Helpless Friend: Hi~ Okay, I'll try to make it simple. My friend and I have known each other for almost twelve years now. I'm quite skinny, but I don't like it. I wish to be more meaty. Moving on, my friend always calls herself 'fat'. I can tell that she is overweight, and I try to comfort her, but it never works. She just always calls herself big and ugly. In grade seven, she never ate breakfast or lunch. Sometimes, she didn't eat dinner either. I think she was starving herself to be more thin. She's really stubborn. What should I tell her next time she calls herself obese?

Friend: Dear Helpless Friend,

I’ll start off this letter by saying your friend is lucky to have a friend like you, and seeing as your friendship lasted so long - I applaud the two of you. It’s great to know that you guys are good friends, which should make this situation a lot easier than you think.

If you’re trying to gain weight make sure you do so in a healthy manner. Don’t go to fast food places 24/7 and stuff yourself with an extra-large cheeseburger every day! Just like I told Anonymous in the first chapter, I recommend you go see your family doctor and a nutritionist. Your doctor can tell you whether you’re skinny like this because of genetics, metabolism, anorexia, etc. and your nutritionist can work out a healthy diet plan for you to make sure you’re getting enough calorie intake, nutrition, wheat, etc. Exercise can also help you build muscle and add a little more meat to your bones, so keep that in mind as well.

Now as for your friend, she is showing me two possibilities as to why she continues to downgrade herself.

The first one being attention. If she always continues to say bad things about herself and you encourage her by always throwing compliments like, “No you’re not! You’re beautiful stop.” It just adds fuel to the fire. She’ll continue to say bad things about herself, knowing that you’ll always compliment her as a result. If you only continue to deny her statements and compliment her in return, she’s basically just feeding herself off of your compliments. It’s not your fault entirely but next time she downgrades herself, ask her why she’s saying such things. If she gives you the typical answer, “because it’s true,” or something, then try and explain to her that she can lose weight if she wants to. If she wants it to be untrue, then she needs to change it herself. No one’s forcing her to be the weight that she is. Everyone is entitled to their own body.

The second possibility I see is that she simply has low self-esteem. Weight is a very sensitive topic for most girls whether they are under weight or over weight. Your friend seems to not know how to compliment herself and only knows how to put herself down by stating the only thing she’s sure about; her excess weight. If she continues to whine or cry about her weight, you can ask her if she wants to lose the weight. If she says yes then you should show her that it’s possible and help guide her through it.

As for your friend’s eating habit, tell her she should stop it immediately. By starving yourself it won’t help you lose weight no matter what she thinks, it’ll only ruin your body. She doesn’t see the reality behind starving herself and is so focused on being skinny, that she doesn’t even know the consequences there are for starvation. Explain to her that when she starves herself, her metabolism will have no food to break down. Because of this her stomach acid will get used to the lack of work it needs to do by not breaking down food on a daily basis and will eventually just give up or slow down. It’ll stop working and when she does go back to eating; her metabolism will be nearly dead and won’t bother to process the food. She may drop a pound or two by starving herself, but she’ll only gain more of it back when she starts eating again. There’s also the danger to your stomach shrinking. Before she goes yay, I don’t mean by her stomach shrinking on the outside but on the inside. Your stomach is stretchable and expands when you put food inside of it; it’s just the way it works. But if she goes days of starving herself, her stomach will shrink and if she just so happens to lose control one day and stuff herself with food too much, she’ll be sent straight to the E.R. (Emergency Room)

The best thing to do is pace yourself through diet and exercise. I know that exercising is hard and your friend probably just wants to take the easy way out and simply diet, but it won’t work. It’s going to be tough to try and motivate her to stick through with her exercise, but tell her that if she really tries, she’ll see that number on the scale drop in no time(:

Next time you both hang out, why not go take a stroll around the park or go for a light jog? It’s little exercise but it’s better than nothing and when you have a friend there to help motivate you, it only makes the battle easier for her. If she’s really determined to go through with this transformation, why don’t the two of you join a gym? Before you start laughing and imagining all those crazy movie scenes where the gym is just a sweaty place for body builders, actually go to a gym first and see for yourself what it actually is like. Heck, you and your friend could even hire yourself a personal trainer if you really want some help.

All of this will be new to her and it’ll really help her if her best friend was alongside her with every step of the way(: After all, wouldn’t you want your friend to do the same for you?

I hope everything goes well with the two of you(:

~(Chingu) 친구