babe when I saw you turning at the end of the street i knew the time was goin and it took like agesssss

I feel like I've more or less conquered the detox. I'm going to follow the book methodically and focus on the different subjects it addresses on a weekly basis with my mother, but otherwise I've got the food aspect in order. It's simple really - just balance everything, make sure you don't buy food with additives and artificial preservatives and flavourings (read the label!), try and cook things from scratch, wholemeal not white, and to drink absolutely loads of water and you can eat as much fresh veg and fruit as you like. Luckily my dad has an allotment so we get organic beans and potatoes as well as other things. I've got my mom to cut down on the caffeine and have put her on those pro biotic yoghurt drinks to help replace good bacteria.

I'm going to keep doing yoga too, and go swimming, to encourage my mom to exercise more. She thinks that this is all like a diet to lose weight, and I think she could do with losing some. However, I just want her to be healthier and want her mentality to improve. Your mood and you mentality is greatly improved with good foods, less caffeine and sugar, and exercise, which she never does. Through what she is already starting now, she will lose weight. So she not only will be boosting serotonin levels through exercise, and good diet, and better sleep I'm assuming, but she will be feeling more positive because to her being thin seems to be really important. She isn't overweight, but acts like someone who is. Which saddens me, because there are some fatties out there who actually think they don't have a problem.

At the supermarket today I felt weird. I suddenly see everything completely differently now since I've over-exposed myself to 'Super-Size Me' and the detox book as well as other things I've read. It was an affair of mixed feelings; disgust and worry with temptation and stress all rolled into one. I noticed things I've never noticed before that I think are terrible now- simple concepts such as having sweets dotted around hanging off plastic loops in random aisles of the supermarket. The 'clever' way sweets and chocs are always at the till. The smell of sweet doughnuts wafting out in the clothes department.

I was shocked that it actually felt like 85% of everything I saw I considered food we just weren't allowed to eat anymore. And whole entire sections dedicated to food that actually make people ill. Not to mention the huge proportion of fat people dragging themselves around, letting their equally fat children run wild and free, eating sweets before they've even paid for them, pushing trolleys full of cakes and bottles of coke... I can choose to feel smug about it, but at the same time I feel really bad about it all. I can see how damaging it is now.

The book has basically made me realise that detoxes aren't hard to follow and the importance of balancing a diet for future health. You don't suddenly just eat leaves and drink water for 5 days. It's a way of cleaning your system gradually and safely and hopefully you take the tips you learn and work them into your daily diet.

I'm hoping this happens for my mom. It's hard, because it's almost like training her. But when I'm gone I want her to automatically drink water, to always have a glass of iced water on the go or a bottle if she's out and about and to be concious of her diet and the importance of the balance and exercise. I myself need to keep at  it as I am particularly weak when it comes to bad foods and being lazy, but I want to gain weight, and muscle, as ideally one day I want to be a regular at a gym and to be a keen swimmer.

Note: the pictures here are of plus size model Crystal Renn taken by Terry Richardson for French Vogue last year.


Going with more than one controversy here and French Vogue never being shy of creating controversial subjects for their editorials, Crystal Renn is a very famous American plus size model who very openly documented her struggle with anorexia and rejection in the fashion industry, even going as far as publishing a book about the whole experience.


Ironically, after being told that she will never make it big in the fashion industry, as soon as she gave up and the weight went back on, she found great success, and is not only known as the only other successful plus size model since Sophie Dahl, but for also starting the trend for using normal sized girls in fashion shows and editorials.