Biggest Loser Finale
December 18, 2008
So I fast-forwarded through the Biggest Loser finale the other night. Somehow they managed to fit 14 minutes of compelling programming into a scant two-hour time-slot. This season was won by the woman of ambiguous ethnicity (the younger one).
I enjoy the show and I enjoy the idea of people making positive changes in their life but there’s certainly something a bit depressing (or hilarious, depending on my mood) when you read or hear of the “winners” gaining back some or all of the weight.
For example, Ryan, the guy who won the first year ended up gaining all the weight back. Here’s what he wrote about his preparations for the last show in his season:
I wanted to win so bad that the last ten days before the final weigh-in I didn’t eat one piece of solid food! If you’ve heard of “The Master Cleanse” that’s what I did. Its basically drinking lemonade made with water, fresh squeezed lemon juice, pure maple syrup, and cayenne pepper. The rules of the show said we couldn’t use any weight-loss drugs, well I didn’t take any drugs, I just starved myself! Twenty-four hours before the final weigh-in I stopped putting ANYTHING in my body, liquid or solid, then I started using some old high school wrestling tricks. I wore a rubber suit while jogging on the treadmill, and then spent a lot of time in the steam room. In the final 24 hours I probably dropped 10-13 lbs in just pure water weight. By the time of the final weigh-in I was peeing blood.
Fun!
Twilight Time
December 15, 2008
I saw the movie Twilight this weekend. Now, I realize that movie is geared towards people half my age and with two less testicles, but I went with a good female friend so it’s not quite as gay as it sounds.
I actually thought it was pretty okay. I mean, the story was not really all that great, and apparently we still haven’t mastered the CGI effect of people moving through the air gracefully, but I thought it was still interesting enough. I won’t end up reading the books but I’ll probably check out the sequel.
One of the big themes of the movie was something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately and that is the idea of temptation and not giving into it. This is beyond obvious but I feel like the biggest roadblock to success in losing weight is how we handle dealing with temptation. Part of temptation is actual hunger, but it goes beyond that as well. If you’re on the Atkins diet, say, at some point your going to be like, “Sweet christ I just want to have some pancakes!” And it’s not a matter of being hungry, it’s just a matter of being denied something so that thing becomes so much more attractive.
So the first way I go about managing temptation is by not having any rules. If nothing is off limits, it no longer has the allure of the forbidden. But of course you can’t just eat as much as you want of whatever you want and lose weight. So you have to not only trust your common sense, but follow it as well. Sure, you can have a cheeseburger and fries for lunch if you go a little lighter on dinner. You know all the rules about losing weight because you’ve read all the articles that do nothing more than restate these rules for the last 50 years.
But even with no set rules in place, you’re still going to have to deal with temptation. One cookie for dessert will sound good, but 18 will sound so much better. This is the kind of temptation you don’t want to give into. You want to train yourself to be satisfied with one cookie. I believe you can do this, just like you can raise and lower your tolerance for alcohol depending on how much you drink. So you eat that one cookie and now it’s up to you to manage the temptation for more. This is all a mental game. And you get good at it by inviting the temptation and then not succumbing to it.
In his essay, Compensation, Ralph Waldo Emerson talked about the Sandwich Islanders and their belief that the strength and valor of the enemies they killed would become their own. In much the same way, Emerson wrote, “We gain the strength of the temptations we resist.” This is a notion that has helped me out a lot. I believe you should put yourself in a position to fail so that you can gain strength by not giving into temptation. If you’re someone who eats half a dozen donuts in the morning, go to Dunkin Donuts and get one, eat it, and leave. You’ll feel like a normal human, and you’ll gain a lot more strength by doing that than by avoiding Dunkin Donuts altogether.
Dear Oprah
December 12, 2008
Dear Oprah,
Hey there, sweetheart, what’s going on? I hope you’re enjoying this holiday season. I picked up a recent issue of O magazine (I’m not sure which month it was but I’m pretty sure you were on the cover) and it has some great advice on where to get the best cashmere socks and a very compelling interview with Blair Underwood. I don’t know how you do it, girlfriend!
Listen, I hear you’ve been having trouble with your weight recently – you’ve slipped back into some old habits and packed on a few of the pounds. Sounds like you could use a visit from hunky home-improvement guru Ty Pennington to renovate your big fat rear-end! Right, girlfriend? What? Oh, I’m sorry, I was just kidding around. I apologize.
You’ve been struggling with your weight for over 30 years and I know you think the answer has to be difficult or mandated by some expert you’ve brought on your show. But you yourself are living proof that even with the best advice available and your own personal chef, it’s still very easy to gain the weight back. One big problem that you need to get over is your belief in magic; your belief in books like The Secret, or putting pictures on your Vision Board, or “sending your desires out into the universe” and all that shit. It’s not real. It doesn’t exist. If that stuff did exist, we wouldn’t be talking about your fat ass again because you would have willed it into the ether already. The universe doesn’t care about you. It doesn’t give people yachts and it doesn’t give them pediatric AIDS. The universe is indifferent. It doesn’t care. It doesn’t have the capacity to care.
But I do, and I’ve got a bit of a heads-up for you. Remember in the 80’s when you went on that liquid diet and then you carted out that wagon with the fat in it? You looked real skinny but you ended up gaining the weight back super-quick, so that kind of sucked. And then, in more recent years, you went on a “sensible” diet where you did a lot of power-walking with Bob Greene and ate poached chicken breasts and wild-rice and things like that. And, although it took longer, you ended up gaining that weight back too. Well, here’s something Dr. Oz isn’t going to tell you: eating “healthy” to lose weight is just as flawed a long term strategy as going on a liquid diet to lose weight is, because neither strategy has anything to do with your relationship with the foods you naturally crave and enjoy. You never learn to eat them in moderation, you only learn to avoid them. Oh sure, you told all of us that after cutting out the sugar and the grease you learned to love the taste of carrots or whatever, that’s what everyone says, but in the long run look what has happened. Or, as Dr. Phil says, “How’s that working for you?”
So I’ve got some different ideas for you about how to lose the weight. You can read about them on this blog. I hope you’ll check them out.
And hey, how about this Barack Obama fella? Am I right, girlfriend?!
Christmonth
December 8, 2008
I’m in the midst of celebrating Christmonth, which is a month long holiday I’ve created between my birthday at the end of November and Christmas. But you can celebrate it too, even if your birthday isn’t at the end of November, just use Thanksgiving as the start of your Christmonth.
Christmonth (pronounced criss-month) is a time when we should all try to live two attitudes to their fullest. The first is “good will towards men,” which is a fairly common sentiment this time of year. The second is “aww, fuck it.” For example, “I really shouldn’t sit here eating a pan of brownies and watching ancient, Tivo’d episodes of Scott Baio is 45…and Single when I told myself I would wallpaper the guest-bathroom today. Aww, fuck it, it’s Christmonth!” In fact, the spirit of Christmonth is all about extending the idea of good will towards men to include yourself too. You get to be hard on yourself and disappointed in yourself the other 11 months out of the year. For this month just relax and do the things you want as long as you’re not hurting anyone else.
I realize a lot of my advice comes down to “Hey, just chill out,” but I think that’s a valid bit of advice in a lot of ways. It might not be useful for everything in your life, but I think the things we obsess about can sometimes be helped by taking a step back rather than being more vigilant.
