"Don't Stop Till You Get Enough"

So now I'm back blogging, you know I need to weigh in on this month's weightiest topic (you see what I did there - twice!) - The Biggest Loser. If you know me, you know I don't see anyone based on their size. I am in the fitness industry because I want to help people love movement and to be healthy. I could give a crap what their BMI's are. I want people to live long, healthy, productive and active lives, and to have absolutely no regrets. Let's be honest here, this is only possible at or within a healthy weight range (which differs for every individual). So please do not think any comments about weight in this blog are meant unkindly. I'm not that person.
I am going to make a confession here. Don't hate or judge.

I have NEVER watched the Biggest Loser. Nothing about watching people who need help get humiliated and set up for failure appeals to me. Now I understand that not all the contestants gain all their weight back - but I would love to find some statistics as to how many currently maintain a healthy lifestyle. For the record - I have no problem with people losing weight in a doctor supervised, personal trainer assisted, dietician approved environment (which the show is) but I have always thought the show needed more.
- a psychotherapist. Overeating to morbid obesity is a disease and must be treated from the inside out. The why of each individual circumstance should be addressed fully or the cycle will continue.
- a life coach. To take each contestant shopping for groceries, clothes, help them make meal plans, teach how to make healthy meals and snack by themselves, and how to schedule and organize their lives. THEN, in the final month of the show, they should go home with the contestant and help them implement these rituals when the added daily stresses of life are back. Help them identify their triggers and manage their emotions. ANYONE can lose weight, get fit and eat healthy when they are locked in a bubble. It's the real world that fouls everything up.

I know - these things cost more money and, let's be real, all reality TV is more about making money than actually helping people. I know it's cynical, and I'm being very general...but too bad, this is my blog.

So the big kerfuffle is as follows.

"Contestant on Diet Challenge Show Loses TOO MUCH WEIGHT"

Ummm..hmmm....duh! Sorry, I know that Rachel looked a little like a praying mantis, but SHE WANTED TO WIN! She had to lose a certain percentage to beat the other two finalists and she did just that.What would YOU do if $250,00 was on the line after you starved yourself and were verbally bashed into working out a gazillion hours per week until every joint ached, and your body wanted to collapse? Exercise while overweight or obese is extremely difficult. Every movement, sitting and standing even, can be painful. Amplify this by what these contestants put themselves through and I would want a HUGE reward at the end as well. This was the motivator for these contestants - to WIN. They wanted to be the Biggest Loser. Not the fittest Dad, not the hottest Mamasita, not the "health nut". They wanted to be the Biggest Loser. Unfortunately, the actual results become the byproduct.

Do I think she lost too much weight? See above. Results vary with individuals - what is a ridiculously low weight for one 5'4 woman is completely healthy for another. I pray that Rachel and her health care team can determine what that is for her.
Until the headlines read,
"Biggest Loser sends Home Contestant, Rejecting them Because They Failed to Meet Unrealistic Weight Loss Goals, and thus Perpetuating their Already Constant Cycle of Low Self Esteem and Emotional Issues"
I refuse to comment any further.
Find Your CORE!

"Black & White"

I have been incredibly negligent with my blog for just over a month. And I don't really care, so suck it, blog fans! You know I love all of you who take the time out of their busy day to read my ramblings, so a little abuse now and then will just help add to your need to read me, I hope. That and, "absence lets the heart grow fonder" and all that.
Why have I been away?
Because I have been in a funk. Been low, feeling blue/blah/blech. Although I have had one of the best month's ever, I can't quite shake the constant dark cloud over my head this last month or so. I mostly haven't let it affect me too much, but you know what they say...the blog is the first thing to go !
Also, writing is my rawest form of self expression, and although I can change my thoughts and patterns in the real world to reflect my inner happiness, it's the dark and twisty part that would take over here, my emotional state as translated by my fingertips.
I am in the business of loss/gain. People seek my services as a personal trainer for many reasons, but mostly because they seek one of those two things.
LOSS/GAIN
WIN/LOSE
CONQUER/FAIL
EMPTY/FULL

Lots of black and white in my industry, right? But don't all these things have relevance in our real lives - we generally tend to miss the grey and live at one extreme or another.

We don't remember the epic performance by a Canadian athlete who finishes 31st, do we?

We measure our successes, both Olympian and mundane, in extremes. WE WON! we lost. I LOST 10lbs!
i gained 10lbs. I RAN 10KM! i didn't do it fast enough. I'M HUNGRY! i ate too much.

But at the end of it all, aren't we the same person regardless? So why can't we sit somewhere in the middle and enjoy the whole experience a little bit?

I am dwelling on loss of late, and what it means to me, or indeed, the greater "us". I experienced in short succession, my father experiencing a health incident that led to him being in a permanent vegetative state. Through this situation, I also lost a relationship with my brother, and though we were never close, it stings nonetheless.
On February 19th, 2013 I lost my mother, Angela Faith Jones. Suddenly, as they say in obits, but not completely surprisingly.
I had already lost her in a way, but it didn't dull the ringing ache that took her place in my heart. You see, it was black and white thinking that led us to not be the mother/daughter duo that both of us so fervently desired. I love her with a daughter's love for her mother, and of all the loss I have experienced in my life, the loss of her left the biggest wound I have ever left untended.
Where is the grey area of loss if the opposing action is gain? What do we gain from losing people we love? As positive a person as I am, I'm not ready to contemplate that just yet..but maybe some grey.
If I sit in the moment and try to wrestle with the emotions of loss, I admit that there is some middle ground to be had. Memories to share with my children, funny sayings and mannerisms to giggle about, and lessons to be learned from my parents wisdom, triumphs and failures. Going to the cinema has become a chance to share a film with my Dad again, and watching Patrick Chan skate to Vivaldi's Four Seasons, a chance to cheer him on as my Mum would have. There is middle ground between the two extremes.
So for all that I have lost, I must realize that fundamently I am unchanged.What has physically left us remains in so many ways, whether the loss be person, pet, pound or pride. Nothing of importance fails to leave its mark, but we ourselves continue on, the same person, regardless.

I'm just figuring out this whole thing, so excuse my ramblings. Just a reminder that although life throws us some pretty big extremes - sometimes it's best to be content to sit in the valley and watch it all play out. There's lots to be learned from here.

Find Your CORE

Death is Nothing at All
Death is nothing at all.
I have only slipped away to the next room.
I am I and you are you.
Whatever we were to each other,
That, we still are.

Call me by my old familiar name.
Speak to me in the easy way
which you always used.
Put no difference into your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

Laugh as we always laughed
at the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me. Pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word
that it always was.
Let it be spoken without effect.
Without the trace of a shadow on it.

Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same that it ever was.
There is absolute unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind
because I am out of sight?

I am but waiting for you.
For an interval.
Somewhere. Very near.
Just around the corner.

All is well.


Henry Scott Holland