Supersize vs Superskinny

As I’m trying my best to “stick with the programme” I’ve been an avid viewer of all the diet/healthy programmes on TV that I can find.  I have to say that most of these shows will either make me roll my eyes to heaven or in some cases they’ll be so crap that they make my blood boil, but I watch them nonetheless because I need the motivation.  One of the latest I’ve come across is Supersize vs Superskinny on Channel 4 and I’m afraid for the most part it falls under the “making my blood boil” category.

The basic story is they get one supersize person and one superskinny person, both being very unhealthy in the extreme and each has to eat each other’s diets for a week.  While in some respects it might be a helpful exercise to point out the error of a person’s ways, the whole presentation and feel of the show is just plain sick really.  For a start there’s the title sequence which has cross sections of naked bodies, large and small, but with the genitals blanked out in a Barbie and Ken sort of way.  Then there’s the (Gillian) McKeith style pile up of all the food consumed in a week, except it’s chucked down a chute into a tall Willy Wonka-esque pipe thingy.  The aforementioned “Dr” McKeith also features in an effort to “Ban Big Bums” where she goes around the UK stripping women down to their underwear and getting them to bear their arses while she does her Chief Sgt Major act on them.  Then to top it off our Gillian has a mini section where she gets people to guess calories and really there’s no point to it because one week something like a Cornish pastie had less calories than fish and pasta???

In the end it shows whether the supersize person has lost weight, whether the superskinny person has gained any and of course good old Gillian delivers the bum downsizing verdict.  Oh and there’s another little segment of a guinea pig reporter woman trying out different dieting methods – from what I’ve seen so far she’ll be lucky to emerge alive – the first one I saw had her getting this “liposuction during your lunchbreak” kind of idea where she ended up with only one arm done that ended up bleeding profusely, later turning black and blue.  Another time she got a massage and she pooed afterwards resulting in losing a few pounds.  This week she interviewed a woman who pooed out all of her excess body fat.

Programmes like this quite honestly scare the crap out of me (no pun intended haha).  Leaving aside the dangers attached to trying all of those silly things above, none of the people involved are portrayed to have learned anything at all, there are no lifestyle changes whatsoever.  That scares me because of the effect it could have on people watching – yes they show some dangers like the problem with unlicensed diet pills and Gillian gives her spiel about what the healthy stuff is but I’m afraid that I can’t help thinking that many people would walk away thinking that okay diet pills are dangerous but hey they work and that they might as well have that Cornish pastie instead of fish because “it said on the telly” that it had less calories.  With all the supposed governmental efforts there are at the moment to combat obesity it scares me that there aren’t sufficient regulations in place to ensure that the information being put out on TV and elsewhere is in fact correct.   But then again, who am I kidding?! 

Rant rant rant…….

I get knocked down…but I get up again….

Okay, so last week (as in the one ending on Saturday 9^th) was a complete and utter disaster. Though, in fairness, I didn’t think it was going to be all that bad, or maybe that was me just trying to convince myself? Anyway, the bottom line is I gained 2lbs.

The trap I fell into was I was actually eating healthy stuff (for the most part) so I consoled myself with that. I forgot however, to remind myself that although nuts are healthy, too many of them will result in a larger waistline. I also fooled myself into thinking it wouldn’t be that bad because I did one little bit of exercise for the week…

The cause of the disaster was a disruption to my routine. I had a reunion with some friends on Sunday night which meant I got home at 4am, which hardly ever happens anymore now that I’m a bit more sensible in my old age. Though I was lucky enough not to have to get up at the crack of dawn on Monday, I did have to get up and get on with things and I spent the whole week trying to put things right with my system.

Another spanner in the works on Tuesday morning involved a pulled muscle/trapped nerve/somethingorother all because I reached up into a cupboard! It was one of those freaky things that have no rhyme or reason to them. This incident left me in a considerable amount of pain, not to mention feeling extremely sorry for myself.

So, after Sunday’s weigh in I resolved to drag myself, kicking and screaming, back on the wagon….. Of course, we’d a family dinner planned on Sunday and I haven’t quite yet mastered the art of figuring out what exactly is healthy in a carvery lunch (they had salmon, which I love but it looked a bit dry and manky). So, I had my pork dinner and resolved to draw a line under it and get going on Monday (yesterday).

That’s a thing I seem to do actually and I’m trying to stop it – the tendency to write off the whole day because I fell during one hour, or the whole week because I had a day where I fell off the wagon. It’s a dangerous thing because it gives me permission to eat what I want and that’s exactly what I’m trying to stop!

I’ve been learning lots about calories from the WLR experience and have been very shocked by the amount of calories in some of the so called “free” foods in the WW regime. Though it’s still a bit of a chore because I’m still getting used to the lay of the land, (i.e. portions, calorie content etc) I’m finding that the online tools at WLR are enabling me to have a much more healthy attitude towards food, particularly with regard to portions and quality versus quantity.

Overall what I’ve learned from the gain this week is that I seem to get away with NOTHING – it would appear that I cannot afford to take my eye off the ball for even a microsecond. Ouch…!

Slowly but surely….

I had intended to update sooner than this but I became completely distracted and ended up using a lot of my “sitting in front of the computer time” reading the wonderful Dietgirl’s blog. I read the entire archive and I’m glad I did. It’s so heartening to see that someone else has made it through the tunnel and has managed to retain her sanity and humanity. So it was a diversion, but a worthwhile one, because I feel very focussed and determined to move forward and plough my way through this journey.

I have decided to revise my plan slightly after reading Dietgirl’s blog. I followed a link from there to Weight Loss Resources and so far I find it excellent. I have to confess I’m nervous of the “free” foods on WW – I tend to treat “free” as a “free for all” and before I’d know it I’d have an entire bag of carrots gone. I need more discipline than that. I need to re-programme myself into realising that eating is not a hobby – not easy for someone who loves cooking. But I shall soldier on.

I actually feel very proud of myself after last night. I realised that by 8pm I’d overdone it on the calories. Proud? Of that? Nope. What I am proud of is what I did next. Instead of my usual “oh well that does it, today’s totally gone – might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb”, I decided to hop up on the exercise bike and try to work off some of those calories. And you know what, I did. I did my first 8km stint on the bike and while my arse was killing me afterwards, it felt so good. Up until last night I had done 4km at a time (2km before that). I tried slowing down ever so slightly (from 28kph to about 25kph) that I was able to last the pace a bit better and it gave me the ability to work through the discomfort a bit. So, combined with the 4km I’d done earlier that made 12km in total for yesterday – that’s 7.5 miles – into town and back! Yay!

In other positive news, I’ve dropped 1.2 in my BMI – my last weigh in was Sunday and I’d lost 3.2lbs. I as delighted with that after my previous disastrous (period induced) gain.

It’s all happening very slowly right now and I’m still at the stage of actually getting my arse moving and re-programming the brain, but it’s a nice feeling to realise I might actually be able to settle into this healthy eating malarkey.