As I woke up one day last week and readied for work, Good Morning America was on the television as usual so I can check the latest news and weather before heading out the door. But it wasn’t the news or weather that caught my attention. 

News anchor Diane Sawyer was interviewing Cheryl Burke, 24, two-time Dancing with the Stars champion, about recent allegations of gaining weight since the previous season of the show. 

A split screen played clips of Burke dancing this year compared to last year, and while her curves do appear a bit more defined, I was appalled fans were even bothering to criticize her. The costume she was dancing in was flashy, cut low to expose the majority of her back and frankly if I had her back I would be wearing something like that all the time.

Burke said she has gained a mere five pounds and is still wearing the same size – a size four – as she did last season, and despite all the tabloids, she has no plans to lose weight to satisfy the critics. 

“You don’t have to be anorexic to be beautiful,” she said, but with media drawing attention to the majority of models and movie stars looking thin and trim, a lot of Americans have adopted that ideal.

According the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Eating Disorders, eight million Americans have an eating disorder, and 90 percent are female. How can you blame them when a woman who is a size four to begin with is being photographed and sprawled over magazines for gaining five pounds?

While a “skinny” ideal is being stuffed down the throats of Americans on a daily basis, we need to step back and look at the bigger picture. Stepping on a scale has never been a favorite pastime of mine – I’m sure most people dread task as much as I do – but it should be more about how overall health rather than “does my butt look big in these jeans?”

According to the Center of Disease Control, 24.8 percent of Mainers are overweight or obese, and health consequences that occur because of added pounds include high blood pressure, osteoarthritis, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke and respitory problems. Being one of those Mainers in that percentile, it concerns me that one day because of my weight I’ll have more medical issues to deal with. 

Due to medical circumstances, I have been an overweight person since I was 5 years old and for the majority of the past 17 years, I’ve been on some form of “diet.” 

I spent hundreds of dollars on a personal nutritionist, two attempts on the Weight-Watchers wagon, riding the wave of high-protein diets, tested various supplements and went through fits of gym-mania throughout all of it. 

Finally, I began working with a family friend who has been a long-standing distributor of a plan that includes two nutritional shakes a day and one well-balanced, healthy meal. I started just after my 20^th birthday, six months later had successfully shed 40 pounds, hit a plateau in weight loss and shortly after gave up my efforts for the lifestyle of a 21-year-old college student (drinking and eating whatever I pleased).

Since then, I’ve not really given much thought to “dieting” or exercise, and it’s been fun not to care. I reached the point where I told myself, “This is who I am, and this is how I look,” but really I’m scared to think about the future impacts on my health and lifestyle.

So even though it annoys me that Dancing with the Star’s fans are criticizing Burke, that the media plays up ways to lose weight and everyone you turn to has some dieting trick to share, I’ve joined a gym and am following the program I was most successful with in the past. I’ve made a pact with myself to lose the excess for my health – not for my pant size. 

— Emma Bouthillette