Honey Boo Boo’s Weight Loss

Still trying to process the following current event…

“Slowly shrinking. Alana ‘Honey Boo Boo’ Thompson, whose unhealthy eating choices were well-documented on reality TV, is getting a little healthier month-by-month.

After dropping almost eight pounds in a month, her mother, ‘Mama June’ Shannon was in a celebratory mood.

Posting a photo on Instagram of her daughter standing on a scale, ‘Mama June’ said she was "so proud" of her daughter.

How is Honey Boo Boo doing it? The old fashioned way — ‘Just by eating smaller portions and walking,’ June said, while crediting celebrity trainer Natasha Fett.

June, though, wasn't entirely in a festive mood. In the same post, she took time to blast the TV show ‘The Doctors,’ saying her daughter lost nothing while she appeared on the show for its 10 week program. Mama June also said that she's dropped 45 pounds in just over a month, as well. This was all due to Natasha, she said, not the TV show's routine.

Natasha, June said, ‘encouraged us when we felt like we couldn't or didn't what to do it,’ adding that the celebrity trainer ‘genuinely cares about us.’”

As an overweight child, placed on my first diet, I get uneasy at the focus of weight loss concerning a child. I talk about its impact in my book, “Thin Enough…”

“Our buzz phrase was, ‘When we get down to our right weight…’ Of course, that must mean we were at our wrong weight... I was becoming so very aware of exactly how unacceptable I was... It was frequently pointed out to me. Diets were first. Then came the insults, the jokes, the strategies… Comments like, ‘You’re looking a little pudgy lately,’ and ‘Be careful, honey, you don’t want to get much fatter now’ came from my family and neighbors...

…I hated one comment most of all... In a patronizing, sickly sweet voice, someone would say to me, ‘You have such a pretty face, if you’d just lose some weight…’ There! So my body was what was wrong with me after all! It hurt even more because this comment dangled the hope of beauty, and yet placed the blame on me, a little girl, for not achieving it. It was my fault...”

So, what was set in motion was my eating disorder road of anorexia, bulimia, binge eating, self-hatred and a spiritual crisis, all hinging upon the following lie:

“I am not acceptable- by anyone, God included.”

“Right weight…”

I risked my life, health and spiritual connection with God, all due to the negative gravity of those words.

Aren’t we still, celebrity by celebrity, person by person, demanding a “right (perfect) weight” standard which is elusive, impossible to achieve, let alone, maintain?

I hear those words not just from my childhood, but for us at large today. It’s a whisper; it’s a scream. It’s a snarky remark. But somewhere, those words linger, don’t they?

Again, I trot out good ole’ Song of Solomon 2:14…

“O my dove…let me see your form…for your form is lovely.”

Form. Whatever it is, whatever size and shape it is. God is not confining it to a limited definition. Why are we?

Words are powerful, healing or deadly because they are ideas. And, whether or not “right weight” is audible, its message and influence are still strong. We have the idea there is such a thing as “right weight” and we spend our entire lives chasing it and even, perhaps, hating ourselves.

This was not what God created our forms to be.

Copyright © 2015 by Sheryle Cruse