"Heavy"--new show on A&E

I watched this with some trepidation and was pleasantly surprised by what I saw. I had to watch, wanting to see how the issue was handled.

There are going to be people who watch it and freak out: "How did they let themselves get so big?" and "Oh my God, fat people are just so disgusting." That's par for the course. I thought the show was quite good, better than I expected (the first episode aired last night). Both people were likable--they had their issues and owned them; they were shown struggling but making progress, falling and getting back up again.

I'm sure this show, like "Intervention" (I am a fan of that show as well), will be good sometimes and not as good other times. You simply root for some people more than others. I actually liked the trainers on this show, which was a surprise. They were real, but compassionate. It was nice to see a buffed-out trainer offering his shoulder to a man over 600 pounds who couldn't walk for more than half an hour at a time; to the camera later, buffed-out trainer remarked, "Imagine if you had to walk up a hill with a refrigerator on your back; that's what this guy has to do every day." Not all personal trainers are meant to work with obese people, obviously, and this show found two that are. (The one I had certainly wasn't! I had to laugh; the female subject of this first "Heavy" episode said, "No fat person wants to work with a personal trainer who has never been fat." Preach it, sister!) The trainers were full of praise for a job well done; they knew how to motivate and really took the time to get to know the people as individuals.

The premise of the show is to follow the people for six months. The first thirty days, the folks go to a facility where they are monitored and trained and isolated from everything. The next five months, they go home and take the tools that they use. If they gain weight, they go back to the facility.

A nutritionist went to the store with them and taught them how to shop. They dealt with things in their personal lives; one gal asked her mother to move out of her house, and how to deal with unsupportive people was addressed.

I will be interested to see how this show progresses and is received.