4-Watching Weight, Part I

I am four-time loser at Weight Watchers. It has become vastly clear that I am not cut out for this program. While some people seem to do well on it, I, sadly, do not.

I joined Weight Watchers four times between 1999 and 2005—two of those times I remained in the program for a year, while the other two times I lasted a few weeks or months. I lost between 20 and 25lbs on the two occasions that I really stuck with it and almost nothing on the other two. I have gained back every pound several times over and presently have zero intention of ever trying the program again. For some bizarre reason though, I have kept some of my old Weight Watchers materials. It’s interesting because pulling them out evokes both longing and aversion: longing for a time when I was thinner and ostensibly in control; aversion, because I had to spend so much time thinking about food in order to feel in control.

I first decided to try out Weight Watchers in 1999 at the age of 23. I had crested to 203lbs, was wearing a size 14 or 16, and generally feeling pretty uncomfortable in my own skin. I remember going to the warehouse at work to make the call to the 1-800 number because I didn’t want any of my co-workers to know that I was looking into it, despite the fact that I was quite good friends with most of them.

It was probably not a coincidence that I had been working my first desk job for a little over a year at that point. Until then I’d always been in retail environments that had required me to be on my feet all day. I had a roommate, which meant I was probably eating less than I would have had there been nobody at home to make me feel some level of shame about overeating. However, I had a hectic schedule, and the money to eat out more, so I could hide some part of my food consumption. Between being suddenly sedentary for eight hours a day and having more money to eat out, I started packing on the pounds.

My schedule was difficult to work around so I chose to go to a Saturday morning meeting even if I had to commute nearly 90 minutes to attend. In time having a Saturday morning meeting became a method by which I could cheat the system. I’d go to the weigh in on Saturday morning and then spend the remainder of the weekend eating whatever I wanted in whatever quantities I desired. Then on Monday I’d go back to “being good” and usually the goodness would show up on the scale the next Saturday morning, though I more than likely slowed down my progress with this methodology.

My ultimate goal, in 1999, was to lose about 30 or 40lbs and get down to my late high school weight of 165, but the first goal that most members try to meet is to lose 10% of their body weight. It took nearly six months but I finally lost my 10% and got down to 183lbs; I never lost anymore weight. I spent the rest of the year bouncing around that number—gaining and losing the same five or six pounds. I remember a friend admitting to me that she’d been jealous of my weight loss. She needn’t have been. After a year of taking my (somewhat smaller) arse across town to meetings I was fed up and frustrated and stopped attending at all; and the weight slowly crept back on.

It was between 2000 and 2003 that I made my two quite short-lived attempts at Weight Watchers. Both times it was my own lack of real motivation coupled with some un-enjoyable meetings that did me in. One of the meetings was simply too impersonal for me. It was held at a regional head office and I felt a bit like one of many cattle—no pun in intended--being herded through the process. The other meeting was in my very Italian neighbourhood and I was the only non-Italian in the room—which became disconcerting after a while. Besides that, the Italian meetings were held on Monday nights and since I usually spent my weekends cheating Monday was the worst possible day for a weigh in, in my books.

My second major attempt at the program took place years later in 2005. This time I went into the program at 222lbs. I’d now been working the same desk job for seven years, I was living on my own (and thus eating constantly without shame), and I wanted to get serious about dating but wasn’t feeling particularly confident about it at my weight. In addition shopping had become such a trial that I felt something had to be done. This time it only took me four and a half months to lose the 10%; but I had help. I had my wisdom teeth out in December of 2005 and didn’t eat solid food for two weeks. It’s amazing how you’ll lose weight when you’re essentially eating baby food. Overall I ended up losing about 25lbs and then, just as before, as the one year mark came up, I got tired of going to meetings every Saturday morning. This time it wasn’t even a long commute getting under my skin. I was only 15 or 20 minutes away from the meeting by subway and I had a friend going with me, so sometimes I even got a ride; but I guess I just got tired one day. And so by August of 2006, I had finished with Weight Watchers for the last time.

The Weight Watchers Method
For those of you blessedly unfamiliar with Weight Watchers, let me explain how it works. I’m going to base my explanation on my most recent attempt to stick with the program, but I can’t guarantee that it reflects the program in its present form whenever you happen to be reading this—Weight Watchers has changed dramatically since its inception and will probably continue to be tweaked as more information about weight loss becomes available.

