I think M likes it when I get riled! 😉 (I'm going to try not to though.)
So when M was deciding my topic for this week, she asked me if I had ever heard of the show "Fit to Fat to Fit." I had a vague memory of it, which I believe was actually her mentioning a commercial she had seen for this new, unusual fitness/makeover/new you/weight loss/exercise show, which she confirmed I was correct about.
Now, I've never watched the show, so I'm not fully informed of the methods by which this was done, but I doubt my opinion would change much if an extremely informed person were to extremely inform me that I was way off on my thoughts of this, AND my understanding of the participants methods.
But here's how it works:
Very fit fitness coaches spend several months gaining weight. This must be done in an unhealthy way- I can't imagine there's any way to gain a ton of weight quickly and still be healthy about it. That's strike one. Really, that's actually all the strikes. And I consider that to be many, many, many strikes.
It's actually a novel idea to have weight loss fitness coaches losing their (over)weight right alongside their clients. The idea is (other than the opportunity to come up with a new reality show to make a whopping lot of money from) that having the same starting point as their clients enables them to relate to their client.
While that seems cool in theory, it seems very superficial. Like, six pack-spray tan-bleach blonde hair superficial.
Those in professions that work with other individuals should certainly be able to build rapport with their clients/patients/students/what have you, without compromising their physical systems with the shock of rapidly gaining far too much weight and then turning around and trying to drop all of it. There is simply no way this can be healthy.
The other thing is that while it's a huge shock to their system that no one in their right mind (with a health and fitness background) should do, it's also demonstrating very unhealthy choices to past, current, and future clients. Not just their clients, but everyone who sees or hears about the show!
It may be an interesting show, and I can see where the clients/coaches may feel closer and possibly more motivated in this kind of situation, I am completely, totally, without a doubt opposed to the idea of fit-fat-fit.
Just be kind, motivating, creative, supportive, hard working, loving, caring, weight lifting, walking, jogging, dancing, swimming, balancing, laughing, smiling, hydrated, 80/20-healthy-to-unhealthy diet ratioing, empathizing FRIENDS, and do your best to walk alongside your clients without compromising your own dang health, folks!
And now, excuse me while I carefully step all the way down the staircase from my soapbox.
Be healthy, y'all.
Ok, :) now I'll give you my thoughts on this: I watched the show a couple of times because I was naturally curious about such a method. Each time I watched it I found myself feeling irritated and agitated with the attitude and ignorance. The mindset of each of the trainers that they picked for this experiment was that overweight people are lazy and should know how to fix the problem immediately. I think the thing that bothered me the most with the show however was the way they started gaining the weight. Their first meal they go out to a restaurant and order unrealistic amounts of food to stuff into their mouths, because you know, that's realistic of how I eat every single day, NOT!! It was disgusting and infuriating!! In my personal opinion they were way off on their experiment and should really reconsider the show! Ok, I'm off of my soapbox now also! Thank you for your views! :)
ReplyDeleteOkay, I'm with you on this! I had never watched the show and was trying to be polite about the conclusions I was drawing, since I really had zero knowledge of the details and would have been making a lot of assumptions. The show seems to have missed it's mark if the original premise was intended to be a positive one!
ReplyDelete