A report published last month showed that two-thirds of U.S. adults and some 25 million children are obese or overweight.
When I read that recently, I almost swallowed my sugar-free gum and spewed my Diet Pepsi.
So in the sense that it is helping some of those obese Americans lose their weight, I applaud NBC's show The Biggest Loser. However, after watching tonight's episode, I'm concerned that the emphasis on quick weight loss isn't very realistic and might do more harm than good to Fat America's psyche.
The show, billed as "the first reality series where everybody loses," brings together a group of "severely overweight participants" competing to drop the most pounds and gain $250,000. Contestants are put through their paces, tongue-lashed, kicked and humiliated by a personal trainer over 15 episodes in front of a TV audience expected to exceed last season's U.S. viewer average of 8 million per show.
From what I can gather, these people -- some who weigh more than 400 pounds -- work out many hours every day and eat a low-calorie diet. Then once a week, they step on the scale in front of their teammates and 8 million others wearing very little clothing and revealing many blubbery rolls. And they get disappointed when one contestant only loses 7 pounds. They get voted off the "fat farm," so to speak, if their teammates think they haven't been trying hard enough.
So the moral of this story, ladies and gentlemen, is -- abandon your day job, bust your butt working out full time, go on national television with it all hanging out (including some fairly impressive man boobs going on, that seem far more questionable to me than Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction), lose a perfectly reasonable amount of weight, be chastised and ridiculed by your peers, and be utterly rejected by millions of people who will joke about you around the office water cooler as they snarf their vending machine Doritos and Little Debbie snack cakes.
I hope I'm wrong in my assessment. I hope viewers are inspired to get in shape, eat more nutritiously, commend these large folks for having the guts to try, and cheer them to the ultimate success -- which is not just about the number on the scale, but about the feeling in one's heart. Do these "losers" feel like winners in the grander scheme? Are they proud of what they've accomplished? Do they love themselves a little more than before?
In a world where people called a rather normal, average-looking Britney Spears "fat" the day after she appeared at the MTV Music Awards, we have to ask ourselves who's setting the bar for healthy, realistic, long-lasting weight loss in this country. (She's had two kids, I've only had one, and I'd KILL to look like that. I had more gut than that before I ever conceived of conceiving.) Are we destined to increase the gap between the have-too-muchs and have-not-enoughs, so that we end up with only the extremes -- obesity or anorexia? Pick your end of the continuum...you're guaranteed to "lose" either way.
When I read that recently, I almost swallowed my sugar-free gum and spewed my Diet Pepsi.
So in the sense that it is helping some of those obese Americans lose their weight, I applaud NBC's show The Biggest Loser. However, after watching tonight's episode, I'm concerned that the emphasis on quick weight loss isn't very realistic and might do more harm than good to Fat America's psyche.
The show, billed as "the first reality series where everybody loses," brings together a group of "severely overweight participants" competing to drop the most pounds and gain $250,000. Contestants are put through their paces, tongue-lashed, kicked and humiliated by a personal trainer over 15 episodes in front of a TV audience expected to exceed last season's U.S. viewer average of 8 million per show.
From what I can gather, these people -- some who weigh more than 400 pounds -- work out many hours every day and eat a low-calorie diet. Then once a week, they step on the scale in front of their teammates and 8 million others wearing very little clothing and revealing many blubbery rolls. And they get disappointed when one contestant only loses 7 pounds. They get voted off the "fat farm," so to speak, if their teammates think they haven't been trying hard enough.
So the moral of this story, ladies and gentlemen, is -- abandon your day job, bust your butt working out full time, go on national television with it all hanging out (including some fairly impressive man boobs going on, that seem far more questionable to me than Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction), lose a perfectly reasonable amount of weight, be chastised and ridiculed by your peers, and be utterly rejected by millions of people who will joke about you around the office water cooler as they snarf their vending machine Doritos and Little Debbie snack cakes.
I hope I'm wrong in my assessment. I hope viewers are inspired to get in shape, eat more nutritiously, commend these large folks for having the guts to try, and cheer them to the ultimate success -- which is not just about the number on the scale, but about the feeling in one's heart. Do these "losers" feel like winners in the grander scheme? Are they proud of what they've accomplished? Do they love themselves a little more than before?
In a world where people called a rather normal, average-looking Britney Spears "fat" the day after she appeared at the MTV Music Awards, we have to ask ourselves who's setting the bar for healthy, realistic, long-lasting weight loss in this country. (She's had two kids, I've only had one, and I'd KILL to look like that. I had more gut than that before I ever conceived of conceiving.) Are we destined to increase the gap between the have-too-muchs and have-not-enoughs, so that we end up with only the extremes -- obesity or anorexia? Pick your end of the continuum...you're guaranteed to "lose" either way.
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Whatever we need, someone is getting rich.
A while ago I stepped back and thought about the term "consumer." In the news, we are so often referred to, first and foremast -- and so impersonally -- as "consumers."
Instead, maybe -- just maybe -- we are "persons" first. Persons who happen to consume, that is.
I could go on and on.
We are such pawns... myself included.