A WOMAN weighing 125 kilograms reportedly died at a weight loss camp in Shaanxi Province, Northwest China recently. She was only 22. The incident has sparked public concern, with people calling on the authorities to monitor camps that put people’s health at risk.

The woman from Xinyang, Henan Province and known as Cuihua, started her weight loss journey at 156 kilograms, creating a social media account to document her progress. Her account on Douyin, a popular short video sharing site, was tagged with “Cuihua wants to change her fate,” with indications that her weight loss aim would be “to lose 100 kilograms.” Before the tragic incident, she had attracted 12,000 followers.

She announced her ambition in September last year and had since regularly updated her progress. Cuihua had claimed to have lost 21 kg in two months, and 31 kg after eight months.

She had previously posted a video where she said that she had done high-intensity training, and ate very little in the weight loss camp. Her diet consisted mostly of coarse grains, cabbages, eggs, and fruit, according to Sixth Tone.

A still from the video shows her working out with a trainer, a pained expression on her face.

In addition to training during the day, Cuihua would apparently hold a live broadcast at night for her fans, and work out even more in front of them.

Chinese media said her ordeal started with a weight loss camp in Dongguan, Guangdong Province and ended in death in Huayin.

Initially, Cuihua paid the camps to assist with her weight loss, but they started paying her to have videos made and posted, as a form of advertisement for the camps, the Global Times quoted an insider as saying.

In recent years, obesity has become a topic of concern in China.

According to data from the Report on the Status of Nutrition and Chronic Diseases in China in 2020, approximately half (50.7%) of adults in the country were overweight (34.3%) or obese (16.4%).

In response to this trend, weight loss camps like the one that Cuihua attended became more common. Some of these camps charge participants up to 20,000 yuan (US$2,793) a month. Campers face a restricted diet and have to partake in four hours of enforced exercise a day.

Jiemian News reported that one participant said they were starved, with daily meals being whittled down to one egg a day. The participant was also forced to exercise three times a day, for four to five hours, and reported feeling chest pains.

Some participants were injured as a result of the training, and a few were diagnosed with rhabdomyolysis, which can damage the heart and kidneys, and cause permanent disability or even death.

The obsession with weight loss isn’t just limited to the overweight.

While the Chinese beauty standard has always favored the pale and thin, the obsession with thinness has intensified in recent years.

A height and weight chart titled “BM Girls’ Ideal Weight Chart” went viral on Xiaohongshu, a Chinese social platform, for stipulating the exact height and weight proportions to be able to fit into clothing by Italian fashion brand Brandy Melville.

Brandy Melville is notorious for its one-size policy, and has been criticized for catering only to the very thin.

The latest tragedy happened just days after reports of a 15-year-old girl in Dongguan dying after trimming her weight down to 24.8 kilograms. The girl, measuring 165 centimeters tall, had not consumed any food for nearly 50 days and survived solely on water. She was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa.

(SD News)