Your question: I desperately want to be thinner

The Mookychick answer to your problem

The Mookychick 'agony sisters' are all experienced girls of the world who can give you down-to-earth advice on any problem, hugely big or ludicrously small. They have no professional advice experience whatsoever, but since when has that ever stopped anyone? They have lived life to the full and are totally on your side!

Amanda says...

Hi, Sweetie.

Well, you've half answered your own question. The problem isn't your weight or your shape but your distorted perception of yourself. You are at an age where most girls lack body confidence anyway, and instead or working out ways to feel strong, powerful and good about yourself, you're knocking yourself down and making yourself ill. Is it just you who's knocking your confidence or is there anyone else? Maybe an unkind, jealous 'friend' or a parent who's obsessed with dieting and causing you to stress about food and your weight? Think about it. If there's a mate who's constantly persuading you to diet, ditch her. You need to find your own body confidence and this is the way to do it. If your Mum's nagging you about diets, she has an eating problem that she's transferring on to you and you really don't want that to happen.

Don't compare yourself to your skinny friends. Skinny is their problem, don't make it yours. Skinnies aren't necessarily strong and powerful women. Learn a bit about nutrition and plan a really healthy diet based around 3 meals a day. Next concentrate on body power - find a sport that you enjoy and that you might one day be able to excel at. You could try martial arts, yoga, pilates, gymnastics, swimming, kayaking, climbing, running, cycling, weight training - go for speed, strength, stamina, height, bendyness whatever. But please, please whatever you do, make sure it empowers you and gives you the great body self-image and confidence that you need. Another way you can get body confidence is to stand tall, walk elegantly with your head held high and make sure your clothes fit well and suit your shape. Walk like you're the Queen of Sheba and people will treat you accordingly! Fake it 'til you make it! Most people are pretty gullible - if you look confident they will treat you with respect and in time you really will feel confidence.

Incidentally, boys are more likely to be put off by a girl with no self-esteem than a girl who's carrying a few extra pounds. In fact, most men I know don't really like to snuggle up to a bag of bones - they rather prefer a curvy cuddle. Hope this answer helps you.

Magda says...

Hey, hon...

It might make your friends feel better if you always put yourself down in their presence because they're 'thinner' than you - in which case, hey, that's lovely for them, and very kind of you. But it's not doing you any favours. You're going to have to accept something: people don't have the same body shape... so people don't have the same ideal body shape that they can achieve. If your friends have hit their ideal body shape through whatever methods, you simply CANNOT look exactly like them, because you have your OWN ideal body shape. And that's what you're going to have to achieve. And if you don't aim for your own natural ideal body shape, you're not going to look as good as you possibly can.

Put it this way: You're going to have to achieve your own personal best, not someone else's. Because someone else's personal best simply isn't going to suit you.

You and I both know that being thinner isn't the answer to everything. Being thinner doesn't get you a boyfriend on its own, it actually doesn't make you more attractive half the time, and it won't make you happier in any way that matters. If it did, your thinner friends would be happy all the time, and would have boyfriends all the time, but life doesn't work like that.

However, we can also agree that in some cases thinner (or perhaps 'more toned' would be a better phrase) can be appropriate and make you feel better about yourself.

The best way look beautiful, more toned, skinnier if you want to be, fatter, even, if you need to be, is to eat, and eat right. It's a drag, and at first you'll think it's not sexy. But you'll get used to it. The results are actually pretty fast. Be your own life coach, beautiful. You had the discipline to drink just water? Right, you clearly had the discipline to achieve a goal. It just wasn't a goal that was going to make you genuinely thinner or happier.

So here's where you start applying your discipline to get the perfect shape for you, ie. the HEALTHIEST thin you can be (the kind of thin you get complimented by strangers, not the kind where people whisper behind your back and you don't even realise):

Let's have a look at fad diets: Any fad diet you put yourself on may take the pounds off, but it works too fast and your body knows you're cheating - so the minute you stop the fad diet, you'll put the weight back on. Fad diets are pretty meaningless, they're boring and they don't work long-term. So forget fad diets. Forget drinking only water. Ain't going to work.

