The Weight Loss Game

A few minutes ago on Facebook, I came across a very interesting blog post about weight loss and the companies that profit from it.  It is called “An Open Apology to All of My Weight Loss Clients.”  The author, Iris Higgins, used to work for “a popular weight loss company.”  I don’t know for sure, but it seems that she dealt mostly, if not exclusively, with women.  She spent years teaching people that a 1200-calorie diet was the way to lose weight.  Then people would stop eating only 1200 calories, and they’d magically gain the weight back.  The whole thing is worth a read, but here’s a chunk to whet your appetite:

I owe you an apology, my former client and now friend, who I helped to lose too much weight. Who I watched gain the weight back, plus some. Because that’s what happens when you put someone on a 1,200 calorie diet. But I didn’t know. If you’re reading this, then I want you to know that you have always been beautiful. And that all these fad diets are crap meant to screw with your metabolism so that you have to keep buying into them. I think now that I was a really good weight loss consultant. Because I did exactly what the company wanted (but would never dare say). I helped you lose weight and then gain it back, so that you thought we were the solution and you were the failure. You became a repeat client and we kept you in the game. I guess I did my job really well.

…

So I’m sorry because when you walked in to get your meal plan, I should have told you that you were beautiful. I should have asked you how you FELT. Were you happy? Did you feel physically fit? Were you able to play with your kids? There were so many of you who never needed to lose a pound, and some of you who could have gained some. And maybe sometimes I told you that. But not enough. Not emphatically. Because it was my job to let you believe that making the scale go down was your top priority. And I did my job well.

This is heartbreaking because it’s real.  As I read that, I looked at what I am doing here, wondering if I was part of the problem, part of the solution, or just blah.  In looking at what I have written, I think/hope I have conveyed what is in my heart, which is that the number on the scale doesn’t matter.  For someone as big as I was, it is the easiest way to measure progress at first.  But I think the time will come when I will put my scale away, because …

I’ve been a 300-pounder since high school.  I was briefly a 400-pounder.  In eighth grade, people called me “191” because that’s what I weighed in at in some stupid P.E. class.  I wrestled as a “heavyweight.”  I proudly wore a custom jersey for my city-league softball teams with the name “The Fat Guy” on the back.  I had a very funny license plate frame that played on a classic scene from Tommy Boy, reading, “Fat guy in a little car.”

I could probably spend six or eight paragraphs listing more things.  The point is, my identity has been defined by the scale, by my body, for most of my life.  I don’t mind, really.  I had the softball jerseys made.  I came up with the idea for the license plate frame.  I didn’t have low self-esteem about it, I don’t think.

But I’m done with it.  I don’t want to be defined by my body, by my size or my shape or a number on a scale.  Right at this moment, I don’t mind being defined as a guy who is losing weight and getting healthy, but only because of the potential for helping other people.  Five years from now, when I’ve been perfectly healthy for four years and change, when my old unhealthy self is nothing but a distant memory, I don’t want to be known as “the guy who used to be fat.”

So anyway, as I was saying, the number on the scale doesn’t matter, doesn’t define you.  What matters is how you feel.  I couldn’t play with my kids the way I wanted to.  I couldn’t walk up a flight of stairs without feeling like I was going to die.  Those things matter, and those are the things that I am fixing.

Here’s what I’m trying to say, in a nutshell: If you are here reading my blog to try to figure out how to lose weight quickly, please go away.  I don’t want you to lose weight quickly — I want you to lose weight permanently.  And I only want you to lose the weight that is making you unhealthy.  If you are healthy, if you feel good, if your size isn’t keeping you from living a long, full, happy life, then please, please, please don’t lose weight.  And if it is keeping you from those things, then please stop losing weight as soon as it’s not anymore.

You are a lot more beautiful than you think, and you’re a lot closer to perfect than you think.  If someone else tells you you need to lose weight, if they are motivated by anything other than a sincere desire for you to be healthy and happy, tell them to shove it.

We’ve been defined by the number on the scale for too long.  We’ve told ourselves that it doesn’t matter.  We’ve tearfully told ourselves that if people would get to know the real us, they would see that who we really are has nothing to do with how much we weigh.  But the trap we fall into is thinking only the negative things don’t matter, but that it’s a good thing to be defined as “skinny” or “buff” or “smokin’ hot.”

Forget that.  Anyone who wants to define me as a person by how I look on the outside, whether it is “positive” or “negative,” is not worth my time or attention.  I want to be healthy — that’s a definition I can live with, because it is tied to the definitions I really want: “good dad,” “good husband,” “good friend,” etc.  Being healthy helps me be a better person; being skinny just makes people look.