What Kelly Said

I know I should leave well enough alone.

I know I should just keep my mouth shut.

But. This is me. I never do that. evvvvvvver.

So. Here goes. Deep breath. 3…2…1:

Point 1: I have said before and I will say it again that I believe that 75% of so-called healthy living bloggers are anything but healthy. Not even freaking close. And it breaks my heart. Like right smack in half.

I see bloggers all the time who are deathly thin through the pictures they post of themselves. And the only reason they are posting pictures is because they need validation from a community of people who won’t tell them how skinny they are and how worried they are like the people in their real life. So they post a picture and then get a thousand comments telling them how great the look, how hot their legs are, how jealous they are of them. Simply to reconfirm their belief that everyone in their real life is wrong.

And all I think is Really? You want to weigh 30 pounds under your ideal body weight? You want your veins to show because you have no muscle or fat to cover them? You want your husband to be able to wrap his entire hand around your thigh? Because here’s a little secret:

IT IS JUST AS DANGEROUS TO BE SEVERELY UNDERWEIGHT AS IT IS TO BE SEVERELY OVERWEIGHT.

A heart attack can kill someone who is too thin and over exercises and under eats just as easily as it can kill someone who is too fat with high cholesterol and high blood pressure.

It is dangerous. It is scary. And the blogging community just feeds it. Feeds the behavior and no one ever stands up and says STOP!

Point 2: Another thing I see all the time are “healthy” recipes that are so unhealthy. Using ingredients like low-sugar syrup, egg beaters, and Walden Farms products are not healthy! They are fake. Fake ingredients that your body doesn’t recognize. Fake ingredients that wreak havoc on your endocrine system. Eating a whole egg will not make you fat. I promise. A few tablespoons of real cream in your coffee will not make you fat. I promise.

When you take something out of a food product you have to replace it with something else. Something your body doesn’t recognize as food but as a chemical.

These recipes are posted by REALLY popular bloggers who have followers in the thousands (and more) and the recipes are not healthy. And neither are they. (see Point 1)

And I am sorry, but I feel like these people have some kind of responsibility! You KNOW you have a following. You KNOW people look up to you by the comments they leave you. You KNOW people heed your advice. So it bothers me that they ignore that responsibility and that they have young, desperate and impressionable people emulating them.

I can feel my heart breaking.

I have these opinions because I once was one of those people. One of those skinny bloggers who needed validation. One of those commenters who left comments about how amazing some emaciated blogger looked. But then I got a reality check.

I haven’t been without my struggles. But today I can say that I am healthy. I am 5’6 and weigh anywhere from 135-140. I am happy. I wear a size 6 (sometimes a 4, sometimes a 8 just depending on the store). So there…I laid it out there.

No one ever uses numbers because they claim they don’t want anyone to compare themselves to them or to trigger any kind of ED (eating disorder) response.

HELLO?!?!?! Do you not think your pictures trigger an ED response??? Or what about your WIAW post filled with hardly any food?? Do those not trigger ED responses?

I think if more bloggers used numbers then no one could comment on the 5’7 individual who weighs 105 about how hot she looks because we all know those are unhealthy numbers. We know it.

You know it.

So why don’t any of us ever say anything?!

I don’t know what I want out of this but I just felt like I needed to say something. It has been boiling in me for a while and I just needed to get it off my chest and maybe own up to my own responsibility.

Even if that means sharing my weight and size with the [blog] world.