There are two methods available in the program: The Flex Plan or The Core Plan. On the Flex Plan, foods are allotted point values based on calorie count, fat and fibre content. Members are then allowed to eat a certain number of points daily. This number is mostly based on the member’s weight but factors like age (i.e. if the participant is a teen or child) and pregnancy are taken into consideration. More recently, gender has also become a factor though for a long time it was not. So for me, at 222lbs, I was permitted 26 points of food a day. And for the sake of context, here are the point values of some common food choices that I would have made:

• 3oz of boneless, skinless chicken cooked = 4 points

• a medium sized apple = 1 point

• 1/8 of a 9” (diameter) fruit pie = 10 points

• a Big Mac =14 points.

Ultimately The Flex Plan is a simplified method of counting calories but some foods get more ‘bang for buck’ because of lower fat and higher fibre content. You can eat whatever you please but you must stick within your point allotment. If you enjoy freedom and have the ability to reign yourself in when you know you’re out of points, then this is the plan for you. On The Flex Plan you can also gain points by exercising—but it is sort of a zero sum issue. You’re only getting more points because you’re burning them off—you’re not actually gaining anything extra or cheating the plan in any way. Also, the makers of the plan recommend that you eat no more than four extra points a day even if your exercise has earned you more (four points amounts to about 25 to 30 minutes of high intensity cardio for most people). For someone working out heavily this really isn’t feasible—after a certain stage you have to put back in what you’ve taken out. However this doesn’t tend to be a problem for most members. While the overall idea of Weight Watchers is that one should exercise in conjunction with the eating plan, you honestly won’t find many hard bodied people at a Weight Watchers meeting. In my experience, members aren’t generally doing more than four points worth of exercise a day.

On The Core Plan a member can eat as much as they need to feel satisfied but the actual foods permitted in the plan are limited. Foods that are part of The Core Plan are ones you know to be healthy—lean meats, poultry and fish, whole wheat pasta, brown rice, whole grains and potatoes, fat free dairy products and a lot of vegetables and fruit. But even some of the permitted foods are limited in quantity—whole wheat pasta, brown rice and potatoes, for example, are only allowed once a day; ground meats with no more than 7% fat are only allowed once daily as well. The member, however, is allotted 35 points a week for foods that don’t fall into The Core Plan. The key to successfully navigating The Core Plan is understanding the need to stop eating when you are satisfied--not full or overflowing.

A member can switch between Core and Flex as often as they like—in fact, switching is sometimes recommended as a good way to kick-start more weight loss when one has reached a plateau—as long as the switch doesn’t occur in the middle of a week.

I don’t like being told what to do so I was always an adherent of The Flex Plan. And frankly The Core Plan didn’t exist the first three times that I tried Weight Watchers. The Core Plan was more of a response to proponents of The Atkins Diet and The South Beach Diet asking why Weight Watchers didn’t seem to really encourage healthy foods choices. Despite my reluctance to ever try The Core Plan though, I actually believe Core to be the more effective of the two in the long term. My feeling is that it helps people learn something they can take with them from the program should they decide to leave—relatively healthy eating habits. Flex, on the other hand, simply left me with an even more bizarre relationship with food than when I started out.

The Meetings
The meetings are an integral and interesting part of Weight Watchers. Missing meetings is usually the death knell for your Weight Watchers journey.

The group leader, a Weight Watchers employee, pretty much makes or breaks a meeting in my opinion. I’ve had some group leaders who I loved and other ones who made me never want to show up again. I’m sure that reason I stuck around for a year in ’99 and ’05 had a lot to do with having really great group leaders. I bumped into one of these women years later at my local Running Room and we still really clicked. When we’d have substitute group leaders I’d sometimes just weigh in and leave.

But the meetings have way of being a double-edged sword because there’s a certain amount of “group think” that occurs. Really heavy members will generally receive unmitigated encouragement. People that tend to fall in the middle, like me, will also receive quite hearty encouragement. People who look "normal” when they join (i.e. not people who’ve lost the weight and are maintaining) but for whatever reason have chosen to try Weight Watchers: not so much. There was a young lady in my 2005 meeting who was around 20 years old and came into Weight Watchers at about a size six. She lost ten or twelve pounds and left looking virtually the same to me. She seemed genuine about her struggle to lose the weight but most of us middle-aged fatties were having a hard time being sincere in our encouragement of her—at least I was. It was difficult to understand why she felt she even needed to lose weight.

Another phenomenon that tended to occur was that when people lost a lot of weight quickly--instead of the promoted healthy 1-2lbs weekly--they really did get the most applause. When my friend Patricia* attended meetings for a short time and proudly met her 1-2lb goal every week, the reaction she got was nothing close to that of those who came in saying they’d dropped six or seven pounds in the same time frame. She found it disturbing that this dramatic and generally unhealthy type of weight loss was held up as admirable without the group leader making much of an effort to temper the excitement.

