Fat Gals on Television--Drop Dead Diva and Huge and why I watch them...

Warning: I ramble like mad. Sorry. Don't feel like revising and proofing over and over to get to essay-like laser focus. Heh.

Television--and cinema--tend not to depict US folks the way we really look. Most of us aren't toned, trim beauties and hunks with white-white teeth and perfect makeup, hair, clothes who look stunning the second we wake up and don't look droopy and pooped the moment we go to bed.

Go to a mall (one not frequented in high numbers by foreign tourists) and look around. What do we look like? For the most part, we're decently groomed, but not glamorous. There will be the occasional really elegant or really updated stylish types, but most just go for comfort. And we tend toward the pudgy side of things, with many of us walking around sporting quite a bit more adipose tissue than is desirable, fashionable, even healthful.

But on television, size 2 rules among women. Should an actress dare to show 10 lbs more than she should by the Hollywood standard, she's gonna have her butt or belly or thighs pasted across tabloids and talked about on Access Hollywood or TMZ and some celebrity blogger will taunt her. (Jennifer Love Hewitt can attest to this.)

Should a formerly glamorous beauty turn flabby and fat (Elizabeth Taylor years ago, Kirstie Alley today), she will be made fun of by late night hosts and everyone under the sun. Maybe they'll be sponsored by some convenience diet program. Because, God forbid, a celebrity look like the rest of us.

Oh, and don't grow old. That's another sin, unless you're a man, who can still get great roles and be a romantic lead at age 65+ (Harrison Ford, Sean Connery,Robert Redford, etc).

But television is right there in our homes, and while it will happily lead or reflect changes in public mores and attitudes about sex or family structure or work or etc, it's sometimes really slow in showing the changing face --and ass--of America.

As a Latina, I know that some years ago I kept asking, "Where the hell are we? We're like 20% of the population, so where are we?" I mean, Freddie Prinze and Desi Arnaz are way in the past. What's happening now?

Then  Jennifer Lopez made box office, Cristina Aguilera and Ricky Martin and Shakira made the charts and MTV's videos, and George Lopez's show gave us a family-face. Sophia Vergara is on Modern Family now (and funny, too). Cute young Latin performers are on TV (the half-Puerto Rican family on Wizards of Waverly Place). Hunkorama Adam Rodriguez makes the girls go mmmm on CSI: Miami. (Although, really, for a city that's more than 50% Hispanic, that show needs some more Latin face flavor and don't get me going on CSI: NY's dearth of Hispanics.)

So, I ask less often about the ethnicity factor and more often about the fat factor. Where are the pudgies, chubbies, zaftigs, chunkies, and fatties? We're a fat country. We're not a country of ectomorphs. We're roundies. J-Lo made the big Latin butt popular among non-black, non-Latin folks, will Drop Dead Diva and HUGE make the bigger gal popular in television programming of the future?

Dunno, but I tune in. I loved DDD from day one and haven't missed an episode. The actors are excellent and the show is fun and funny while often addressing important issues other than fat-related ones. Even my husband sits to watch with me without fail. The lead actress is plus-size who comes across smart AND pretty AND talented. She may have the soul of a skinny blonde inside, but what we see is an attractive, successful lawyer of a Lane Bryant size brunette. And it's about fricken time a plus-size lead actress can be seen as SEXY AND COMPETENT.

While we've seen big gals featured before--notably Roseanne, whose eponymous show let us into the often cantakerously dysfunctional world of a supersized wife/mom/blue-collar worker. But Roseanne wasn't put out there as desirable or super-successful. She was the tough-talking, no nonsense, unglamorous big gal married to a blue-collar supersized hubby with often rebellious kids.

But at least she wasn't a vindictive whack job like Mimi in Drew Carey Show--with the clown makeup and insane outfits that said, "I'm fat, so yeah, I am a big joke." It was okay for Drew to be the fat guy who gets the cute gal. Mimi was just the fat gal with no fashion sense and a psychosis.

