Super-Skinny Me: The Race to Size Double Zero

Exploring new frontiers in danger TV, Channel Four trod right to the heart of the great weight debate with Super-Skinny Me: The Race to Size Double Zero.
Following in Louise Redknapp's ITV footsteps, two journalists, Kate Spicer and Louise Burke, aimed to reach the holy grail of the extreme-dieting world, a UK size two - or in more accessible terms - the waist size of a six-year-old.
What could of served to glamourise the cause instead finally hammered home the sickening truth about the obsessive clamour of the people caught up in the Size Zero trend.
Inside two weeks the successful, grounded pair had become pallid, exhausted, jumpy shadows of their former selves surviving on a cocktail of low-calorie diets.
The strict new regimes, specially selected to shrink the women from their healthy size 10-12 jeans, were based on calorific contents of no more than 1500 a day, with a 1000 of those being burnt off through rigourous exercise, leaving them with 500 calories - the energy equivalent of a blueberry muffin.
As the pounds fell off, new much more worrying problems began to emerge as the dramatic lifestyle change took its toll on their emotional and mental states.
A clearly-annoyed boyfriend was close to the end of his tether with his new easily-exhausted, drawn girlfriend who was surviving weeks at a time on rations of watercress soup, homemade lemonade or thrice-daily fruit juices. For the second journalist, formally a tall 10st 4Ibs, her mindset radically altered leaving her teetering on the brink of an eating disorder - well after the experiment had ended.
What had changed from the press's pawing glamourisation was the harsh reality behind the protruding cheekbones and revealed decolletage - the true sacrifice that some women choose to make and others aspire to be.
The women's relationship with food became distorted and fearful as the seduction of dropping pounds pulled them further and further from reality.
At the four week point, one confessed to day-long binges follwed by punishing fasting and, on two occasions, making herself sick.
As the experiment drew to a close, one removed early for her own health, the 'winning' journalist held a party to celebrate squeezing herself into the revered tiny jeans, but what had she gained instead?
For five weeks these two women had put weight at the centre of their universe, probably with little idea what the true impact of a Size Zero lifestyle entailed.
At one point or another it has been the focus of probably 90% of the front covers of women's magazines, The Latest Celebrity Diet, Hollywood's Size Zero Stars but until Super-Skinny Me I had never realised just how many areas of a person's life their eating pattern affected.
From the flourishing, healthy young woman came two wan, morose addicts. A lack of food and unhealthy exercise had robbed them of their energy, their personality and their lives, they couldn't socialise, they took their own food to restaurants and very quickly they found it increasingly hard to go back to their own lives.
For a long time I've refused to be drawn into the risky business of crash-dieting and in many ways I am incredibly grateful to my mum for instilling a great sense of fear into me combined with a positive body image.
After the show finished, I checked out some pro-anorexia websites to see their reaction. What scared me most is that they looked to shows like this for weight-loss tips. Why couldn't they, like me, see the dangerous and sickening journey these women had taken?
Several articles have criticised the extremity of this programme but to me it can only be a step in the right direction. These are the problems that are affecting young women, and some men, nowadays, nothing can or will ever be learnt if we sweep grim reality under the carpet. What was probably cheap ratings for channel 4 for me emphasised some awful trues and until media does stop flaunting unhealthy idols a more realistic image can never be achieved.