At every meeting, there are, besides the group leader who runs the discussion, a variety of people taking your money and weighing you. The people sitting at those scales have the power, often, to make or break your day. I recall one old fella at my 2005 meetings who used to call out your weight so loudly that every one else could hear it, much to the chagrin of many. There was another woman who was so discouraging to members who had gained weight that some of the members complained to the group leader. There was also the complaint that she was harder on very heavy people than she was on others who were smaller. Ultimately, the actions and reactions of members cannot be fully controlled, and as such the meetings can be both the greatest strength and weakness of the program.

Weight Watchers, My Friends and I
Off the top of my head I can count seven of my friends who have been Weight Watchers members. I'm almost positive that there are more but it’s hard to keep track. Tonya* has tried the program and always slips up with alcohol. She constantly overshoots her points when she and her husband decide to crack open a bottle of wine. She’s no longer on the program. My friend Emily* has an on again-off again relationship with Weight Watchers. Sometimes she does the meetings and sometimes she doesn’t. She almost always seems to be counting her points but never quite religiously sticking with the plan. She’s never really been overweight, in my opinion, either though. My aforementioned friend Patricia was so perturbed by the unhealthy encouragement of dramatic weight loss that went on in the meetings that she attended, that she stopped going after just a few weeks. My good friend Krista* just seemed to tire of the program eventually. Another friend, Miriam*, one day decided she was finished with paying for weight loss and quit attending meetings after about a year and a half. She’s now on a new diet that’s doctor supervised and it seems to be working well for her—she’s lost more than she did on Weight Watchers thus far. I remember an old friend Norma*; she was one of those rare people who had managed to hit her goal in the program and was in the coveted position of not having to pay for meetings anymore. She called me one night because she didn’t know how to keep herself from eating. This was after her weight had floated back up and she was paying for the privilege of attendance again.

And then there is my amazing friend Val* with whom I started out in 2005, still keeping up with it 2 ½ years later. I asked her what makes her stick with it after all this time and she said the following (I’m paraphrasing here): “I like that I can eat whatever I choose to eat. There’s no one telling me what I can and can’t have; because whenever something is restricted then I’ll cheat. With Weight Watchers I can have what I want and find a way to eat that works for me so there’s never any need to cheat. Secondly I like that I’m not alone in this. On every other plan that I’ve tried I always hit a point when I start feeling like I’m the only person doing it and then I want to quit. The support that I get at the meetings really helps. Lastly the accountability. Knowing that I have to go to that meeting every Saturday keeps me on track. I can slack off for the weekend but I know if I don’t stick to the plan Monday through Friday it’s going to show up on the scale. So the accountability is a real motivating factor.”

Even though she's on The Flex Plan, Val mentioned that for the past 18 months or so she hasn’t actually been recording the point values of what she eats at all, but she has diligently recorded what she’s been eating. She finds that having to be honest about everything she eats keeps her in check (or at least lets her know why the number isn’t going where she wants it to on the scale). And to her credit I will say this—Val looks fabulous. I saw Val a few weeks ago and she looks great. I mean she can wear skinny jeans dammit.

But I have my suspicions (and Val had agrees) that she is the exception, rather than the rule. Val said that almost none of the people with whom she began Weight Watchers back in ’05 are still in attendance (myself included obviously)—or if they are, they have left and come back, thus losing the same weight again. It seems that while the psychology behind Weight Watchers works for Val, it doesn’t, in the long term, work for the vast majority of people, myself included.

In the documentary "The Diet Wars" Stephen Talbot compared Weight Watchers to being in a 12-step program; and I have to admit, the shoe fits. Weight Watchers meetings can sort of feel like being in a group of ever-recovering fatties. "Hi, my name is Isabel, and I'm fat." My therapist has indicated that she feels the point counting is only giving you a false sense of control over your eating habits, and only recommends using the program to kick-start weight loss but not as a long term remedy. And I'd have to agree (and no, I don't always agree with my therapist). If it's going to take attending weekly meetings and counting points for the rest of my life to keep me in check--I can't say I'd call that control. And while The Flex Plan is all about eating what you want when you want, no one talks about how dramatic the food reduction is for most new members. Upon starting the program I was easily eating a third of what I'd normally eat. I'm not saying this isn't a good fraction to shoot for but in my case I was left feeling quite deprived. When I finally got accustomed to eating less, I still had be really careful about my food choices or risk being left hungry...and angry. I could have a 10 point piece of pie but I'd have a hard time remaining satisfied for the rest of the day on just 16 more points. In fact I wasn't able to, so I'd have to overeat or starve. One option would leave me trying not to feel bad about having cheated (and usually eating to numb out the guilt) while the other option would leave me hungry and angry. I realize there are a lot of emotional issues caught up in my eating habits and that complicates what is, at its simplest, an issue of calories consumed and calories burned. But I don' t know many women for whom weight gain and loss isn't an emotional issue. While Weight Watchers does have a component of emotional coaching in the program, obviously it's not tailor made for each member.

