I haven't written in a long time because I've been dealing with my own family tragedy right now, the woman who made me everything good I am today is slipping out of this world. My grandma had a stroke Monday night, and she no longer has any brain activity, so the doctors tell us that she is leaving us. I've haven't had the energy to write anything up lifting because I don't feel very uplifted right now. I am facing the most difficult time since my recovery began five years ago, and I'm doing it without behaviors. I have learned that I am stronger than I could have ever thought even in the moments that I feel weak, that those old voices are screaming in my head, and I want to disappear. I've learned to combat the lies, to fight the disease that still lurks in the corners of my mind, and I think that is something to be proud of.
     Even with all that said, I didn't think that I had anything to really say to anyone until I saw the newest winner of that ridiculous show, "The Biggest Loser"...I suddenly felt like I had a lot to say. If you are a fan of the show, you probably aren't going to like my opinion or this blog, so I'm giving you the heads up now and saving you the time it would take for you to read it.
     I was scrolling through Facebook the other day and a picture of the newest winner of "The Biggest Loser" popped up. She was standing there smiling after losing a hundred and fifty five pounds and winning two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, but what struck me most was how sick this woman looked. She had started this contest overweight and hoping to gain some more health, and at some point she found that health and continued to become unhealthy in the other direction. Looking at her it was obvious that she was unwell, even seeing the other contestants and coaches congratulating her they couldn't hide the concern on their faces. My question is simple, why didn't anyone step in when she started heading in the wrong direction. The staff for the show has even made comments admitted that she is underweight at this point, yet she is being rewarded for becoming too thin and malnourished. What kind of message are we sending to the viewers and other contestants who made a lot of progress in their weight loss and remained healthy.
     When this show started I wasn't the biggest fan, but I did think they were doing something good for people who really did need the help to lose weight and get healthy. So many of the contestants were dangerously obese and facing the very serious medical problems that come from being obese such as diabetes, heart attacks, breathing problems, and a number of other life threatening issues. So often people suffering from obesity can't find the encouragement they need to get themselves eating healthier and working out, and they really need someone pushing them when things get tough and they want to give up. I'm sure that it is a very difficult struggle and they deserve to live a life that doesn't have to revolve around their weight or allowing their weight to limit them from certain experiences. I admired that this show was trying to help people who might not have gotten the help, and also that they encouraged weight loss through diet and exercise rather than quick fixes and surgeries. It was emotional to watch these people fight to get their lives back, to work so hard to make sure that they could get healthy and watch their kids grow up, or even set a good example for their loved ones. I've read stories where the contestant took what they learned in the show and took it home to their families, they helped their kids make healthier food choices and get up off the couch, and just make the whole family healthier and seemingly closer. I respected that part of the show.
     Now that I've given the positive things I believe the show has accomplished there are still a lot of things that I just find incredibly inappropriate. I know that some of the contestants were a little lazy when it came time to push through all the work outs, but some of the "coaching" was essentially just screaming at them, and when you are already struggling with emotional problems getting yelled at and criticized really doesn't help to build up the confidence that I think was the goal. I've also read that the contestants were told to eat no more than 1200 calories on camera and once off they were told by the coaches to not consume more than nine hundred, which causes the body to go into starvation mode. Starvation mode is a bad thing no matter what weight you are, and add on the amount of exercise these people were doing that puts a lot of danger on already strained organs. Everything was focused on the weigh in and how much weight they lost, there were punishments for the teams who didn't lose enough weight, which caused rivalries between team members. I just don't think that a person's health and life should be turned into a game full of drama, there was so much gossip and overall nastiness between these people even on the same team when the focus should have been on getting healthy. It was like the overall goal of helping people get healthy went away at some point, and as viewers, we didn't tune in to see how they were progressing, we tuned in to pick our favorites, and gossip about the other contestants. I really feel little need to bring up the fact that these people weren't really losing weight to get healthy, they wanted to win the money, which makes you wonder what motivation will they have to keep the weight off?