Blasting to the past a bit, I have fond memories of tuning in to a new show called THE PRACTICE and seeing a size 22 or so Camryn Mannheim as a regular (even with her notable man woes). A less-cute precursor to DROP DEAD DIVA's Jane, she was a a smart lawyer gal (though not as brilliant as others in the team). Again, though, unlike DDD's Jane, who gets warm "almost passionate" looks from one of her colleagues and has a passionate relationship (spoiler: now off) with a prosecutor, Camryn's character was not drawn as an effervescent object of like and some lust.

Anyone remember LESS THAN PERFECT?  A show with two less-than-slim gals. Both Sherri Shepherd and Sara Rue have lost weight now, and Sara, who was the show's lead actress, now plugs Jenny Craig. But hey, I liked seeing a show with gals who displayed more "average" American bodies.

Back to today: I'll say this--at least the characters in HUGE are more like regular fat teens. Some are overprotected and meek, some are rebellious, some are super-hot-to-trot, all have issues with either their bodies or society's rejection of their bodies or both.

I don't remember my teen years as being all lightness and joy. I was chubby --by my own estimation and by size category, as I wore a size 10 at start of my teens and a 12 by graduation from high school. Old school measurements, not the revised ones of today, meaning I wasn't really THAT  big, geesh. My hips were 41 inches at age 18, and I weighed 139 pounds, which I remember one cousin going, "Whoa!" when I measured them. I wish my hips were that "big" now (for reference, they're 54.5 inches) . I used to read diet books that had calculations that told me I should weigh 123. Right. Yeah. Like that ever happened.

No wonder I couldn't enjoy being NORMAL weight

I rode bike. I did yoga. I walked for miles. I swam for hours in my sister's complex's pool. I loved the beach and let my poochy belly (got it from mom) show in bathing suits. I didn't FEEL fat in my activities. But society/diet books told me I was overweight and should reduce. So, I couldn't enjoy my body fully, though I was normal.

It makes me furious to this day to think about it.

So, even with HUGE not being anything outstanding yet --one can hope. I base that hope on the really charismatic presence of unkempt, snarky, cellulite-baring Nikki Blonsky. (I never saw this gal in anything else she's done, but man, she's good, good in a way Ricki Lake never, ever was when she was "the cool young fat actress of the moment." Although, to give Ricki her props, she's gotten better. Saw her in an indie flick not too long ago, and thought, "Oh, she's finally learned to act.")

HUGE is the television drama version that reminded me of an MTV documentary I watched a while back that showed teens at a weight loss camp.  It had the same vibe as HUGE, maybe was an inspiration, dunno.

 Some critique the fact that the show doesn't feature someone with total body acceptance without reservations (ie even Will has issues). Well, I had fat friends as a teen. Not merely "a bit fatter than me", but fat. Big. Round. Obese.

And not one had total body acceptance. Every single one wanted to lose weight. One underwent a radical weight loss over one summer vacation: left school in spring quite obese, and returned to the new year's term normal weight. She must have pretty much fasted, and protein fasts were very popular in the seventies. She got a huge boost of confidence, was more active in social events, and got a boyfriend. Clearly, it made a "huge" difference to her life.

I'd find it unrealistic if the characters in HUGE really were totally happy being large in a society that hates large, big in a culture that considers big a fatal flaw, particularly for females. I might believe in a character that believes in fat/self acceptance, but still wishes she could "fit in" to a slimmer world just cause it's EASIER. I've heard that view spoken by gays: "It would just be easier to be straight." Doesn't mean they hate themselves, just means that they wish day to day life was less full of obstacles.

I suspect Nikki Blonsky's "Will" may say she likes herself the way she is and it's going to prove to be nearly all talk by season's end. Maybe she doesn't have the profound self-loathing so many of us have had/have about our fat, but I suspect that it was universal in my teen circle in high school: the chubs all wanted to have the figure of the bat girls, cheerleaders, desired girls in school. The ones the boys rated 9 or 10. We wanted to shop in normal clothes stores, not Lane Bryant.

