"Dear Weblog: I was just at the fridge"

Internet slimming blogs create communities whose members rarely see each other

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By Tiina Rajamäki
     
      "Third slimming pages so far. The first disappeared into thin air, and I gave up on the second: not enough time or motivation. So what happened? Started gaining weight. Now it’s best to take the bull by the horns and start to fix this lifestyle. Once again..."
      This is how Taru sums up her ups and downs in losing weight on her web page.
     
In a few years numerous Finnish language web sites have appeared on the Internet, where ordinary people trying to shed weight describe their experiences.
      The pages reveal their weight-loss goals, and the methods they hope to use. Some keep a food diary. Others have set up an Excel table to follow the weekly decline in grammes - or their aggravating increase. Following mere pluses and minuses can be boring, but the life-stories that the pages reveal are quite captivating.
      "A year and a half ago I was inspired to follow the slimming pages written by a person calling herself Grace, and I decided to try and see if having web pages of my own might help", Taru says.
     
During her virtual weight-loss effort, Taru has managed to lose about 20 kilos of real weight using the WeightWatchers’ method. She calculates that she will still need more than a year to reach her goal.
      Although her scale is not directly linked to a webcam, Taru feels that honesty is the key to her web site. At times the pages overflow with humour, and at others, there is a feeling of severe self-flagellation. The pages offer a glimpse into ordinary family life, which can be read both in the text itself and between the lines.
      "It’s 3:22 PM and I’m starving. I don’t want to cook anything before I wash some dishes.. Now one of my two kids is calling me to watch television, and the new Harry Potter is waiting for someone to read it, so that’s what’s going on this evening", Taru wrote in July.
     
Internet slimmers are generally women, mostly over the age of 30, in various professions, and living around the country. Many have been inspired from the pages of author Katri Manninen, who reported on the revamping of her lifestyle a couple of years ago on the Internet.
      However, the greatest appeal is in following the travails of others in the same predicament. Virtual slimming has created a community of people who exchange experiences on an almost daily basis. Although people exchange tips along the lines of "drink water before eating, and eat linseed", the discussion is anything but a mere comparison of waist measurements.
      The writers jealously guard their anonymity. On the other hand, people involved in the circle are often often privy to details about the lives of the others that even their closest friends do not necessarily know. Nevertheless, few of those involved know the real names or places of residence of the others - to say nothing of their actually meeting.
      "People have become so familiar with each other that news not related to losing weight has become more important. I think that the whole excitement would disappear if I met the people I am in contact with, and whom I know so much about. I can tell them things that my friends of normal weight do not understand", Taru notes.
     
Grace’s pages were the original inspiration for Taru. Grace is a woman from Southern Finland who is slightly over 40 years old. She also wants to keep her Internet acquaintances - as important as they are to her - on an electronic basis.
      "It could be that if we met face-to-face, we would not have anything to say", Grace ponders.
      "This morning I had oatmeal, and in the evening I ate an apple. That fact might not sustain much interest, day in - day out."
      Grace set up her first slimming web site at the beginning of 2004. She has revealed her Internet persona to only a couple of her friends.
      "At first I lost five kilos quite easily, but last autumn the progress stopped. I got so angry that I destroyed my pages", Grace says.
      She has lost ten kilos since the beginning of the year.
     
The rise and fall of slimming pages is sometimes a rather stormy phenomenon. New pages appear on the web in late summer, when people try to get rid of the kilos they accumulated during the outdoor barbecue season, and in January, when the Christmas ham needs to be exorcised from the thighs.
      The pages are usually set up in a fit of great enthusiasm; if the kilos do not drop as hoped every week, the pages become more subdued.
      There is a group of so-called update police on the Internet, who are so interested in the slimming efforts of others that they become rapidly impatient if the pages are not updated.
      "The only downside are the few angry e-mails, in which people might ask in a very stern tone why I have not updated my pages in several days", Taru says.
      "I am a mother with a family, and I cannot shut myself downstairs for hours just to update my pages."
     
Grace has noticed that the hit-counter moves forward more frequently, and the guest book gets more entries, when her slimming is going well. She makes a habit of warning readers about upcoming pauses in updates.
      "A web site is an additional incentive, when changing lifestyles is so difficult. And it also has the good side that women have started playing with computers", Grace says.
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat - first published in print 8.8.2005

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TIINA RAJAMÄKI / Helsingin Sanomat
tiina.rajamaki@hs.fi