Glutton - Part 27

Can we talk about regaining for a bit?  I haven't lost enough weight yet to regain any.  It's just something I need to address.

I can't watch "The Biggest Loser" anymore.  I used to love that show.  It shamed and inspired me.  An odd combination to be sure but I loved it.  After a few seasons though, I started to feel as if it perpetuated every myth people believe about the obese.  Because the show basically proved that if you just got your fat butt off the couch and exercised for three hours a day and ate Jennie O lean turkey meat, you too could lose 127 pounds in just 12 weeks.  Right?  And clearly those fatties really needed a trainer to yell at them until they cried.  You gotta break 'em to build 'em.  Amirite?  And even though they talked incessantly about good nutrition, that never stopped them from having a challenge to see how many doughnuts the contestants would eat for a certain reward.  And then (my favorite part)  the trainers get to berate whichever poor soul actually did eat the doughnuts.  "How could you?"  they would shriek.  Just once, I wanted one of the contestants to shake that doughnut in someone's face and shout "How could YOU!?!?" 

As the seasons began to pass, something happened.  One by one, past contestants started to regain the weight.  Now this, in itself, is no big surprise.  A huge percentage of people who lose lots of weight do regain it.  You can't actually blame that on the tv show.

Then the 2006 winner, Erik Chopin, went public with his own weight gain.  The winner.  The guy who saw all the medical evidence about how his weight was killing him.  The guy who bounded up to the big scale in his official Biggest Loser tank top and compression shorts while confetti rained down on him and his wife cried happy tears in the audience.  That guy gained it all back.  He owned a deli in the town where he lived.  How often,as he was regaining, do you think people came in and just stared? Whispered behind his back?  Made concerned phone calls to his wife or mom?  Flat out asked him in front of God and everybody?  How much shame do you think Erik endured every day?  And then, when the show called to do a 'Where are they now?" feature, he did something crazy.  He answered the dang phone!  That's the bravest thing I have ever heard.  If that had been me, I would have moved to another country and changed my name to Wutang Margarita Smith. 

You know why Erik ansered the phone?  Beacuse he was desperate.  And desperation almost always trumps shame. 

I don't blame the tv show for Erik's weight problems.  (Ok, I blame them a little bit.)  Mostly I blame a weight loss mindset that never addresses addiction.  And by that I do not mean "Well you are addicted to food so I guess you will be obese permanently and die young."  What I long for is that someone would get real and say "You are always going to struggle with food.  Every day of your life is going to be a balance between freedom and dependence.  And twelve weeks on a ranch is just the tip of this gluttony iceberg."

In case you think I am unfairly singling out this one show, next week we will talk about Ruby.