But even so, a drama needs conflict. External and internal. Otherwise, boring.

HUGE has an assortment of issues under the skin of its fat characters, and I hope the show improves so I don't just tune in cause "Hey, a show with fellow fatties." No, I want it to be a show that really delves into the issues big teens (and by extension big adults) face in a big-despising society.

At least Gina Torres and Nikki make it really watchable (as do a couple other actors doing a very nice job, imo). I like these two ladies a lot. They both have charisma.

And I admit, that I had this moment of intense sympathy and even admiration when Gina Torres' camp director character, when offered a special food one evening, says, "I don't eat after dinner. Ever." (I paraphrase, as I don't remember the exact wording of the script.) And she repeats it.  This is a character who has lost a lot of weight and is paying the price, in terms of discipline and self-sacrifice, to keep it off. The total seriousness and even bit of anger in the tone as the lines were delivered gave me chills.

It's not easy being fat. But it's not easy staying slim, either, as I think we're going to see more of in the show.

So, I'm hanging in there with DROP DEAD DIVA (yay, me loves Jane!) and HUGE (just okay, but me loves Gina and Nikki). I'm all for employing the fat in Hollywood. :D

Bad sleep, salt bender, and more depressing research on how women's bodies hold onto fat....

Well, I've been struggling to stay on a normal schedule, and my nite owl body is resisting like mad. I was so happy when I was up early and to bed early, but that only lasted like 2.5 weeks and then I started having sleep issues as my body wants to be a vampire again.

When I don't sleep well, I am hungrier and more prone to want those fast food baddies. Don't know why, but it's true. If I sleep well and deeply and at least 8 to 9 hours, I do better with my eating and exercising. When I sleep poorly, I crave salt and I crave sugar and I can barely get through a training session. Yesterday's Pilates class was a struggle punctuated by cramps and having to stop and start several times, whereas the ones when I was getting up earlier were hard, but doable. And I've been practically sucking on the salt shaker.

Disgusting.

So, today, I'm gonna go get some veggie and fruit smoothies and try to mitigate some of the damage from all the sodium. I feel bloated and I have dark circles under my eyes. Not nice.

Of course, to add insult to bloaty injury, I read this: Weighing the Evidence on Exercise.  This is a really interesting article, and I recommend any of you who are struggling with diet AND exercise to read it. It's not the happiest news for us ladies, though, because, as we already knew, when it comes to weight loss, biology favors the gents and royally screws us. The article highlights how, especially in women, exercise increases ghrelin which increases appetite. (I can attest to this. I'm always FAMISHED after a hard workout and hit Starbucks for a sugarfree latte posthaste.)

But it's not all grim news in the article, though it is still grim for those of use with BMIs higher than 25 (and if you're obese, yeah, your BMI is way over 25). (see page 2 of article).

If you plan to lose the weight and keep it off, you (and I) better learn to either love to exercise A LOT or just buck up and do the exercise, love it or hate it. Why? Cause exercise isn't just about calories out. It seems to do something to your very physiology:

Scientists are “not really sure yet” just how and why exercise is so important in maintaining weight loss in people, Braun says. But in animal experiments, exercise seems to remodel the metabolic pathways that determine how the body stores and utilizes food. For a study published last summer, scientists at the University of Colorado at Denver fattened a group of male rats. The animals already had an inbred propensity to gain weight and, thanks to a high-fat diet laid out for them, they fulfilled that genetic destiny. After 16 weeks of eating as much as they wanted and lolling around in their cages, all were rotund. The scientists then switched them to a calorie-controlled, low-fat diet. The animals shed weight, dropping an average of about 14 percent of their corpulence.

Afterward the animals were put on a weight-maintenance diet. At the same time, half of them were required to run on a treadmill for about 30 minutes most days. The other half remained sedentary. For eight weeks, the rats were kept at their lower weights in order to establish a new base-line weight.
Then the fun began. For the final eight weeks of the experiment, the rats were allowed to relapse, to eat as much food as they wanted. The rats that had not been running on the treadmill fell upon the food eagerly. Most regained the weight they lost and then some.

