The Cinderella Diet runs like wildfire on social media. Where does it come from and what are your followers looking for? The goal of this diet, which has gone viral in the last three months, is to reach the waist of the aforementioned Disney princess.
“This challenge began among adolescents in Japan via Twitter and has spread on Instagram , where the girls upload photos that show how they are losing weight,” explains Diego Bellido, vice president of the Spanish Society for the Study of Obesity (Seedo) , at that he knows that the Cinderella Diet already has many followers in Spain.
What is the ‘Cinderella Diet’ and what are its health risks?
“ It is not based on a balanced or healthy diet , which provides enough energy to be able to face the day to day. It does not educate from a nutritional point of view. It is based on achieving an objective, which is to look like a fictional character in terms of body proportions, ”says Mar Mira, a graduate in Nutrition and Dietetics and medical co-director of the Mira + Cueto Clinic in Madrid.
To do this, the Cinderella Diet states that “you have to achieve a body mass index (BMI) of 18 , which is insufficient and not healthy at all (the recommended is 18.5 to 24.9), and, as such, can have very harmful consequences for health: anemia ; fatigue; dizziness blurry vision; weakness; headaches ; mood, sleep and menstrual disturbances; osteoporosis ; digestive discomfort, frustrations and lower intellectual performance “.
Bellido specifies that it is not a diet as such, since it does not give nutritional guidelines. “Their only message is that you have to eat less of everything because the goal is to lose weight .” In addition to the aforementioned damages, this expert adds others: confusion, absent-mindedness, apathy, paleness and hair loss and, in the long term, distortion of body image ”.
“I am afraid that the Cinderella Diet is an incentive to encourage, once again, the cult of thinness. The great danger is that the risk of eating disorders , especially restrictive ones, such as anorexia, increases . This disease often has its origin in a diet ”.
What’s more, Mira warns, 5 percent of anorexia cases can end in death, according to the Clinical Practice Guideline on Eating Disorders , from the Ministry of Health, Social Services and Equality.
Although the vice president of the Seedo does not see similarities with other diets, the co-director of Mira + Cueto considers that the Cinderella Diet can resemble anyone who is aiming for an isolated figure, is excessively restrictive and damages the organism. This is the case of the Dukan , the Atkins and the Liquid Diet.
Profile of the followers
According to Mira, it is worrisome to think that being a fairy tale character, a princess, can capture more attention from young women under 18 who are still in developing age.
“This profile is usually ‘captured’ on social networks for wanting to be up to date. They allow themselves to be influenced by the level of demand in society, associating thinness with beauty, success, more social acceptance … They follow a series of prototypes as models ; beauty profiles that send the fashions, canons that in many occasions are not healthy and that are available to everyone by advertising or the internet”Says the nutritionist. But in reality, “these prototypes are difficult to reach and maintain, with the consequent damage to physical and mental health, generating frustrations when interpreting it as a failure, either because they cannot achieve it or because, once achieved, they cannot keep it. Other times they do not get the acceptance they were looking for and the real underlying problem is another. ”
How to become aware of its risks?
In order to raise awareness of the risks of diets like this, Mira indicates that “it is necessary to clearly report what health, beauty and success is, working on food behavior, social relations and the essence of people, and giving resources to have security and know how to tolerate failures . You have to know and promote a healthy lifestyle and know the risks that are run when you carry out this type of diet. ”
Thus, the expert believes that “we should not pursue an objective that focuses on an isolated figure. We cannot all weigh the same , but the weight will depend on many factors, and not because we are thinner or because we look like a fairy tale princess, we are going to be better and more successful. ”
In Bellido’s opinion, the main thing is to emphasize that following the Cinderella Diet can cause nutritional deficits , metabolic and neuroendocrine imbalances and lead to restriction-based eating disorders. A balanced and healthy diet leads to a good state of health and well-being, and everything that is voluntary food restrictions will always lead to associated diseases. He concludes by saying that the stereotype of extreme thinness must be erased from the map .
