The Biggest Loser - Opinions?

[jobob]

Looking great, scaldedcat!

[crazycanuck]

Ok, normally i don't watch "reality" tv but since my dear's away, I flipped the channel from continuing coverage on Cyclone Yasi in Qld to Biggest Loser Families.

Can someone please tell me: How can you not know you're eating poorly??? I just don't get it. Yes, in the past, someone may not have fed you well but there's info out there at the library, the net etc about changing.. Eating a huge bowl of ice cream plus McDorknalds each day?

Also, why is it that people need to be embarassed on nation wide television about thier weight before they do something about it?

What does this say about society? Is weight just another issue that doesn't affect us but rather someone else?

I don't know if what i've just typed makes sense or is worded correctly but it's around the right words of what i'm trying to say.

[Crankin]

It makes perfect sense and I often ask myself the same things.
I think it's a combination of really not knowing proper nutrition, doing "what you've always done," and not having the support you need to change. Money plays a part, too. It's cheaper to eat crappy food, which is an issue for many, especially in the US.
Change is hard. Eating habits/exercise are no different than addiction to substances. What concerns me about the BL is that the people are put in an artificial environment where they have nothing else to do but lose weight and exercise at a level that even I don't approach most of the time. While this may be no different than someone going to a substance abuse program, my concern is that when the person goes back to his/her home, they are still surrounded by people who eat horribly and don't exercise. The #1 thing that addicts have to do is stay away from people and environments where drugs and alcohol are being used. It's a lot harder to stay away from people and places that are eating/serving unhealthy food. It's everywhere.

[lph]

Some random thoughts on the topic:
Hunger is real. It's one of the strongest cravings we have and not surprisingly - if you don't eat, you die. And we've been genetically hardwired for thousands of years to eat when we have, so that we starve slower when we don't have.
Willpower can only go so far. It's a limited and unstable resource. Habit is much stronger, for many of us. You need willpower to start a good habit, but habit creates its own willpower.
Large parts of todays society is geared towards expending as little effort as possible. Yesterday I got off the metro (abandoning a comfortable seat and a good book) to run the last 6,5 km to work. Before I got outside to where I could run I had gone through 2 sliding doors, 1 revolving door and taken 3 escalators, ensuring that my precious resting heart rate was completely undisturbed. After running and showering I sat at my desk for six hours.
Rational eating is just a tiny part of why we eat. I eat what I eat because I like the taste, because it's what's available at my local store every day and every week, because I have cultural preferences telling me that this food is wholesome or traditional, because I want to treat my family to something special and this is the way my mother always fed us when we celebrated something, because I always comfort myself with this treat when I'm feeling down, because this is acceptable food to serve guests etc. etc. And because I'm hungry, or maybe even sometimes - because I feel my body needs this particular food.
Knowledge of healthy food and exercise is important, but I think it's really hard to kick entrenched habits unless you have some insight into why you eat and exercise (or don't) the way you do. For some people those connections are very complicated, for some they're simple and easy to break.
Sorry for rambling on again, I don't mean to sound preachy

[nscrbug]

Very well said, lph!

[ivorygorgon]

lph - love your post!!

I don't remember who posted here asking something along the lines of "how can you not know you are eating unhealthy?"

My highest weight was 245, I am down to around 160 now. I am hoping to lose at least 12 more. This process has taken me several years. I can tell you that there are different levels of knowing. At my highest weight I knew I was really fat. I knew I ate far too much, but then on the other hand, I didn't really know HOW bad it was. There is some kind of mechanism going on - maybe denial (that I have seen in many other heavy people) about exactly how bad the situation is. I also think that for many of the mirror lies. I still don't know what I look like! How many times have you heard someone say "I didn't know i looked like that?" Until they saw a certain picture. I certainly never thought I looked how I look in old photos. Even today, I don't think I look like how I look in photos. It's one of the reasons I absolutely HATE having my picture taken.

The whole mess is just really confusing isn't it?

[Catrin]

I also think that for many of the mirror lies. I still don't know what I look like! How many times have you heard someone say "I didn't know i looked like that?" Until they saw a certain picture. I certainly never thought I looked how I look in old photos. Even today, I don't think I look like how I look in photos. It's one of the reasons I absolutely HATE having my picture taken.

The whole mess is just really confusing isn't it?

This is such an important point, and it works both ways. I was quite large for well over a decade, and will I chipped away at it over time I've lost over 50 pounds in a little over a year. Even though I am now only 131-132, when I see myself in a mirror I have problems seeing why people now refer to me as "small" or "petite". We have an internal image of how we look, and when that gets out of sync with changes - either way - it takes some time for that internal image to catch up.

[OakLeaf]

when I see myself in a mirror I have problems seeing why people now refer to me as "small" or "petite"

+1

And, while it's true that each individual is ultimately responsible for her own health, it's important not to deny the effects of commercial interests, too. Most processed foods are formulated to actually decrease satiety, so you'll eat and buy more of them without feeling full. They're enhanced with chemical flavors and aromas that target food/nutrition cravings that are hard-wired into our bodies by evolution. Then there's the whole media empire that conflates advertising with news and commercials with science.

Like the USDA's "food pyramid" (ever wonder why it comes from the department of Agriculture, not the department of Health and Human Services? It's because it's there to sell food products...). I haven't really looked at the newest version, which is supposed to be a little better than the prior ones, but the wording is much stronger on what you're supposed to eat more of than what you're supposed to eat less.

And the defeatist news stories bewailing how it's impossible to meet the new sodium guidelines. (Well, no, not if you eat actual food, which none of these writers seem to ever do.) And how supposedly healthy processed foods (that come out of a box, the microwave, or a fast food restaurant) aren't really healthy, but instead we should eat this other set of equally processed foods.