But the exercising rats metabolized calories differently. They tended to burn fat immediately after their meals, while the sedentary rats’ bodies preferentially burned carbohydrates and sent the fat off to be stored in fat cells. The running rats’ bodies, meanwhile, also produced signals suggesting that they were satiated and didn’t need more kibble. Although the treadmill exercisers regained some weight, their relapses were not as extreme. Exercise “re-established the homeostatic steady state between intake and expenditure to defend a lower body weight,” the study authors concluded. Running had remade the rats’ bodies so that they ate less.

As someone whose fat is primarily that dangerous abdominal adiposity, this is actually something that offers a bit of comfort. I may really hate aerobic exercising (though I enjoy Pilates), but the fact that it might have an effect on my worst fat issue--that deadly abdominal fat--is something of a spur.

I'm gonna go check Netflix and On Demand for doable aerobic exercise for big me. I hate to sweat, but I hate this huge, deadly belly more.

It's not good news. Good news would be, "NewsFlash: We've found the magic bullet and you can all be trim with one daily pill with no bad side effects that also happens to make you look younger." :D

Until then--we know, we know--eat wholesome food and move, move, move.

So, let me finish watching THE DOCTORS (they have the Eat This, Not That dude on today, and he's kinda cool), finish my second cup of java, and then do a shopping list for debloating and defatting this week.

Later...from the bloated Princess...


ETA: Well, I found this on sleep and weight loss in a Washington Post article:

What do we know? Scientists have an idea for how lack of sleep might contribute to obesity. In two studies, lack of sleep was found to influence two hormones that help control hunger. Leptin, made by fat tissue, tells your brain when it's time to stop eating, while grhelin, which is made in the stomach, signals that you ought to eat more. Both studies -- one involving 11 subjects, the other more than a thousand -- found that restricted sleep led to suppression of leptin and increased grhelin activity, two states that could make you want to eat more.

At least one doctor is willing to take the leap and recommend that people who want to lose weight should get a handle on their sleep. Michael Aziz, author of "The Perfect 10 Diet" (Sourcebooks, 2010), writes, "Getting enough sleep is the cheapest and simplest advice I can give for losing weight."

A Depressing Update...And Clearly, I Haven't Accepted The Hunger Factor

I updated my weigh-in at left, sidebar, and it's not good news.

The lethargy continues. I did see my new endocrinologist on Tuesday, and I need to get to the lab for the blood test. I'm still feeling muffled, damped down, apathetic, though I'm self-talking like mad, trying to get my spirit revved up. And on top of all that, I gotta get my uterus biopsied after getting ultrasound results. Lovely. It's been the year of the medical appointments. Four so far with three docs.

But seeing the increase on the scale is always that little shock to the system, and it doesn't help the mood. I want to feel angry enough to get the mojo back, but all I feel is defeated. I won't wallow too long, but it's the emotion of the moment.

As if I didn't already know, I read an article today, which says what a lot of us already know by trial and error--it's the calories. The rest plays an assisting role--exercise, group support, journals, green tea, supplements--but it's all about the calories. Whether it's via self-control and strategy and planning, or via gastric bypass or via gastric banding or via stomach stapling or via diet pills: The reason people lose the weight is cause they EAT FEWER CALORIES.

The benefit of surgical/medical intervention is that it offers an escape from hunger. Doing it the old-fashioned, low-tech way means you really do have to learn to live with some or a lot of hunger, which, frankly, sucks monkey butt.

Here's an excerpt from "It's Not What You Eat, It's How Much," but you might wanna read the whole thing over at ABC News:

In terms of dieting, community support can be critical but choosing a plan is up to an individual, and the hardest part of losing weight may be accepting the hunger factor.

Past studies have shown that calorie restriction is the biggest determining factor for successful weight loss, even greater than exercise.

"There are those with unrelenting optimism, who think [dieting] is going to get easier," said Marlene Schwartz, deputy director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University. "But if you are eating fewer calories than you are burning, you are going to be hungry."

