Strong being the new "skinny" is a GREAT concept. In fact I LOVE this idea. I have never wanted to be skinny; nor did I ever think I would get to skinny in my journey of weight loss. However, this show really ticked me off today. So they had one woman from the new show come on to Dr. Oz to talk about her experience. They showed clips from an episode of Strong and she talked about how broken she was when she went on the show. So they showed a before picture of her and felt the need to mention her size (a 12 by the way). They then brought her on to stage so you could see how she looked now and out walked this super SKINNY person. She may very well be much stronger than she was before. But, the show then had to tell the audience that she is now a size 2 and made this transformation in 3 months. When she talked about how she did this and what she did she obviously talked about her diet and exercise.
I know you can all guess what she did. She drastically changed her diet to eat ONLY clean/natural foods and ate 5-6 small meals a day. She then was working out before work AND after work. And even now she is "only" working out 90 minutes EVERY DAY! Does anybody else think that this sounds slightly unrealistic for the "every day" person? If you want to get overweight/obese/morbidly obese people to change their lifestyle to get healthier, I believe this isn't the way to do it. If you are someone who is eating fast food multiple times a week or maybe even multiple times a day; how does it make you feel when someone tells you you just have to completely change the way you eat overnight? Overwhelmed? How about when you're told that you need to workout for HOURS every day? Overwhelmed even more now?
I believe that this is why so many people stay overweight. I also believe that this is why so many people fail at "diets". People who think they have to make such drastic moves will either not even start in the first place because it is so overwhelming or they'll do it for a finite period of time only to gain the weight back because they cannot possibly keep up the lifestyle they have chosen to lose the weight.
Trust me people, I am on a journey to figure out what is going to actually work for me to finally lose this weight and keep it off. To have being HEALTHY as the top priority and worrying less about what the number on the scale says, but instead focusing on how I feel and how happy I am with how I look. Are there some people who can make the lifestyle change to eating only clean and working out 2 hours every day of the week? Absolutely! But, are there probably more people who will find this lifestyle awfully difficult to maintain? Probably.
So what frustrates me is, even when people are trying to be more positive and tell women to focus on being strong and not skinny, they show us these people who are skinny! She may be a strong skinny and way healthier than someone who is skinny without lifting weights, etc; but SHE IS STILL SKINNY! And, coming from a person who is not skinny, that is what the overweight/obese person sees. It would be much more helpful to me if you show me someone who is more average size and is still considered fit and healthy. You don't have to have 15% or even 20% body fat to be considered healthy and strong. As a woman you are considered fit if your body fat percentage is 21%-24% and you are considered HEALTHY/acceptable if your body fat percentage is 25% to 32%.
The fact of the matter is, this woman was probably in a healthy body fat percentage range when she first joined the show. Now, I'm not saying that if you're 32% body fat you shouldn't want to make a change - that's a personal decision and awesome if you want to strive for that fit or athletic body fat percentage. But what I AM saying is that if you're trying to reach the people out there (like me) who need hope or motivation to get themselves into a place where they are healthier, perhaps don't focus on someone who started at a size 12 and is now a size 2.
Perhaps a more helpful story would be one where someone who started out at 240+lbs now weighs 175 lbs; and even though the BMI considers her to still be overweight her body fat percentage is 30% and she is as healthy as she's ever been. Furthermore, she didn't make these changes overnight or even during the course of 3-6 months. She took time, worked hard, fell off the wagon and got back up; worked at it for a year plus and made it to her goal.
I know there are stories like that out there. I just feel like they are harder to find and today's post was because yet another one of those "other stories" came up. Sorry for the rant. I am done now.
And for those who didn't already know, that story above IS going to be mine! :) My story is still happening. I work hard, fall off the wagon, get back on and NEVER GIVE UP! I will be writing my story of how I started at 240+lbs and am now at X weight with a healthy body fat percentage. If that X weight puts me still in the overweight category of the BMI I am not going to care! I am working on my mind this time more than anything. To anyone else out there struggling.....we've got this! Just don't ever give up. Shake it off, take a break and come back stronger! And focus on being strong and not skinny!
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