My intent here is not to besmirch the name of Weight Watchers. I think it's one of the healthier weight loss programs out there. I just wonder if it's as kind and gentle and all-inclusive as it claims to be. Given the seemingly high member turn over, one might not think so. But I don't intend to have you simply take my word for it. I'm not even going to have you go on the word of my jaded ex-member friends. In the interests of checking this theory out I plan to follow some Weight Watchers members over the next year to see how it works for them. It will not, by any means, be a large enough sample to call the experiment scientifically sound, but simply an interesting look at random people trying to make this program work for them. I will give at least quarterly updates on their progress and in a year we'll see where they all end up. While it may prove nothing either way, it will be interesting to get a glimpse into the journeys of others as they navigate watching their weight.

*Of course those aren't their real names!

3-The Story of…the Body’s Fat Cells Was Like A Bollywood Epic

That quote made sitting through the six hours of documentaries that comprised National Geographic (Canada) Channel’s “Fat Day” all worth it.

Now let me apologize for the delay in getting this entry finished and posted. I’m sure some of you have already decided that I’m just some flash-in-the-pan, fly-by-night blogger who only has something to say for a couple days and then gets bored with the topic and goes back to whatever held their interest before. I tell you, it’s not true; I’m just slow and I have 15 pages of notes to whittle down to bring you something cogent and relatively concise. While I can assure you that concise didn’t end up happening, I hope that cogent did. I promise, however, never to take 15 pages of notes again. I also promise never to try to report on six hours of television again.

So first the facts—eventually I’ll come back to that crazy Bollywood comment.

National Geographic Channel aired a six hour block of documentaries three times beginning at 12:00 noon December 30th and finishing up at 6:00am December 31st, 2007. While this makes for 18 hours of viewing rather than the 24 hours one might have assumed would comprise “Fat Day;” I can’t say I’m terribly upset, given that the channel only cobbled together six hours of content.

Below is a wee synopsis of each of the programs that aired in the order that they were presented.

America’s Fattest City
This doc follows five residents of Houston, TX—the fattest city in the U.S.—who generally don’t seem to care about their weight with the exception of one. They range in size from an 11-year old at 165lbs to a woman in her forties who weighs 625lbs. The myth of this documentary is that these people don’t care about their weight. While two of them don’t ever admit to having dieted, two of them do, and talk about their frustrations with the lack of long lasting results. One of them is having a gatric bypass by the end of the film. While it makes for intriguing copy to say these people don’t care about their weight, I’d venture to say they all do.

Frontline: Diet Wars
Stephen Talbot, who played a young friend of Beaver’s on the iconic “Leave it to Beaver” investigates all the biggest diet trends from The South Beach Diet, to Weight Watchers to The Atkins Diet. And then tries to lose weight himself.

Too Fat, Too Young
This title reminds me of cautionary films about the dangers of teenaged sex. This doc follows three children ranging in age from ten to sixteen, on their weight loss journey as they take three very different paths. Kari, 16, is an American girl who decides that a gastric bypass will be her way of dealing with her weight. Barnaby, a 15 year old boy, convinces his parents to let him go to a fat camp for five weeks. And Daniel, an adorable 10 year old boy, is part of a new program (not covered by the government’s health plan) that sets him up with a dietician, a nutritionist, a trainer and a professor. His plan is meant to be a long terms solution and when the doc ends he’s been working with them for nine months and there’s no indication that the program is coming to an end.

Diets from Hell
Honestly the most tedious of the lot to watch. This poor excuse for documentary film making tells us of some hellish diets. But while the title of the show would give you the impression that you’re going to be watching something about different diets that people have tried, it was basically a documentary about some dramatic eating disorders like addictive dieting, anorexia, over eating, and get this: eating in one’s sleep. Still, even with a show stopper like eating in your sleep, this doc managed to bore the hell out of me.

