Out with the Virgin Mary, the menorah, the kinara, the what-have-you, and in with the personal trainer. Placing the flesh firmly before the spirit, BBC America has announced that this December will be “Body Image Month,” at least on BBC America. (All other channels will devote themselves to the soul, as usual.) Five one-hour documentaries about various forms of bodily dissatisfaction, some readily understandable, others seemingly self-indulgent and obsessive, will be doled out in weekly installments.

It isn’t such a bad idea. Despite the traffic jam of religious celebrations and pious resolutions that accumulate at year’s end, each December seems to become ever more entangled in the needs of the economy (Shop! Shop! Shop!) and our own need to remain competitive within it. Between swarming the malls, stuffing our faces, and discarding vices that prevent us from fitting into bathing suits, there doesn’t seem to be much time to ponder spiritual matters.

Enter the BBC. In “Super Skinny Me,” making its premiere Sunday, two female journalists mimic the diets of such human stick-insects as Victoria Beckham by trying to reduce their average size 12 figures to a skin-and-bones size 00 in a mere five weeks. It’s a stunt — “Super Size Me” in reverse — but not without some revealing moments along the way. If one thing can be said to obsess today’s Western imagination, it’s miraculous bodily transformation, whether via the operating table, the weight room, or a draconian diet regimen. This documentary gives us a sense of what’s involved in such physically ambitious undertakings.

Not that dieting has to be as complicated as it’s presented here, what with all the protein shakes, colonics, and bowls of watercress soup (supposedly Elizabeth Hurley’s preferred weight-loss method). You can always take the supermodel approach, subsisting on little more than “Diet Pepsi and fags.” Which is fine if you can do it without fainting. Perhaps adulation and cameras and catwalks are enough to keep you upright, at least until you get back to the dressing room.

The journalists featured in “Super Skinny Me” are Kate Spicer, 37, and Louise Burke, 28, and their task is to cut their caloric intake from a normal 2,500 per day to a perilously spartan 500 (or fewer), while also exercising far more than they’re accustomed to. Kate, who describes herself as a “method journalist,” is an appealingly sepulchral figure with sunless English skin and pronounced dark circles. Louise, who works for a celebrity magazine, is pretty and cheerful and, unlike Kate, is content with her body as is.

What’s genuinely interesting about the program is how Kate, once she’s a week into extreme food deprivation coupled with punishing rounds of exercise, begins — albeit somewhat cautiously — to enjoy the apparent purity or Puritanism of her near-nutritionless state. “I’m in a world where food does not happen,” she says. “And I’ve got used to it. And actually, it saves you a lot of hassle, not thinking about food. It is quite strangely energizing in some ways.”

Even more striking is how, as her determination to shed the pounds becomes all-consuming, she begins to resemble a fanatic in the generic sense. With the circles under her eyes growing blacker by the minute and her face even more ashen than it was to begin with, she looks as if she could just as easily attack an embassy as pay another visit to the gym. She — or at least the version of her that emerges from the editing room — has become the kind of person whom the poet Wallace Stevens disparagingly referred to as “the lunatic of one idea / In a world of ideas.” And yet we warm to her determination to succeed, perhaps because there is almost always something admirable about single-mindedness.

Eventually, however, both she and Louise conclude that extreme dieting is a form of madness. As a chastened Kate sums up, “The basic thing it proved is that not eating makes you go mental.” Which may explain something about contemporary Hollywood.

The other four documentaries, also showing on Sunday nights, are “476-Lb. Teenager,” “My Small Breasts and I,” “My Big Breasts and Me,” and “Teen Transsexual.” Breast lovers and language mavens will be particularly drawn not just to the subject matter of the third and fourth documentaries, but to the curious change of pronouns in their titles. If I’m not mistaken, the first lesson to be drawn is that the English are becoming as arbitrary about grammar as Americans. The second is that while small-breasted women often envy their more buxom peers, their problem is primarily a question of aesthetics and self-esteem, whereas having oversized breasts can be a genuine liability, resulting in pain (backaches, spinal distortion), endless quests to find a bra that fits, constant ogling and jokes from men, and real trouble in being taken seriously in the workplace.

Furthermore, while breast enlargement has become a routine medical procedure, surgery undertaken for reduction purposes can be complicated and dangerous. Of course, it depends on the surgeon, and some inspire more confidence than others. Demonstrating how he would reduce the size of a patient’s breasts, one plastic surgeon scribbles a diagram and proclaims, “The first incision in my operation is to isolate the nipple and the brown bit around the nipple …” That would be the areola, doc.

The female narrator of “My Big Breasts and Me” isn’t much better, taking every opportunity to indulge in groan-inducing tabloid-style double entendres. “Will they be able to minimize their assets or are the odds stacked against them?” she asks at one point as the busty women ponder their options. At another point she says, “Just preparing for a night out with the girls requires forward planning.” Got it.

I confess I couldn’t face the 476-lb. teenager, but despite some cheap gimmicks and a couple of exhibitionists (who have their own monomaniacal fascination, particularly the flat-chested woman whose faith in the dubious science of the breast pump borders on the surreal), there’s plenty of interesting material here, from exactly how a bra should fit (most women wear the wrong size their entire lives) to learning how to live with, and accept, the body you’ve been given — a viewpoint toward which the series generally and respectably tries to nudge us.

bbernhard@nysun.com