Tuesday Night Must See Obesi-TV

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In the Sixth Sense, Haley Joel Osment delivered one of the classic movie lines. “I see dead people… walking around like regular people.” When Bruce Willis asks how often he sees them, Osment delivers the even more frightening statement. It’s in the short clip below if you want to relive the terror.

There is something even more terrifying going on in this country. Tuesday night I turned on the TV and I saw obese people everywhere. Well to be specific, they were on NBC and Fox. I had already decided to tune into the season premiere of The Biggest Loser–Season 8. I had planned to watch so I could report on the horrible and unscientific advice that obese people get on this show, but I only lasted about 7 minutes. First, the tears and infighting are formulaic reality TV staples. Then there is the unsustainable semi-starvation diets and ridiculous exercise routines planned by Jillian and Bob–or as I like to think of them Gym Teachers Gone Wild.

Insane.

In 1961, FCC Commission Chairman Newton Minnow famously called television “a vast wasteland.” He mentioned formulaic comedies, but couldn’t have imagined the onslaught of reality shows spawned by the success of Survivor and Big Brother. Say this out loud in a stage whisper: “I see dysfunctional people all the time. They are everywhere.” (See below.) Now we have vastly overweight people starring in reality shows. In one of the shows, a group of obese people is trying to lose the weight. In the other, they are flaunting it.  If you are overweight yourself, how do you decide which show to watch?

When I saw this picture after my summer vacation, I could see that I was on the wrong track. I am definitely overweight in the picture. Not Biggest Loser obese. Just 223 pounds or so. The Metropolitan Life Weight Tables would tell you I’m anywhere from 21-32 pounds overweight depending on whether I have a medium frame or a large frame.

Obviously I exercise. You have visual evidence. So why was I getting fat? I started doing my own research and stumbled upon Tom Naughton’s Fat Head blog. I watched many of the clips from his movie there for free. When Netflix said it would take a “long time” to get it delivered, I  spent the very best $15 I have ever spent and ordered it from Amazon.

I watched it twice. That lead me to Gary Taubes groundbreaking article What If It’s All Been a Big Fat Lie and from there to his book, Good Calories, Bad Calories. After reading it twice, I modified my diet. As Zola went on her protocol, I ate every meal with her. But because I wasn’t taking the homeopathic remedy, I ate breakfast (usually a cheese omelet and a few whole wheat crackers with some peanut butter or a few pieces of bacon. When we had lunch, I ate the ZReduction food but added a little brown rice or quinoa to get a few more calories and carbohydrates. (I will warn you that I used to think of a serving of brown rice as a cup. But 1 cup of cooked brown rice delivers a whopping 41.3 grams of carbohydrates. Now, I occasionally eat 1/4 cup of cooked brown rice.

Based on Taubes findings (Knopff paid him a $700,000 advance for the book and he spent five years doing the research and writing), I decided not to increase my exercise. In fact, I cut back on it a little. I dropped to 206 pounds between July 10 and  August 30th and have held steady since then.

I didn’t need a trainer yelling at me telling me I’m lazy and this is my last chance. And I don’t need some nurturing, understanding person telling me my weight is okay and I should accept myself the way I am. All I needed was a look at my vacation picture. Plus, my lithe 86-year old my mother doesn’t mind saying,  “How much do you weigh? Your stomach looks appalling.” (So I’ve got that going for me.)

HERE’S THE THING: I KNOW WHY I GOT FAT. I WAS EATING THE WRONG STUFF. I WASN’T OVEREATING OR BINGING. I WAS MAKING SOME TERRIBLE CHOICES.

Okay, I admit it, I love onion rings. I haven’t had one for 60 days though and have lost all cravings for them. I have never felt comfortable telling people they are overweight and should do something about it. Obese and overweight people already know their condition already and feel bad about the way they look.

THE BACKSTORY

I know what it’s like to be the fattest kid in the class. In third grade, I weighed 130 pounds and wore Husky jeans with a 32″ waist. We had moved into a new school with no playground equipment. We had two recesses each day. We played a game called Ring Up. One person was it and stayed it until he/she caught someone and they became it. Then two people would tag a third until one person was left “not it” and the winner.

Ring Up was s a 15-minute game of tag. We played it morning and afternoon for weeks at a time. And for weeks at a time, I could not catch anyone once I became it. One day I came home crying to my mother about the fact that I was so fat and so slow I couldn’t catch anyone. “You just need to lose weight, Christopher,”  she said. But I didn’t. I was 8 years old and in love with Hostess Cupcakes and peanut butter and Wonder Bread sandwiches. (It “ helped build strong bodies twelve ways” with that refined, but enriched white flour.)

I played 5th and 6th-grade basketball and my coach’ s nickname for me was “Heavy.”

Finally, in 8th grade, my growth hormones kicked in and I grew from 5′4″ to 6′0″ in 8 months. And all of a sudden I was lean and fit. Not because of diet, but because of hormones.

In college, I was a conference high jump champion and placed 5th in the NCAA College Division Track and Field Championships in 1971. Upon entering the workforce, I became an avid jogger and ran 40-50 miles a week until my knees started clicking. As a professional speaker and trainer, I traveled up to 225 days a year doing seminars and speeches and gradually found myself 43 pounds heavier than when I graduated from college. Turns out the two years I had decided to convert to a vegetarian lifestyle started me on the spaghetti train and jump-started weight gaining process that running and jumping rope could never reverse.

It’s all better now. No running. A little tennis. Once a week I do Super Slow weightlifting at City Wide Super Slow in Chicago.

Where did all this self-disclosure come from? Well as VP of Anger Management, I see RED when I think about how much bad advice I took from the “medical establishment.”  I am furious that I compromised my knees running road races in order to develop a strong heart.

Here’s the truth: You have plenty of motivation to lose whatever weight you need to lose, but you haven’t had the right information. You do now. You’ve got Plan Z. Stay on it. I would love to co-opt the slogan from George  Zimmer and the Men’s Warehouse for Plan Z but I won’t. I’ll just ask you to watch the 30-second commercial below and pay close attention to the last sentence.

I have first-hand evidence that the advice works. I live with Zola and I’ve never been more excited for her and you. This diet works and if you read more of Zola’s blog articles you can find out how you never need to go back to your old ways and weight. If you’re fat, it’s because your hormones got out of whack and your insulin started working against you instead of for you.

All of that is changing now.