Fat Plague
Believe it or not, the Bollywood comment came out of this program. In this doc we are introduced to Dr. Nihkil Dhurandar—a man who proposes that obesity, in some cases, may be viral and that it’s catching.

Horizon: The Atkins Diet
Lastly, an entire hour devoted to debunking the myths surrounding the Atkins diet and discovering why it actually works.

And just for the fun of it I watched a couple more British docs on the W network called “The Truth about Size 0” (which actually means a British size 4 but I guess that doesn’t have the same punch) and “Extreme Celebrities.” Both sent British B-listers with already model-esque figures, off to do some crazy diets for two weeks to a month just to prove that those types of diets are bad for us. Really? We weren’t aware that starvation and bingeing are bad for us—in 2007, this was still a mystery to most of us? Who fucking allows this drivel to go to air! I haven’t had my intelligence offended like that in some time.

What I am not going to do here is give you a blow-by-blow of each doc. If you want to know the details of them that badly just stick around your TV next year right before New Year’s Day. I’m sure some network will find six hours of content geared to make you want to lose weight. If you’re really desperate, let me know and I’ll loan you my awesome VHS tape of the event. What I will focus on, instead, are all the things about each doc that the producers of Fat Day don’t want you noticing—like the marketing surrounding it, the visual and sound devices employed by the film makers, and the language used in the programs; all devices meant to instill a certain message, but hopefully in a way that you won’t discern. So off to the races, shall we?

The Promo
I have to tell you about the promo for “Fat Day” because the first time I saw it my heart rate went up. Based on when I started this blog I know that I was seeing the promotional ad for this block of programming at least a week before it aired but I have the feeling it was probably running before then. When I first heard it, I was actually angry, until I heard the last bit. But in hind sight I think I should still be angry. Here’s why:

You’re presented with a kaleidoscope type image of shots of KFC and Burger King signs, various fat persons just being fat, fat persons eating high calorie foods, shots of those high calorie foods all by themselves, fat children and a fat woman in a wheelchair in a hospital—you get the idea. And because it’s in a kaleidoscope every image is multiplied by five so it feels all the more pervasive. My favorite image, because of how cruel you’ll later realize it is, is one of a person pulling a pair of stretch pants over their ample belly. The voice over accompanying all these images is that of a man who clearly has little patience for the fat among us:

“Okay they continue to stuff their faces with crappy food. They’re a burden to our health care system. What the (bleep) is wrong with these people? I mean c’mon, how hard can it be to lose weight? How about injecting a little discipline into your lives folks? Put down the cheeseburgers and fries, eat a salad; then get off your butts and get some (bleeping) exercise!

Then the screen fades to black and the following sentence appears in white:

“If only it were that simple.”

Now, whizzing across the screen, diet books with horrifying sounding names (“Thin Within”) and bottles of pills and a logo for the FDA and a much more sane sounding man with the following things to say:

“From social pressures to biological costs, get the facts on fat. Fat Day, on National Geographic Channel.”

So while the first part of the ad made my skin crawl, and clearly that was the intent, I held out hope when I saw all those awful diet books and the pills and heard the words “social pressures” that “Fat Day” was going to add a little something insightful to the North American dialogue (or is it a monologue really) on fat. Oh how wrong I was. They might as well have left the second half of the ad on the cutting room floor for all it had to do with what actually aired.

I am naïve. I thought National Geographic would pull out some really insightful work on the topic of fat but it was all the same old, same old. It was all about what it takes to lose the weight with very little discussion of how the weight came about in the first place. And even where that was discussed, there was never any focus given to those explanations. The focus simply came back to the big three: less food, more exercise and how’s about a little surgery.

The Timing
Much as I want to believe that the National Geographic channel has my best interests at heart, I should have known by the timing of “Fat Day” that this was all a massive marketing gimmick. It just would have made more sense to me if they’d aired it on the 31st but maybe it got in the way of too much other programming. Or maybe they expect that even fat people have something to do during the day on New Year’s Eve so it’s best to serve up this programming on a Sunday when everyone, including fat people, tends to be sedentary. In any case, December 30th is still only 48 hours away from the great day of resolutions and most everyone can be counted upon to make a resolution about losing weight. So why not a little nudge right?

And if you’re going to appease all the advertisers filling the 138 ad spaces in that block of programming, you can’t be telling people that it’s just okay to stay fat and we’re going to sit and talk about why you are. Because if you do that, you miss out on the enormous amounts of cash the diet industry (an any other industry that wants to be associated with thinness) is willing to dump into advertising right around the new year. So National Geographic, like any other channel, decides they too, want a piece of the pie and you get a “Fat Day” that should have been called “Diet Day.”

