In the episode Mrs. Garrett had a function to go to. When she went shopping for a dress she was dismayed to find out that she no longer fit into a size 12, and she had to buy her dress in a size 14. She vowed to go on a strict diet and lose enough weight to be able to return the dress for the size 12 before the date of her function.
While they tried to make the episode comical - showing her passing up delicious foods and opting to eat one single green pepper for lunch - they also managed to focus on how starvation and crash dieting is harmful for you. They did this by involving one of the girls at the school who wanted to lose weight for a blind date. This girl's starvation dieting led to her fainting from hunger.
In the end, Mrs. Garrett strides in wearing her pretty new dress. "Oh" the girl exclaims, "you lost the weight and got the size 12 dress"! "No" Mrs. Garrett replies, "I decided to keep the size 14 dress and take on a more sensible approach to dieting".
The lesson the show came across with was that starvation dieting and crash diets are harmful. We all know that starvation diets and crash diets are not good for us. But how many times have we succumbed to these drastic measures with the need to lose weight quickly? I'm sure that almost every person who reads this article can say that they have tried a crash diet at least once.
Sure, crash dieting offers us a quick way to lose weight, but usually, the effects of crash dieting last far longer than we manage to keep the weight off.
Although the lesson learned in this show is a valuable one, I think a more modern day message would portray Mrs. Garrett deciding she was happy with the way she looked in the size 14 dress. After all it's supposed to be who you are that counts, not what you look like, right?
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