Have just viewed the first season of Heavy, a semi-dignified reality show that aired on A&E. The male clients weigh in at 5- or 600 pounds, the women at 3- or 400, and the show follows them as they began a program of physical exercise, diet re-education, and therapy.
What's contained in those centuries of pounds? Deceased mothers. Living, negative mothers (one said of her aspiring singer daughter, People want to see Madonna; they don't want to see her.") Family members members who interfered with young girls. Fathers felled by suicide. Sons lost to untreated mental illness or drugs. A range of situations and events over which the clients can't let go.
Weight Watchers, for example, asks, What are you eating?
Mariane Williamson's A Course in Weight Loss asks, What's eating you? Or more pointedly, What's going on with you that you aren't treating yourself well?
The clients seem high strung and overly emotional. One isn't sure if it's just due to the presence of the cameras or if they're so used to eating through every emotion that, without continual food intake, they're a bit raw and naked.
The toughest job the trainers, coaches and therapists seem to have is explaining to the clients that greasy, sugary, overly processed junk really isn't a good thing, that consuming masses of such food is really an act of self-violence, self-abuse--a one-person Fight Club.
God bless Alice Waters and God bless the First Lady for encouraging us to take good care of ourselves by way of our food choices. And shame on those who attack them as being "elitist".
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