The Visuals
The opening shots of “America’s Fattest City” were a perfect precursor for what to expect for the next six hours. There was one sequence in which every person about to be profiled in the doc was shown eating at some laughably unattractive moment. The inference of course is that fat people always look like this when they eat—and apparently thin people don’t eat at all, but they most certainly don’t eat like this. While this type of visual didn’t come up with the same frequency in every one of the programs, in the programs where specific people were being profiled, it was du rigeur that the “offending” party had to be shown eating. Interestingly in the documentary “Too Fat, Too Young” Kari, the 16- year old girl, is never really seen in an unflattering shot like this, but by the end of the of the doc I was left with the distinct impression that she might be trading in one issue with food—overeating—for another—anorexia. Maybe the film makers find anorexia more acceptable.

In “The Diet Wars” our correspondent, Steve Talbot, who is considered at the high end of overweight by the BMI chart, is shown eating plenty of times, but never in an unflattering way. Perhaps because he’s the correspondent and we aren’t supposed to have feelings of loathing and condescension for him. But perhaps also because he is repentant; he spends the entire doc searching for a diet to cure him of his near obesity and by the end has dropped 15lbs. It seems that as long as someone appears to care about their weight they are allowed to be shown eating food like normal folk.

In “The Atkins Diet” documentary these shots were almost nauseating. Taken against a black background, a round table piled with steaks, bacon, eggs and other meats and proteins was harshly lit. The fat group of men and women around this table were shown eating the meats, up close and in slow motion. No one looks good in slow motion (except Bo Derek in “Perfect 10”). It’s a known fact that political smear ads usually slow the film to make the victim of the ad look sinister. So even if you shot Kate Moss eating in slow motion it would look sinister. But when you put fat people in the shot it’s reinforces the idea that it is somehow wrong that these fat people are allowed to eat all these fatty meats and proteins and God forbid, lose weight. Ironically, though the voice over talks about these people losing weight, the unfortunate souls in those shots are all still relatively fat—reinforcing the idea that to eat this much of type of food, even when the Atkins Diet says you can, is at the very least, distasteful and at the worst, sinful.

My favorite, staple visual of these programs is the shots of headless fat bodies walking by. These unfortunate fat folks who’ve obviously never consented to having their images shown on TV are paraded in front of the camera wearing the most unflattering clothing to ever appear in any store. From too-tight shirts to wedgie-causing pants, there’s not a single one of these fat people shown well dressed. I worked in a plus sized women’s clothing store for three years and I can assure you there are plenty of women over size 14 or 16 who dress themselves very well. There are plenty of men who shop while being fat and still do a good job. Take Brian Clivas, a middle aged gentleman profiled in “The Atkins Diet” who even after having lost 70lbs is still way above the top end of Marks & Spencer’s largest pant size. He is as well dressed as any man at Christie’s or Sotheby’s. In fact he looks quite dapper. But I guess it’s okay to show him looking great because he, like Steve Talbot, is repentant and diets. Even when Brian is shown in just his under shorts the shot is more flattering than similar shots of the two thin semi-celebrities who were put through the diet ringer on the two W network programs.

I cannot resist talking about one particular headless fat man shot—the man is seen riding on a Segway. If you’re not aware of what the Segway is, it’s like a pogo stick on wheels and goes the way you want it to based on the direction in which you lean. A reporter on a local news station was shown trying to maneuver one at Disney in order to get around efficiently for the day. She’s thin. I guess it was okay for her to use one.

And then there are the food shots. In these documentaries food is constantly being shot in a way that makes it look unattractive. I’m sure most of us are aware of the tweaking that goes on to make food photogenic. The army of paints, waxes, and lighting that go into making the cover of a cookbook look good are phenomenal. Take that all away and food, photographed, as is, looks generally unappetizing. You’ll know this from staring at the shots of your favorite combo at your local kabob restaurant. They have probably not hired a really good culinary photographer to do their meal shots and so there’s a weird, sickly look to the food. Thankfully you can see the real thing right in front of your face and it looks and tastes a lot better than those photographs would make you think. Like the harshly lit meats of “The Atkins Diet” or the wide shot of all the fajita fixings on the table at a Houston restaurant frequented by one of the “America’s Fattest City” participants, the food always looks abundant in a bad way or frankly unappetizing—when there’s an unrepentant fat person sitting next to it. Cut to Steve Talbot eating dinner on his birthday after two months of dieting—that chocolate cake actually looks good; his Atkins dinner at TGIF looks good and appetizing. The message, over and over again: if you’re dieting and we can see the results (i.e. you’re beginning to look acceptable) what you eat is okay; and if you’re not it’s not.

