I saw the most bizarre things while flicking through some magazines in our local convenience store.

There was a section on dieting. They had two women who had tried this specific diet for 2 months.Drinking milkshakes instead of eating real meals.

The womens STARTING weights were both around 44kg! (obviously they thought they were in need of a diet???)

The womens finishing weight after the two months diet were 35kg and 37kg! wow. I was so shocked I read it twice! They were tiny and looked about 12 years old after their diets.

These women were in their 20’s, beautiful and slim and had no reason to need to be any skinnier.

It really shows me the place and importance of image in Japanese society. It means a lot to look good, wear the right clothes and be the right size… this magazine was just one example, but often on TV there are diet shows with women losing weight who are already at a healthy BMI, and then they reach a non-healthy, underweight BMI and advertise this as ‘the way to go’ for all their viewers and readers.

Also recently Japan is having a banana drought… all because in September someone invented the ‘Morning Banana diet’ and on national TV claimed that be eating a banana only for breakfast and whatever else you want during the day you can lose a ton of weight.

Now there are no banana’s anywhere to buy (

I miss them! I wonder how long this fad will last?

Bring back the banana’s!