Then, if you've been fed fake food-like substances from childhood, and you've been taught by commercial interests (medical as well as food industry) to ignore the messages your body is sending you, it's very, very difficult to learn to hear those messages, and actually taste the flavors of real food.

You have to have time, inclination, self-respect, and at least a decent high school education, I think, to really be able to sort the truth from the advertising about nutrition. How many people have all those things in this economy?



ETA: Mark Bittman's take on the issue. As usual, he says most things better than I ever could.

[lph]

I was at a seminar recently which was really boring... so I ended up spending most of my time reading a study done on why people are active, or inactive, in daily life. I just remember a few points here, but definitely mentioned was that active people had active friends and often active family members, while the most sedentary ones had very many sedentary people around them. Keeping yourself fit may look like a personal and solitary challenge, but in practice we tend to do as others do, compare ourselves to our neighbours, family and friends - and if they're all kicked back with their feet on the table eating cheetos, why shouldn't you?

I just have to look at my own neighbourhood really, we live in a fairly low-status area where not that many people are heavily into exercise, and I know I have a reputation for being "you know, one of those exercise addicts".It doesn't bother me, but if I had a major setback, like an injury, and had to stay at home for a while, it would be quite easy for me to compare myself to my neighbours and think that hey, I'm not doing so badly after all, what's the rush. It also helps me to focus on healthy eating that I have a super skinny dh. He's just naturally skinny, but I don't have to gain much weight over a lazy Christmas before I start feeling pretty darn chubby compared to him.

I can't really imagine the challenge it is to radically change your whole lifestyle, without friends or family changing at all.

[Tri Girl]

amazing transformation, ScaldedCat! WOW!

[Trek420]

amazing transformation, ScaldedCat! WOW!

+1,000,000

It takes a village to raise an athlete; family, friends, community. What we do is seen as a solitary sport but we may need encouragement from all those and more.

What we've all said about food: broccolli, berries, pine nuts don't have marketing departments and Super Bowl ads. For some raised with TV as the baby sitter that's where we learn about food.

I was raised by amazing cooks and at one time a sous chef myself. I really like what this woman writes about the family dinner :

http://thefamilydinnerbook.com/

[abejita]

Here is a picture of my wakeup call. I ate healthy...I just ate way too much healthy. I got anxious, I ate, sad, I ate, mad, I ate...you get the picture. It is never as easy as just stop eating and exercise more. Only people who don't struggle daily with their weight say that. Unless you have been the one in the seemingly perpetual weight battle, you will not know what it is like to battle the unhealthy relationship people have with food. In the end, I think for 95% of overweight people, the weight is a symptom of something deeper...obesity is very seldom caused by 'just eating too much'...it is a symptom of a failure to deal with life's issues in a healthy manner. That is what people need to be taught...what to do when life gets a little uncomfortable.

I am certainly still learning to deal with life in a healthy manner. I've come a long way. I started in the spring of 2009 after seeing this picture of me and my family at Easter. I was about 220. A year and a half later, I am right at 124 (and yes, I do struggle with seeing myself as petite or skinny) I still struggle daily to normalize my relationship with food and to not transfer using food as crutch to something else (shopping anyone??)

[OakLeaf]

You look great, abejita! (ScaldedCat too, if she comes back...)

I was just reading this in a waiting room last night. It's a pretty condensed summary, but basically, it says that the neurochemical basis for physical, calorie-deprived hunger, and for "psychologically" based "cravings," is pretty much identical. You really have to engage your mind, step back and analyze what your body is asking for, because your body is asking for it in almost exactly the same way in either case.

"Only eat when you're hungry" doesn't work for someone who hasn't done this analysis and learned to listen very, very closely to their body, because we ARE hungry when we're trying to stuff emotions by smothering them in food, or something similar. And then there's the other part of the equation, that some people can eat in a disordered fashion and stay slender, and other people can eat exactly the same way and gain.

Nothing made it clearer to me than when I was on a medication that caused weight gain. I didn't realize it was the medication that made me gain. But when I went off it, within four months I'd lost the 20# I'd gained on the med. No change in appetite. No change in eating habits. No change in activity. Nothing but a chemical change in my metabolism caused, in this case, by a single added substance.

[abejita]

Great article Oakleaf. This paragraph stood out to me:

Food, like sex, is associated with pleasure. This is nature’s way of encouraging us to eat. The feel-good aspect of food is one important cause of overeating. The link between the brain’s reward mechanism and overeating is something that scientists are still trying to figure out.

I think that another interesting aspect that the article didn't touch on is that so much of the processed food is engineered to trigger the pleasure center in your brain. Somebody asked how those people didn't know that they were eating so poorly. I am sure at some level they do, but those foods are engineered in a lab to trigger the same parts of your brain as drugs. People literally get addicted to junk food. It can be as hard a habit to kick as smoking, drinking or other drugs. I am thankful everyday that that wasn't a battle that I ever had to fight.

[Pedal Wench]

Wow, Mary and Scalded Cat - great transformations!!!!

I'm loving the talk about image too. I've never been really heavy - heaviest was 135 at 5'4", but in my mind, well, I am. Actually, I'm not that much different weight-wise now, but the difference between an exercising 135 and a sit-on-the-sofa-drinking-martinis 135 is huge. Like others, there's a photo that makes me cringe. And for anyone struggling with the scale - it's tricky. One time at 135, I was a size 10. And now, that 135 is a size 4. However, I think that's why I can relate so much to people's struggle - in my head, it's my struggle too. In my head, I'm about 5'9" and 175. That's what I see in the mirror. I just laugh when people say something about me being short, or thin. I just don't see - or feel it.