Over the course of the day I began to realize that the visuals used in the promo were all lifted from the six programs shown that day and there was one that came to bother me when I figured out what it was. During the promo there is a shot of a seemingly random headless fat person pulling a pair of spandex pants up over their ample belly. And with the snide male voice over in the audio you’re left with the impression of someone who seems damn proud of their belly. How far from the reality. That shot is taken from a scene in which Daniel, (the 10 year old in “Too Fat, Too Young”), in an effort to lose weight, is getting dressed to go and do some exercise. Apparently even children are not safe from having their images used to further the idea that all fat people are out of control; even when the image is taken from a moment when they’re trying to get things under control.

The Audio
Polka music. Let’s just lay it out. Polka music is the best music to use if you want to make fun of someone. If you want to convey that George W Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” announcement on the USS Lincoln was all a sham, show the image with some polka music playing. If you want to keep us laughing about the models who have fallen on the runway, throw up the image (in slow motion) and play some polka music. If you want to make sure that we get that fat people should never be taken seriously, play some polka music.

Accompanying nearly every image of the headless, anonymous, badly dressed, fat person in this six hour block was some polka music. Or something heavy on the tuba in any case. It’s like we can’t talk about fat or see images of fat people without having to make a joke. And somehow this joke isn’t considered offensive—though it damn well should be.

I don’t know a single fat person who likes polka music. Maybe show some fat people and play something really cool by Radio Head. I wonder if people might begin to understand that no one has to be made to feel bad in order to talk about fat.

Then there’s your other most popular audio cue: the foreboding music. Whether it’s just one low note on the synth or the long held note on the violins, it’s all about freaking you the fuck out. It’s played at every possible moment: during talks about the rising statistics of obesity in North America and the UK; when the ten year old boy who’s being taunted about his weight at school declares that he’s wanted to kill himself; when the fat people in the black room filled with meat are eating.

And of course when people have lost weight, like Kari and Tiffany, after their gastric bypass surgeries and Steve Talbot, after two months of eating well and exercising, there’s the piano tinkle of quiet triumph. They’ve joined the ranks of the normal—heaven be praised.

The strangest audio cues of the day though, came from “Too Fat, Too Young.” The doc begins with the three profiled children, Barnaby, Daniel and Kari all talking about what they have suffered being fat and how much they dislike themselves as a result to the (appropriate) tinkling of emotional piano. But then the opening credits sound like something out of a 70’s cop show or an episode of the original Batman, with clashing trumpets and cymbals. It only gets weirder, with the voice over about Britain’s obesity epidemic set to some sort of guitar twanging funk piece. It’s like they think it’s serious but still kinda comical. Maybe the music was meant to be subversive. I think it’s a film maker unsure of what he/she wants to convey. Which is almost as bad as the film makers who are quite certain that they want you to feel bad.

The Language
“If you can call being fat an epidemic, it’s an epidemic.”
“So just how have these larger than life Texans ended up being so big…”
“Although obesity is raging through out the entire United States, it’s the southern states that tip the scales more than most.”
“…reveal just what it is about the Texan lifestyle and attitudes that’s turned this place into a land of giants.”
“…are often shocked by the sight of so much wobbling, waddling weight.”
“Britain is in the grip of an epidemic of childhood obesity.”
“These children are dangerously fat. Unless they get thinner they will die prematurely.”
“Can a pioneering new treatment help him escape the fat trap?”

There are two kinds of language that come up here. The shocked and bemused language and the scary language. “Larger than life,” “tip the scales,” “land of giants.” Are they kidding? I shouldn’t have been, having lived while being fat for some time now, but I was shocked by the condescending language used in “America’s Fattest City.” I was shocked by the disregard for the people being profiled. I was shocked that it was not enough to simply describe the situation but to use language that was clearly meant to poke fun at these people. The entire documentary had an air of “if these people don’t care to lose weight, we don’t have to take them seriously as human beings” and it came through most in the language. The second problem here is the fat that these people, did, generally care about their weight.

