“Anorexic skinny with food – Montignac Method Part 1” Video // TW: Eating Disorders
On the 17th of April 2013, Adora released on her YouTube channel a video titled “Anorexic skinny with food – Montignac Method Part 1”. She began the video by addressing the fact that images of herself had been used on thinspiration and pro-ana websites and by using this opportunity to confirm that she is not anorexic, nor does she encourage anorexia. She then reveals to her audience how it is that she is as thin as she is without being anorexic: the Montignac diet, a diet that restricts what can be eaten but does not limit calorie intake. It is not unusual for a celebrity to take a shot at promoting their favorite fad diet, but this video quickly became polarizing in the comments section.
Many who backed her video, from parents to viewers who had struggled with eating disorders themselves, complimented her for reinforcing that she does not support anorexia and providing a healthier alternative to teens who wished to be thinner.
Others, however, found her rhetoric itself to be harmful and insensitive to those who have struggled with eating disorders. Perhaps what turned the most viewers against the video was Adora expressing her wish to look “anorexic skinny”. This sentiment and its phrasing raised concern that Adora was romanticizing a real mental disorder on her platform aimed at young and often impressionable baby bats, some of whom have struggled with eating disorders themselves and others that may be influenced to. Another commentor raised the point that “looking anorexic” doesn’t mean anything, writing, “you can be fat and still have anorexia”.
A couple of minutes into the video, Adora demonstrates how thin her diet has allowed her to become by wrapping her middle finger and thumb around her entire bicep and being able to touch their tips together. Such imagery without a trigger warning can be harmful to those who already struggle with body image and eating disorders by setting an unrealistic and unhealthy standard of what is “thin enough”, especially when Adora claims that she is not as thin as she hopes to be “… yet”.
This being said, the primary message of the video (one can lose weight without starving themself) is valuable, especially coming from an influencer idolized by a young, impressionable fanbase. Although a number of her fans found the video to be disturbing or triggering, this does not seem to be due to Adora aiming for controversy as would later become her norm. Rather, it seems that a distinct lack of trigger warnings combined with poor rhetoric are what turned this video intended to promote a diet and disaffiliate from pro-ana sites into the controversial piece that it became.
As for the Montignac diet itself – what is it, and does it work? The basic premise is, as Adora stated, that the dieter does not need to limit how much they eat, only what they eat. What can and cannot be eaten is based off of a food’s glycemic index (GI), which is a number on a scale from 0 to 100 that ranks how drastically it will raise blood glucose levels after being consumed. Foods that are considered “good” in the Montignac diet are those with low GI’s and preferably high protein content, while those with high GI’s are typically considered “bad” (with some exceptions) and are to be limited in one’s diet. High GI foods are especially not to be combined with fats on this diet.
The Montignac diet has two phases: phase I, which focuses on losing weight, and phase II, which focuses on stabilizing weight. Phase I is stricter in what can and cannot be consumed, only allowing foods with low GI’s, but in phase II the dieter can eat whatever they would like regardless of GI by considering the glycemic outcome of the meal.
Although there is no shortage of anecdotal evidence of the Montignac diet’s merit, nutritionists remain skeptical for a number of reasons. First and foremost, many experts believe that any excess calorie intake not metabolized by the body, regardless of GI, will be converted into adipose tissue. Proponents of this theory argue that only hypocaloric diets will allow for weight loss. To hold consistency with the anecdotal success of the Montignac diet, these experts suggest that its restrictive nature influences some dieters to consume fewer calories than they burn, thus making obsolete the idea of losing weight without limiting calorie intake that many choose the diet for in the first place.
Other skeptics of the Montignac diet theorize that short-term weight loss results may be attributed to dehydration, or that the GI values of foods are too arbitrary and inconsistent for dieters to be able to reliably lose weight. As it seems, experts are divided on the efficacy of the weight loss method. More research is currently needed on whether or not it has real merit, as well as on its potential side effects.
If you wish to lose weight, do not make dieting decisions based on the words of a YouTuber with no medical experience. Instead, please seek advice from a trained medical professional to find out which diets would work for you and how to implement them safely.
