I’ve been watching Taking It Off on Discovery Health Channel these past couple weeks. In case you’ve never seen or heard of it, it’s a reality show that covers people who are losing weight for six months. Each week they weigh in to see how much they’ve lost (or gained). In between weigh-ins, they follow them throughout their daily lives to show the kind of lifestyle changes they made and how they are progressing.
I love this show because it’s real people with real weight problems. Most of them have other issues as well like divorce, lost loved ones, or even emotional or physical abuse as a child – which I’m sure are contributing factors to their weight. When you see before and after pictures, you know they are real. They don’t paste the heads of the same person on a different body like I’m sure most advertisements do.
This show also gives me motivation and inspiration to keep living healthy. Each person tries a different weight loss program and for some they work, for others they don’t. They have nutritionists, doctors and personal trainers to give them advice and encouragement.
Yesterday, when I was watching, I saw something so profound, that I realized that this is a huge problem in so many people. At the first weigh-in, one man tipped the scale. He figured he was about 375lbs and that’s as far as the scale would show. After he stepped on a digital scale, he was blown away when he realized he was actually 475lbs!
He knew he was overweight, but he had no idea that he weighed 100lbs more than he initially thought. First of all, if you get on the scale, and you’ve maxed it out, you should know that it’s time to do something right now! Secondly, I realized that this almost surely happens to plenty of people.
I’ve seen and heard of people who are so blissfully unaware of their weight problems, that they are shocked when people comment on their weight.
Some of these people may legitimately be unaware, like the man on Taking If Off, or they may just be avoiding the unavoidable truth. They may think that if they don’t say they have a problem, then they won’t have to deal with it.
Of course, this is just my opinion, but if I’m right, what exactly could we do to make people more aware?
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