger. There is a reason we feel hunger - it's because we are hungry. Hunger means we need food. Good food - not burgers, saturated fats and shit - proper food.

I am not praising obesity or fat people - I think it is just as unhealthy. Eating disorders go both ways and I'm not claiming that diet pills cannot be used in an extremely carefully controlled exercise and good food regime to help people who are extremely ill through excessive eating.

But, these forums for the companies flogging diet pills are filled with forums with girls saying they are a size 12 and just desperate to get down to an 8. And they need this to be instant gratification - there isn't the time to do it sensibly and make it stay off because they genuinely believe they are so disgusting and wrong.

The most sickening thing is the girls (and it is all girls) praising the diet pills for doing the work. Tell me what's wrong with this sentence:

"This syrup really works!!! It's quite hard not to eat but it's been 5 days now and I've lost 8lbs!!! Thanks!"

You are losing weight because you are starving - you will not keep that weight off. You will give yourself brittle bones, eye problems, gum problems, stomach ulcers and dizziness. There is nothing magical about these starvation detoxes - they are just conning you into believing your eating disorder isn't a fucking problem because you paid someone to help you with it.

If you are overweight and could be healthier by losing weight, join a hockey team and have the discipline to put yourself on a good diet and plan to see the weight come off over a year.

Eating disorders can literally appear overnight. They are petrifying and leave people not really sure if it's worth being alive because everyday is so damn difficult to cope with. They affect moods, trash relationships and turn people into manipulative shadows. They don't really go away either - they hang around for years and pop back up. Watching someone get destroyed by their relationship with food is one of the most depressing things you can sit through - and it is horrendously difficult to treat. How do you treat someone who doesn't know if they can cope with being cured?

I honestly don't know whether I can stomach this meeting. I may have to take a bit of a professional hit and not go. I may have to go and spend an hour asking him how any of the advice on the website is responsible when it publishes testimonials of people who have not eaten for a week and are thrilled with his product for helping.

I think I may have a little trouble controlling my temper. There are just not enough people in the world talking sense to people who need it. Apparently it doesn't spin enough money.