     Back to the current winner. Since I don't watch the show I had to do some reading and watching old videos to figure out her story, and where she came from. She started out like the rest of the contestants and needed to lose some weight to get healthy, and she worked her butt off. Every show you could see that she was putting her all into losing weight, but at some point things shifted. When she walked out on the show's finale the look on most people's faces was completely shock. After losing 155 lbs she was officially underweight, which is the first time in the history of the show that someone has become clinically underweight. Even knowing she was unhealthy and out of a safe weight range she was still crowned the winner of the show. Not only am I shocked that none of the doctors who were supposedly looking out for the people on the show never stepped in, but I am shocked about the message that is being sent out to viewers, esp the younger viewers.
     In the beginning she was an overweight 24 year old young woman who really needed help to get her life back under control and get healthy. She worked hard and made huge progress, and was looking great, then there was the finale. When that girl walked out I would never have even guess she was only twenty four years old, I would have added at least ten years to that age by looking at her face. She lost 60% of her body weight in four months, over a hundred pounds in four months...NOT HEALTHY! It made me sick as they cheered and congratulated this girl when she won, pretending not to even see how sick she was. That is telling all the younger people watching that it is better to be sickly thin than overweight, that being "fat" is the absolute worst thing you can be on the planet. I read comments posted on videos and articles about this girl and people said things like, "at least she isn't disgusting anymore", "I hope people saying she is too thing doesn't cause her to get fat again", and the list goes on. Everything we are teaching on this show is only going to feed into the problems we are already facing with the rise of eating disorders and bullying.
     By spending so much time talking and focusing on obesity, making weight loss competitions on television, reality shows about teens going to boarding schools for fat kids to lose weight, and much more we are translating to kids that there is absolutely something wrong and disgusting about an overweight person, they are less than everyone else. Is it really a shock that they are terrorized at school by other kids? When you give them impression that a person's self worth lies in what size jeans they wear you are making them a target for bullying. Have you seen overweight kids walking with their heads down, not having any friends to hang out with, and hating themselves? That self hatred just feeds the problem...isolates them and they turn to eating. Yes, they do need to get healthy, but they need to understand that their weight does not reflect who they are as human beings. By perpetuating this belief that being "fat" is the most awful thing in the world that causes other kids to go hard core in the opposite direction, causes them to be terrified of gaining weight, and the next thing you know you have a kid in the hospital with an eating disorder. IT HAS TO STOP!
     I agree that it is important to get healthy, we have to teach the right ways to take care of ourselves. Moderation and physical activity is the best way to control all of this. We can't teach that there are good foods and bad foods because that is the same black and white thinking you will find when dealing with anorexia or other eating disorders. I will never forget when my step son came home and told me he couldn't have a cookie because it was "bad" and he would get "fat". I was twenty four years old when he told me that and just beginning to be stable in my recovery and it set me off. I spent the next hour explaining to him that he can absolutely have a cookie or even two, he just couldn't eat a box of cookies. Then I had to explain that it is okay to have unhealthy food every once in awhile as long as it isn't all the time, there is nothing wrong with ordering a pizza every once in awhile. We talked about how to stay healthy we had to go outside and play and not sit and just watch movies and play video games. Why can't we talk to kids like that, they aren't stupid, and they are capable of understanding what moderation is?
    I'm so tired of everything revolving around weight, tired of seeing at all over television, tired of diet adds, and so tired of hearing the first thing people say when they describe someone is "they are fat". I refuse to be a number anymore, I refuse to let a pair of jeans define me, and I refuse to support TV that allows someone to become sick for ratings. Someone saw how unhealthy that young woman was becoming, and said nothing. The funny thing is that if she were thin and started to gain weight someone would have spoken up before she put on twenty pounds, yet when you see a twenty four year old girl wasting away in front of you there is nothing to say, you reward them with a huge sum of money. I can't believe this.