Healthy eating, information overload and confusion!
12 Mar 2012 3 Comments
in Diet and Nutrition Tags: Biggest Loser, dieting, Eating, Health, healthy eating, Obesity, Physical exercise, protein, weight loss
I’ve been thinking more and more lately about healthy eating, diets and weight loss, the information overload we are all exposed to and the 
continual exploitation by the media of people’s worries, fears and insecurities.
Watching a late night repeat of a Biggest Loser winner who had put most of his weight back on and has now lost it again reminded me of all the things I dislike so intensely about that programme and others in a similar vein (the USA version of Obese a Year to Save my Life being another), namely that anyone can lose weight in a severely restricted, controlled environment – in fact it would be hard NOT to lose weight when you have to completely suspend your real life and your decisions about food and exercise are completely taken away from you. The hard part is always losing weight or maintaining the loss whilst living a normal life, making everyday family decisions over food and dealing with normal life stress.
My complaint has always been that programmes like this and magazines publishing some z-list celebrity weight loss story only ever tell half a story and an airbrushed, edited, highly selective story at that. They simply don’t provide people with the real knowledge to make healthy choices and healthy decisions. So, what happens? People expect to lose weight overnight and are disappointed and demoralised when they don’t and those that do, often lose the weight on a restrictive diet and are surprised that it all goes back on again when they resort to their old eating habits.
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Obesity, weight loss and the media
29 Feb 2012 2 Comments
in Diet and Nutrition, Exercise and Fitness Tags: Biggest Loser, dieting, fitness, Health, Jessie Pavelka, Obesity, weight loss
One of my current pet gripes is with the continual somewhat exploitative media around obesity and weight loss. I understand that this is serious issue in today’s modern society but the unrealistic way in which these issues are portrayed, the gratuitous exposing camera angles and the high levels of emotion (just make sure they cry on camera seems to be the message!) just continue to perpetuate the myths around weight loss and fitness.
The Biggest Loser is, in my own opinion, one of the worst culprits, continually focussed on losing pounds without any of the explanations behind why any of the “contestants” – lets not forget this is an old-fashioned reality competition – are on specific diets, how their exercise routines are worked out or how much warm up, stretching etc goes on behind the scenes. All we get to see are humiliating intense routines where someone always has to fail, public weigh ins and eviction for those who don’t do well enough. Whilst, for those who take part it may seem like an extreme but effective way to lose the weight, I would question how many of those people are happy with the way in which they are portrayed on camera.
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Biggest Loser
23 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment
in Diet and Nutrition, Exercise and Fitness Tags: Biggest Loser, Biggest Loser UK, Charlotte Ord, Kettlebell, Personal trainer
I have to declare from the outset that this is one of my most disliked shows on TV (yes I have watched half an episode of the USA version but had to turn it off in disgust after that) but I am very aware that opinions are completely polarised – you either love everything about it or, like me, dislike it intensely and all it stands for.
So, given my hostility I was very surprised when doing some research to come across Charlotte Ord as one the trainers on the UK version (which I must hasten to add I have NEVER watched, the combination of the premise behind the show and Davina McColl presenting are just too much for my taste!). Charlotte was one of the first female fitness presenters on TV that I watched especially as the programmes she presented were based around the stuff I was doing in the early days including TRX, Kettlebell and another couple about rest and recovery using foam rollers. I admired her training style and it was so useful to see normal people doing the Kettlebell exercises that I couldn’t get my head round. It inspired me and helped with tweaks to my technique, making it all that little bit easier.
Judging by some of the comments on her blog other people were surprised too that she agreed to train on the show; I can see what the show gets out of it, after all she was Personal Trainer of the Year 2010, and her style is very different to Jillian Michaels but apart from the exposure does the association with things like this damage a trainers brand or? Or, at the end of the day does that really matter as long as more people know about fitness, training and what you can offer?
Looking at her posts recently she does seem to be aware of how the show is portrayed and there is definitely a hint of disappointment that the hard work, training, stretching and rolling don’t make the final edit – all of which go to perpetuate the myth that weight loss is easy and all that matters is pounds lost. There is just so much more to it than that and it would have been good to have a trainer like Charlotte lead from the front and try to change some of the appalling myths that hamper people from healthier lifestyle changes.
This really isn’t meant to be a criticism of Charlotte Ord who I actually think is really good but rather my dislike of such an exploitative show and my disappointment, I guess, that someone I kind of admire is associated with something I dislike so intensely.
By way of a bit of balance, check our her blog above there are some really interesting articles on fitness trends for 2012 as well as bodyweight exercises at home.