To be honest, from your email I can't tell if you're underweight, just right, or overweight. I get the feeling you're worried about your body because you're worried about other stuff in life and it's somehow coming out as worrying about your body instead. The good news is that dealing with your body is not too hard once you get started and you force yourself to learn new good habits...

So here's some advice on how to lose weight, or achieve the best shape for yourself, regardless of if you're heavily underweight, heavily overweight or somewhere in between. Remember, it's not just vague mimsy advice to 'eat right', it's hardcore advice on what to eat to actually look good, too:

Up the fruit and veg levels. Eat as much of them as you can. The colours green, orange and red are your friends.

Eat unprocessed food whenever possible.

Eat a lot at breakfast, a fair bit at lunch, and some at supper. Like a kind of food pyramid.

Supplement what you eat, even if it's unhealthy gack, by at least a litre of water a day, and one fruit smoothie, or some kind of fruit juice.

Don't eat nothing at breakfast, nothing/some at lunch and nothing/loads at supper. Ain't gonna work. You'll end up looking bad.

Cut down on sugar and fat. Don't freak out about salt - in most people, salt intake is neither here nor there. It's sugars and fats you need to cut down on.

Eat dried fruit or nuts as a snack.

Good foods include: eggs, all green/orange/red veg, all fruit, meat now and then (especially white meat like chicken), fish (tuna and salmon), yoghurts, rice, brown bread if you can get it, wholemeal pasta if you can get it... you can even have burgers and fries, just not all the time, and not where you have a burger and fries then feel guilty and don't eat anything else that day.

I don't care what you've read or who you've talked to. This is how it is:

Rule number one for losing weight: Eat breakfast every day. If you eat breakfast, it gives you much-needed fuel throughout the day when you're actually doing stuff and burning up energy. Eating breakfast makes you sane, balances your emotions, makes you strong. It sorts you out on all levels. It will make you a better person if you eat early in the day, and rest assured, you WILL burn it off. It makes sense. If you eat nothing all day then panic because you feel faint and eat a burger in the evening then worry about it, this is not making you lose weight gracefully - it's totally freaking your body out.

Everybody is different, but blood sugar levels go up and down. The more natural (ie. unprocessed) the food is, the easier it is to absorb in your system. So if you panic and need a munch but feel guilty about it, have nuts, or a banana, or a carrot (and not a bit of carrot, a whole carrot). Food like this is absorbed quickly so you'll feel better and fuller soon. It's also easily broken down by the body, so it won't hang around in your system for ages, making you feel fat. Flat stomachs love this kind of food. They also love shitloads of it, so don't skimp. Half a carrot and a slice of cucumber as a meal is not going to impress your body - it's going to upset it. From now on, your body is your best damn friend. Start giving your body a break and do what it wants, not what you're telling it it wants. Use your powerful sense of discipline wisely.

People can write all the diet books they want but, essentially, if you follow the rules above you will hit your body's natural ideal body shape. If you're a curvy girl, you're never going to get a runner's physique, but your body will still have an ideal weight and amount of toning for its shape. Similarly, if you've got a runner's physique, you're never going to have big breasts and momma-hips - but you can still work your ideal body shape so it looks lithe and attractive. And for either shapes, the same eating rules above apply. Ain't no way round it.

I agree that a flat tummy is attractive. I'm a thin girl with a pot-belly tummy (don't ask) and I get my share of boyfriends anyway. But I sure do wish I had a flatter stomach. That's why I do martial arts - to exercise that stomach down, so I don't lose weight on the curvy bits I like, but do lose the curves on the stomach. Oh, and exercise releases endorphins, which are positive mood balancers, and it gives you something you can control and take pride in. Exercising is better than starving yourself - it makes you feel better, and it makes you look better. If you're honest with yourself and know that you're not underweight with low self-esteem, aim for cardiovascular exercise - exercise that works your heart and makes you sweat. It tones your body, releases happy-making endorphins, and helps keep weight off. Cardiovascular exercise is stuff like dancing, cycling, gymn workouts, running and swimming.

