What's Eating You?- First Episode Thoughts

What's Eating You is a new six part series on E! that chronicles different people with different types of eating disorders:  Everything from anorexia and bulimia to the more bizarre like eating chalk.  Chalk?  Hmm.

Here is the commercial for the show.



The first episode followed two girls, 21-year-old Adrienne and 20-year-old Danni, as they tried to cope with their eating disorders.  Adrienne is anorexic and Danni binges and purges.  Their stories couldn't be anymore different, though. 

Adrienne's mom had been anorexic as well.  Adrienne is a dancer in an Elvis review, eats oatmeal, looks like Paris Hilton, and doesn't think she is skinny.  Danni was the All American cheerleader who started binging and purging when she didn't make captain of the cheer squad.  Her parent's took out a loan to send her to treatment and when she returned she went back to her old ways.

Both girls are going to out patient therapy, and Adrienne is also seeing a registered dietician.  I feel bad to see their struggles with their sense of self and where they fit in in the world.  I am not sure that this show is a beneficial show for the true exploration of an eating disorder.  I mean, it IS on the E channel, home of the Kardashians and Kendra and the Girls Next Door. 

The show didn't show the girls getting better.  Adrienne lost two jobs (her Elvis gig and a job as a dance teacher TO YOUNG GIRLS!!!!!) over the course of the show and although she realized she actually did have anorexia, the show didn't show her progress.  They did state at the end of the show she had gained six pounds, though.  Danni pouted and cried through her therapy sessions and then fired her therapist.  According to her mom she has done this many times.  Danni had mentioned she felt like her family didn't pay enough attention to her-- so the eating disorder created the attention that she craved.  Maybe she wasn't ready to give it up yet.  I am not a doctor or a psychologist, so this is just my opinion.

As a fit blogger, I felt a need to cover this show.  I have had my own trials and tribulations with my own body issues, and I am always wanting to learn more about what makes people with these illnesses tick.  I don't know if E really handles these issues with the care they deserve or if they are making it into salacious television watching.  If eating chalk and being anorexic are in the same category, I don't know what the goal of the show is.  To show that these people are freaks?  Or people that need help?