"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.

Only the Beginning

I recently started the process as a serious candidate for bariatric surgery and it seemed like a good framework to begin a blog. I am going through health insurance to do this, so it is an involved process requiring years of documentation, a physician-supervised and monitored diet and exercise program, a psychological evaluation, and more. People I know have many questions about how it works, what the timelines are, and just about every other imaginable aspect of it, and that I thought perhaps a blog would be the way to go. So I'm giving it a try.

My intention is not to write Only Specifically a Bariatric Surgery Blog, or The Definitive Bariatric Surgery Blog, and I hope that isn't all this one is going to be or sound like. I would like to believe that just about everything about me as a human being and what I have to say is more important than my Body Mass Index. A complicated series of events that took place over decades brought me here, and are only one part of the story, as they are for most people in my current position.

Considering bariatric surgery is a more complicated and involved process than one might imagine who hasn't had the need to investigate it completely. It's not an easy cure or way out, not a magic bullet, as many people with an opinion but not education regarding the topic seem to believe. (I have been researching this topic for about ten years and I learn something new about it every day, in part because it is always changing.) Bariatric surgery is one optional tool to help the obese people who choose to have it manage their weight and health in coordination with healthy lifestyle changes in diet and exercise. It is not an easy thing to decide to have, maintain properly once it has happened, and for many, it is not an easy thing to pay for. There is no guarantee that it will be effective, though it has worked for many people.

I am not going to talk about whether this surgery is right or wrong. Its inherent risks are well-documented and the choice to have or not have this surgery is up to the individual. If you believe bariatric surgery is a cop-out, I very much doubt I can change your mind. (My own mind tends to change when I decide it changes, and not a moment sooner.) Most people who reach the point of having bariatric surgery feel that they have tried every possible measure, both healthy and unhealthy, to lose weight--and I count myself among them. Diets, exercise programs, medications, eating disorders, drinks and pills and bars that taste like cardboard coated in flavor-free goo but that just might be full of that all-important protein are a regular part of our lives, along with the conflict that goes into every bite we take or even think about taking. The world at large feels entitled to have a opinion about our bodies--not just our own families and friends, but doctors, adult strangers, even children we've never laid eyes on before. We cannot go anywhere without thinking, am I going to fit in the seats there? We can't put on our walking shoes without thinking, Is some guy going to yell names at me out of the car today? Before we grocery shop, we wonder how many people are going to stare at what's in our cart this time. We try to be ready for any comment some nimrod throws our way, but the nimrods of Earth come up with some real lulus, usually when you're in a good mood, having managed to forget for a few minutes that you're fat and that your very presence offends the world. Contrary to popular belief, we didn't all get this way from sitting at home eating cheeseburger after cheeseburger. As my husband--whose weighs approximately half what I do--is fond of pointing out, "We have the same diet."

I begin this blog today with the hope of documenting my journey to a healthier life with more purpose. When they asked me why I wanted this surgery, I said, "To feel better." That pretty much says it all.