If you know you're underweight, please don't walk away from this thinking 'yeah, I'll exercise, but ignore the eating advice'. This stuff has to be taken as a whole, or it genuinely won't work. And if you have weight that fluctuates and can head towards being underweight, it's safer to do exercise with instructors so they can keep an eye on you and check you're exercising right. Exercising is their life - you can probably rate their judgement on how you're doing.

Self-perception is totally to do with the mind. Once you start trusting that you're doing right with your body, you'll start trusting your mind to make good decisions. And boyfriends will follow. Well, hell, they probably will anyway, regardless of what you do with your body... boyfriends always happen at some point down the line.

You're a strong girl and will sort this issue out, I know it. Good luck!

Magda xxx

Debs says...

Stop comparing yourself to your friends, you don't know what they're doing to stay 'thin'. I know that telling you that you're not as fat as you think will not help, so you need to work out what you mean by fat and thin.

You say that you're not medically overweight, which is a good thing. That means you are not fat. But that doesn't alter the way you see yourself in a mirror. You will only see those bits of you that you think are fat. Most likely there's probably only a couple of areas, usually the waist, thighs or arse. And you focus on those parts, ignoring the other bits.

So you need to think very carefully about this. If it's serious, and I know you say you don't have psychological problem with this, but you sound to me like you do, you need to see your doctor. This is already affecting your life, drowning your self confidence, and you really could do with resolving this.

There's two things you need to do. First of all, you need to work on that self esteem, you need to stop seeing yourself as fat, but then that's also tied in with the other solution, which is to get to a weight that you don't consider to be fat. So that when you look in a mirror, you don't hate what you see. (Though, you will find something else to hate, once you've achieved this, so be warned.)

Most people with eating disorders tend to set themselves a target weight, and give themselves a threshold, a few pounds either size, that they know they can live happily within. Most of those targets are lower than the medical status thing is not their perfect weight, sometimes it puts them in the underweight category. You need to decide what your target weight will be. Now, once you've done that, ask yourself, have you ever been that light? When was that? What did it feel like? What did you look like? Chances are, you probably weren't as happy as you think you'll be if you get that thin again.

Now ask yourself, if you were that weight now, what would you look like? And answer this honestly, don't just think 'THIN!'. That's not enough. Would you look healthy would you look ok? Or would you look underfed? Would you really look that different? In your mind, you will look different, but ask yourself honestly, would anyone really notice the difference? You only know because you know where to look, but would anyone else? How would you feel? Would you really feel more confident? Or would you still have insecurities?

If you really think that you would, honestly, feel better thinner, then look at how to get there. The simplest way to lose weight is to eat less and do more. However, you also need to make sure that you are still keeping a balanced diet going. Look at what you eat, I doubt you have too much junk food in there, if any. But that's the sort of thing to cut out first of all. Anything with high fat or sugar content. Look at cutting those from your diet, and bringing in healthy, less fattening alternatives. You've probably read lots of diet books, but remember that most diets are designed to get you to lose weight quickly and are in no way designed to maintain a constant weight level. And most people skip from one diet to another, without ever giving any of them a chance to work. The best thing to do is work out what you want to eat, avoid fatty, processed foods, make sure it's balanced and eat things slowly.

And do some exercise, walking is by the easiest exercise to get. Walk places, walk every that you can walk. Walk every single day. Even if it's just catching your bus one stop further down the route, do it. But get active and keep active.

And, I know I said that telling you this may not help, but keep in mind this one simple truth. You are not as fat as you think you are.

More Mooky Advice Links

Anorexia information (really useful)

Anorexia support group (no longer operating, but a lot of anorexia sufferers sharing their experiences)

Losing weight safely (if you're going to lose weight, you should be fine following this advice)

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www.relate.org.uk (Email counsellors about relationships)

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