Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edition

I turned this program on today because I was cleaning and wanted something on that I could listen to and mostly ignore. This show is just reinforcing toxic diet culture ideas. It might be helping 20 people a season--at least in the short term--quite a bit. But look at the cost for millions of viewers. They come into this desperate, morbidly obese person's life, take away all their junk food and put them through a harrowing workout. Then over the course of a year, they give them weight goals to hit with the promise of some non-food reward to motivate them. Invariably the person fails at one of the weigh ins (which proves that even after educating them and giving them the promise of free skin surgery and amazing non-food rewards, it's still not enough to "fix" them), at which point they're berated for not trying harder. Generally, they do lose a staggering amount of weight (at least the contestants that they show. Who knows if there are others who give up altogether). Then they get skin surgery and a final reveal party. Everyone is happy, the end.

Even though I'm so so happy for the people who lost weight, I got so mad at some parts of the show:

• reinforcing the idea that all a person needs to lose weight is to be educated on how to eat healthy and how to workout. No mention that the mental part of weight loss is the most important part. A LOT of overweight and obese people have been dieting for most of their lives, know exactly how to eat healthy and workout, and have still never succeeded in the long run. Why do you think this is? Because of this very toxic diet culture which this show is perpetuating!

• reinforcing the idea there's "bad" food these people just shouldn't eat.

• reinforcing the idea that weight loss has to feel like a punishment. In the third episode I watched, the young obese man was doing water aerobics at the beginning of the show. The trainer berated his workout, saying it wouldn't get him any closer to his weight goal. I hated it.

• blaming the contestants for lack of willpower when they invariably fail at some point during the year. Yeah of course they failed! You've done nothing to address the issues in their lives that they struggle with. You haven't taught them any substitute methods to deal with stress. All you've done is take away their favorite foods and given them hard, punishing workouts. How do you expect them to cope on bad days. Eating and working out are only a small part of weight loss. The big part is the mental work.

Even without changing the format of the show, they could make simple changes to the script to make the show less toxic.

• Change the script when throwing out the junk food. Instead of making it sound like "bad" food, they could focus on all the healthy foods they're bringing into the house and show the obese person choosing to throw away the food they don't care for, perhaps saving some of their favorite foods to eat in moderation.

• instead of the trainer berating the man for doing water aerobics, he should praise him for taking steps toward his health, and offer to show him some strength training exercises to incorporate

• instead of making the first workout look like a punishment, they could have the same workout but show the contestant really enjoying pushing themself

• when the person starts struggling with their eating or workouts, the trainer could show more empathy and not telling them they failed because they lost willpower. They could show them some tricks to get into the gym even when a person doesn't want to. They could show them going to therapy to help deal with their issues. The can teach the person meditation. They can show the person how to go out and indulge, but moderate it so they don't fall into "fuck it" mode

I worry that all these contestants will regain their weight since they were never taught the mental part of weight loss. Furthermore, I think this show perpetuating harmful ideas about weight loss will keep millions of viewers from learning how to lose weight and keep it off for good.

submitted by /u/moncul1
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