But the study's findings encourage experimentation, Sacks said, and the flexibility to find the best balance of calorie restriction and satisfaction for individuals.

"The hardest thing, having been born and raised in America, [was that] I thought I was entitled to eat as much as I wanted whenever I wanted and I would stay the same weight," Termini said. "But you can't do that. And it's not healthy."

So, off to see how well I manage the hunger and food choices today. I'm telling myself to be good, to nurture the optimism, to find my inner warrior.

My inner warrior now needs to get my outer wimp over to the kitchen, where a whole papaya sits on the counter, waiting to be prepped for breakfast--yeah, breakfast. I woke up today at 12:30 and I've moped around feeling like I didn't sleep at all. Lack of energy sucks monkey butt, too.

I want to have eggs and toast and papaya and coffee. I have a mango I can have with lunch, which will probably be a light soup (I took the cans out of the pantry last night and put them on the counter, so I wouldn't ignore them.) A tiny bit of conscious effort to remedy the sad upward course of my weight since late last year.

I could do so much better, I know, if I didn't feel this pressing lethargy. I feel like I'm walking through concrete, like my face is this flat, expressionless mask. I wish I could give up feeling sucky for Lent.

Now, off to get this day going. With some hope, some prayer, and a papaya. :)

Have a great Thursday.

X-Weighted and Marichu

This is a repeat episode from 2007, but it does show what being a junk food/take-out junkie will do to your body. Both Anthony and Marichu (the Mrs.) were obese. They were also clearly feeling the damage to one's self-esteem that so often comes with being so large.

Marichu had to deal with clutter issues, and not just body clutter--house clutter. (I'm a hoarder, so I know of clutter .) And you could see that the pain of change was weighing on her as much as her fat. She was very weepy and her face was this harrowing mask of depression. Hard to watch.

She couldn't even celebrate her 32 pound loss at the mid-point weigh-in (at three months). Honey, 32 pounds in 3 months is a VERY good weight loss rate. Are you kidding me?

I wanted to slap her.

But I realize that she felt she was working so hard that she should have lost, I dunno, 50?

Not how it works. Fat comes on as easy as pie, goes off harder than heck.

It's such a shame she couldn't jump up and down with joy for that 32 lb loss. I got so tired of hearing, "Was it worth it?" Yeah. If you didn't gain, if you lost, it's worth it, cause not doing anything, girl, just makes you FATTER.

I should add her hubby was also not celebratory over losing 36 lbs in 3 months. What is with these people? Do they have SAD or something?

At the end, they both lost big, looked better, made inroads into making their lives more vital and enjoyable. Marichu in part did this by passing her second attempt at her lifeguard test (she failed 3 of 4 tests the first time). And Anthony did it by engaging in kickboxing and realizing he'd been so miserable for years, but that he could be happy again. (Marital issues came to the fore, as it's bound to when people start to assess and make changes to their lives.)

It was really great to see Marichu and Anthony both look so much more alive--their faces no longer tragic masks. And the kids now have so much of a better shot at NOT becoming as obese as their parents, as they learn to cook healthful meals and learn to enjoy fruits and veggies, instead of just consuming fast food fare.

Final tally: Marichu lost 66 lbs (originally weighed 245, ended up at 179) and a total of 26 inches. Anthony lost 63 pounds (original weighed 347) and a total of 22 inches. Man, she beat him. How 'bout that?

At the finale, Marichu was able to glow and smile and show elation. She looked great after the makeover (hair and clothes). The frumpy, uberwhiny, hangdog-faced depressed housewife was gone. The Girl was back!

Nice.

Now, that was 2007 the show first aired (and I don't know if that means the weight loss occurred in 2006 or 2007). But I would like to know how they're doing now. Have they lost more? Have they maintained? Have they regained?

One thing I hate about these weight loss programs--X-Weighted, You Are What You Eat, to a lesser extent The Biggest Loser--is that they don't do adequate follow-up. As a viewer, I'm interested in what happens when real life strikes.