The scary language came up most in “Too Fat, Too Young.” And here I feel I need to insert a caveat. It’s not that I wouldn’t be concerned if my 15 year old son weighed 308lbs (like Barnaby) or that I’m not concerned about my own weight; I would be and I am. I just don’t think scary language generally motivates people to work on their weight in the long term. It has never motivated me (in the long term) and I would venture to guess, based on the obesity statistics floating around, that most people aren’t motivated that way either. So maybe a little less of the catastrophic language would be a neat idea. People don’t even talk this way about drug addiction anymore. But somehow we can’t manage to be more sensitive and logical when it comes to weight. Frankly the crytal meth will kill me faster than my extra weight—though admittedly if I was on crystal meth I would likely be thin…

While I found the overall message of “The Diet Wars” a bit preachy (eat well and exercise and it’ll all be okay—coming from someone who frankly wasn’t terribly overweight) I was relieved to sit through a program that didn’t talk down or try to scare fat people into submission for the most part.

The Ads
Of course you can’t talk about six hours of programming about fat people and dieting without looking at who’s sponsoring the entire sordid mess.

While it’s not surprising that there were ads geared towards weight loss the surprising winner for ad most aired was a 30-seond spot for Braun’s Pulsonic shaver. It came in at 18 airings in the six hour period. Now while the two ads running for Curves came in at a distant nine showings, (second to a Benilyn ad at ten showings) the Curves spot was nearly double the length of the Braun ad at about 58 seconds. So in the great big scheme of things Braun and Curves got the same amount of air time. Apparently Braun is just as concerned as Curves that you get thinner. Who would have thunk it?

An interesting twist was an ad for Thermacare back wraps that appeared a few times. For months, I’ve only seen a Thermacare ad profiling a couple on vacation during which the husband suffers from back pain. The one airing on Fat Day, however, featured a woman dressed in active wear trying to get in shape and paying for it by having her back go out. An interesting new year’s twist.

Interspersed through out the day were these little blips called “Fat Facts.” These ranged from the inane: “a single pound of fat contains 1.6km of blood vessels” to the so relevant and un-pursued for the rest of the programming that it hurt: “healthy foods often cost more than foods high in fat, sugar or starch.” If even one documentary had run with the concept of good food costing more it would have been really, really interesting. Alas it was not to be.

Honorable Mentions and Poignant Moments
“As it turned out the true story of how the virus woos the body’s fat cells was like a Bollywood epic.” That was the full quote that got me through. It was taken from the doc “Fat Plague” where it’s theorized that people might be catching obesity when someone next to them sneezes. Dr. Dhurandhar is years away from ever proving that this is happening in humans and it’s completely likely that he never will. There was no less than six minutes of that doc taken up with Bollywood-type actors and actresses dancing and singing the story of the adenovirus AD-36 attacking the body’s pre-fat cells and making them fat. While I’m not holding out hope that they’ll find a cure for my weight gain, it was a lot of fun to watch.

Creepiest moment: a group of children are shown pictures of three people who look exactly the same, are dressed the same and are performing the same activity. The difference between them is that one is thin, one is medium sized and one is fat. Without fail the children all chose the fat figure when they had to decide which one of the three was deceitful, ugly, scared, lazy, stupid or selfish. Even Daniel, the overweight child being profiled made the same choices. I guess I shouldn’t be wondering why film makers can’t manage to step away from the visual and sound conventions of showing fat people when we all, apparently, think ill of them.

Most poignant moment of all: Diane, the woman from Houston weighing 625lbs talks about her first diet: “My first diet; I was eight years old. At eight years old I weighed 133lbs. And I can remember that very clearly. It took me a year to lose 30lbs and two weeks to put it back on. That’s all it took. Since then I’ve been on that same program five other times; never successfully obviously. Matter of fact I’ve even gained weight on it a few times.”

There was a woman in the UK, Lisa Kirsch, (profiled in “Diets from Hell”) who is a size 14 but cannot stop dieting. And frankly I don’t feel for her. Lisa doesn’t look overweight. Men don’t expect her to be grateful for a date—in fact she’s married with two children. She doesn’t get stared at in the street. No one has ever called her orca (I actually got that one once—and I was 20lbs lighter than I am now). Her issue is all in her head. None of it is showing up on her body and so she’s got a leg up in my books. She just has to fix what’s going on in her head and she’s good to go. Diane, on the other hand, like all recognizably fat people and even more at her weight, must deal with the shit that goes on in her own head as well as the unwanted opinions of others. She has had a gastric bypass and had to have it reversed. She’s quit trying to lose weight and I don’t blame her. And while the documentary in which she appeared, was supposed to show the humanity of a woman like Diane, all those awful shots of her in comprising positions, are really about the spectacle of a woman like Diane. I guess that was the problem with the entire day of programming. I walked away from it wondering how much longer will it take before we hold ourselves, as a society, responsible for making a spectacle of anyone?