'The Dream Body System.' A beauty queen is spruiking tube-feeding for weight loss.

Kathryn Lean, who relies on tube-feeding for her nutrition, explores the appropriation of feeding tubes by the “medical spa” industry as a method for rapid weight loss.

Last week, a casual scroll through Instagram saw me alerted to a business called Royalty Holistic MedSpa, run by an American beauty queen, advertising a tube-fed diet as a “fast and healthy weight loss” solution.

“This little tube is part of a system called The Dream Body System,” says Rachael Lynee, Miss Texas International 2014, as she points to her nasogastric tube in a video posted to both TikTok and Instagram. “It is a tiny paediatric feeding tube that is going to feed me a perfect balance of nutrition for the next 10 days… I will be fed 24/7 for the next 10 days. It puts my body into a deep state of ketosis so I’m losing 1-2 pounds of fat per day.”

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To hear these words while attached to my own feeding tube, in an attempt to keep weight on, was gutting. I clicked on the comments and witnessed the hurt felt by others in the feeding-tube community. Responses of disbelief, outrage and disgust.

The reasons people have feeding tubes vary widely. My own need for one is due to having gastroparesis and oesophageal dysmotility, conditions which make it extremely hard for me to nourish and hydrate my body through food and drinking alone. Never have I heard of a feeding tube being used for the total opposite reason: to starve a body.

Tess Swift, a disability support worker from Ocean Grove in Victoria, is a friend and fellow tube-feeder.

“When I first saw the Instagram post by Royalty by Rachael I thought I must have been dreaming, but no, I wasn’t,” Tess tells me. “This so-called ‘complete diet’ is devoid of sugar, carbs and barely even half of the caloric requirements of an average-sized woman. Reading this made me feel physically sick. The thought that they are handing out a medical device such as a feeding tube to aid in ‘healthy weight-loss’ absolutely blows my mind.

“As those of us that rely on our feeding tubes to sustain us and keep us alive, it’s an absolute slap in the face. So many people living with feeding tubes, their parents, carers and loved ones had to go through many different diets, treatments, and advocate relentlessly, many left on death's door before the decision for a feeding tube is made.”

Tess’s words are ones I echo. Many people in the feeding tube community have had to reach a crisis in their illness before feeding tubes were used as intervention, reaching drastically low weights and being in positions where our hearts were at risk of stopping. To see that this life-saving intervention is being used to restrict a person’s nutritional and caloric intake, risking the creation of eating disorders, is baffling to me and my friends.

My further research shows me that this isn’t a new concept, with websites dating back 10 years speaking about this crash diet and the inherent harms associated with it. I fear not only for the people undergoing this method of weight loss, but the harm this could bring to our feeding-tube community also, where medical supplies are, at times, extremely limited and in short supply.

While much outrage in the feeding-tube community is focused on this singular person promoting this ketogenic enteral diet, I think we need to look at the bigger picture. The wider nutrition and dietetic community needs to step up to dispute ‘The Dream Body System’, directing critique at the actual companies profiting from its implementation, while sharing the risks for those contemplating this extreme method of weight loss.

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I also feel that it’s time for social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram to listen to the many reports being made about these posts and take them down. Both platforms claim to be proactive at removing dangerous eating disorder content, to the extent that a simple search of the term ‘feeding tube’ on TikTok gives a support alert link to The Butterfly Foundation, a non-for-profit supporting people with eating disorders and body image concerns.

In allowing the promotion of this diet by leaving these videos up, TikTok and Instagram send the message that they don’t care about starvation using feeding tubes when a company is profiting from dangerous weight loss.

My feeding tube gives me the ability to participate in society and live alongside my illness by giving me balanced and adequate nutrition, not by restricting it. Feeding tubes are not something to be appropriated by the ever-growing “medical spa” and diet industries. They should not be spruiked - and profited from - as a quick method of weight loss.

This article was originally published by Hireup. 

For help and support for eating disorders, contact the Butterfly Foundation‘s National Support line and online service on 1800 ED HOPE (1800 33 4673) or email support@thebutterflyfoundation.org.au.

Feature Image: Supplied.