After all, the ranch is not real life. It's...intervention. It's...treatment.

I'd like regular follow-ups of ALL the contestants to see the ones who succeeded AFTER the show ends. The ones who keep it off, they're the ones to learn from, frankly. But I think it's important to see the ones who do not succeed in maintaining, because we learn from that, too. I know the first TBL follow-up was too upbeat and felt like a whitewash. Subsquent ones reported online were less slanted.

While I don't know how this couple is continuing to do, if her facebook photo is anything to go by, Marichu is doing great and looking faboo. Gives a gal hope. :)

I think one of the good things of shows like this one is the clear depiction of how losing weight can impact so much of a person's life. Fat gets in the way. I know that fat-acceptance folks mean really well. But fat gets in the way of doing so much, of going places, of feeling able to stretch into new avenues. I know fat encapsulates me in more ways than the physical.

Marichu's story--and Anthony's--show how getting leaner and stronger opens doors to living.

~

UPDATE: The original Anthony/Marichu show re-aired today (I watched part while having a snack), and I thank Beth for giving the heads-up in the comments section about an update. If you are curious about what happened to this couple AFTER the show, go here and scroll down for the follow-up info.

Not Impressed by Five Pound Loss of Recent Diet/Exercise vs Relaxation Study

While I totally believe that stress screws your body and mind up, and destressing and learning to do things that involve quietness and meditation are healthful (they prove so to me), I can't get too excited about that study recently reported all over the diet world online. You may have heard about it, the one that says that destressing with meditation and Yoga and such is better for weight loss than diet and exercise.

The destressors kept off the five pound weight loss for two years, while the nutrition info and the diet/exercise groups didn't lose or keep off.

When you're big like me and five pounds barely registers, this is not big news. If the women in the study had lost and kept off 25+ pounds (just with destressing), I might perk up.

But I've struggled to keep off 25 lbs. I had lost 29, then regained, then lost, then regained a bit, then lost. After my last bout with asthma (3.5 weeks of ickiness), I'm up again. For me, 25 pounds is an ongoing battleground. Makes me nuts. So, excuse me if a five pound loss after two years doesn't make me go yippee for Yoga.

Five pounds. This is gonna solve the obesity epidemic? I think not.

I still think that it's a holistic thing that's gonna get us there--ie, dealing with sedentary habits and moving into movement; dealing with excess calories and outsized portions and learning to eat less; cutting down or out the junk and non-nutritive foods and snacks and focusing on whole and clean foods; working with internal/emotional issues and learning how to tap into the self-control we all have to some extent; tapping into our spiritual power (if we believe in such); creating support systems in and even beyond our family/friendship circles; committing to a lifestyle change that is lifelong; changing the societal landscape so that it is fashioned and structured to support healthful living; encouraging employers to make room for exercise at work and offer healthful snacks instead of junk on the jobsites; incorporating stress management techniques; eliminating all junk from schools; adding penalty taxes to junk foods and using that money to offset health care costs for obesity; tax deductions for gym memberships and buying at-home health gear (bikes, ellipticals, treadmills, etc); making health a top family and personal priority for life.

Destressing, as you see, imo is part of that holistic approach. But without diet and exercise and support, etc, I'm sorry, the very overweight and obese and superobese can't be satisfied with losing five pounds doing yoga. That's not gonna cut it.

So, I'll take the study for what it's worth. Yes, I'll continue to incorporate mind-body/destressing times and activities into my life. But that will not solve my obesity problem--or the nation's. Or the world's. Life is stressful, no matter what we do. Destressing helps, but when you'r mom is dying or your husband leaves you or your kid gets a major illness, or your car is totalled or your country is at war or your house is foreclosed on or someone robs you at gunpoint or a hurricane is coming--stress is hard to eradicate. I think the researchers who de-emphasize or pooh-pooh (or seem to) the role of diet and exercise ain't helping us as much as they might think.

They probably just make us worry about destressing enough. :)