I also remember how you [Adro Sarnelli, winner Biggest Loser's first series] presented yourself at your final weigh in (behind closed doors and a few days before filming so contestants had time to recover and look healthy)…..you were starving, pale, had shallow breathing, low blood pressure, cracked lips and you were unable to stand on your own two feet – hardly a great advertisement for healthy weight loss….. all the contestants begged me to ask the producers to have you drug tested. I took that request to the producers and was told they didn’t want to know the truth, they just wanted a good winner and told me to shut up and go away. This was one of the many problems I faced in the job I became known for being difficult in…….because I spoke up when I felt it was wrong or that we were being deceitful. I refused to be the face of their online diet club, I refused to sell their shakes and diet bars, I complained when someone who went on to win was living off 200 calories a week, I complained when I had to participate in a cover up for the contestant (who also went on to win) who drank bottles and bottles of tea tree oil (and whose relative was caught smuggling more in) to lose gross amounts of weight and more…..it made me NO friends, but I refused to drink or even sell the Kool Aid. When I joined Biggest Loser I truly believed I would be able to help people learn to love and care for themselves and hoped my message of loving yourself first was more important than chasing a number on a scale. I quickly learned I was never going to be able to do that. And I am grateful for the good that came from that job but I am sick and tired of people like you who forget how hard the struggle can be and the arrogance and judgement you wield while making us feel inferior, forgetting that fat people have feelings too and deserve just as much love and RESPECT as anyone else.

Whether Ajay’s specific allegations are true or not, I don’t think anyone doubts for one instant that unsafe and unhealthy practices take place on the show and are tacitly condoned by the producers and the staff.

[...I]f WeightWatchers has just cottoned on to researching ”real solutions” for people to lose weight, then what has it been doing with its customers for the past 50 years?

Oh yes, that’s right, running a highly successful business – one that profits from repeat business.

This is a company that, by its own admission, trades in failure.

[...]

But the Plate of Our Nation campaign is not focused on health. It’s focused on WeightWatchers core business – the promise of weight loss. And as any health professional should know, weight loss and health are not necessarily the same thing.

[...]

Lydia Jade Turner, the managing director and psychotherapist at BodyMatters Australasia, condemns WeightWatchers for its fat shaming imagery and messages.

”WeightWatchers is morphing itself to appear as a benevolent public health institution when in fact it is grooming customers for profit,” Turner says. ”The Plate of Our Nation website provides many healthy tips – essentially piggy-backing off already existing public health campaigns – but the problem lies in the ultimate promise of weight loss.”

Turner says ”WeightWatchers has no research to show that it is any more effective than any other diet on the market over the long term”. This makes WeightWatchers’ new aim ”to reverse this country’s obesity epidemic” at best naive and at worst highly cynical.

I’m NOT going to publish the comments for two reasons.

Firstly, every single one of the comments fails to meet the criteria of ‘Constructive Debate’, ‘Respectfulness’ and ‘Open Mindedness’ as defined in my Comments Policy, which on this blog is required reading before anyone comments. It’s clearly listed at the top of the page, so there’s no excuse.

Secondly, all the comments basically boil down to the below and add nothing of intelligence to the discussion:

ALL FATTYBOOMSTICKS ARE GONNA DIE. FROM SUGAR AND FAT AND THE LAZY. EVERYONE KNOWS THIS, FATTY. STUPID FATTY. BAD FATTY. GET OFF THE COUCH, FATTY.

So, ‘Fat and Fatter’ viewers, if you want your comment to appear on this blog, read the Comments Policy and don’t spout fat hate.

Truly, it’s so fucking hard for a woman to leave – then and now – that it’s remarkable that any do. The fact that so many do successfully speaks of their strength of mind and purpose, their focus in saving little bits of money he doesn’t know about, their survival skills, their determination to remove themselves and their kids from any further violence. Don’t sell women who’ve experienced DV short. They may not realise it themselves after their abuser has shot their confidence to shreds, but the fact they are still standing is testimony to their strength.

And I am seeing those qualities reflected in my sister (the 12 month old mentioned above, now in her 30s) who is herself taking a stand and leaving a violent relationship. The police have failed her repeatedly. They failed to make an arrest following one particularly viscious assuault in which her husband repeatedly smashed her head against concrete until she blacked out. I’ve written about it here and here. And they have failed her again recently when she went to them for an AVO and they told her there “wasn’t sufficient evidence because it’s different once you split up”. Ignorant dickheads. OK, that might have been one cop. But because of that one cop’s bullshit assessement, decent cops can’t take the AVO out on her behalf by over-riding the previous cop’s assessment. True there are alternatives, but come on.

So, following trying to take an AVO out on her husband and failing, she made the brave decision to leave. And leave immediately. Have you ever packed up an entire house in 2 days? We did it. She was more than fair in leaving half the household goods (particularly given that we’ve since found out he’s already trashed the lounge and punched the TV to bits in a rage), but we packed up every personal item belonging to her and her kids and put it either into storage or in the back of her boot.

That sounds hard enough, doesn’t it? But wait, there’s more.

She drove with her belongings in the boot of the car and her cat in the back seat with the kids to my step dads for refuge. I had told her she was welcome to stay with me, but I think she wanted some stable male energy. Wrong place to go for that. Before they were even there two days the evil witch who controls our step dad had created drama and was ready to kick my sister and the kids onto the street. But in fact it took another two whole days for that to actually happen. My sister once again packed the kids, the cat and the stuff into the car to drive 1000k or so to my place. Now, that’s not nice in any circumstances. But add two traumatised kids who are convinced their grandad doesn’t love them and a shell-shocked mum just trying to keep it together and you begin to think that my step dad and his evil witch are actually pretty poor excuses for human beings. Week 1 wasted.

OK, so she’s at my place. She and the kids have survival senses that are so honed by trauma and the DV cycle that they are flinching at the slightest thing. Despite being made welcome, they are expecting to be kicked out at any moment. We are having to give the kids so much love, but the trauma is there just below the surface. Yesterday, my sister said that the needed to get into the car and go, and the kids took that to mean that they were “going” going and asked if they were taking the cat!

But apart from frayed nerves and post traumatic stress, she now has to deal with housing. She hasn’t had to seek refuge accomodation, and she won’t have to while I’ve got a say in it. She has a room here as long as she needs it, and she knows it. But it’s not ideal. It’s not her room or her space. She’s living out of a suitcase and it’s cramped (the room, not the suitcase). But she has to deal with long term accomodation, which raises questions of public or private housing. If public, complete paperwork and cross fingers. If private, figure out how to cover the bond and afford the rent. Is there assistance for private bond and rental? What is deemed to be ‘affordable housing’ and how far away from where she is staying will she have to look to find it? What about her son’s special needs? How do they factor in- help or hindrance? And so on.

Accessing any assistance is to delve into a paperwork nightmare. Centrelink. Dept of Housing. Sorting out the banking. And on we go. Through a friend of mine who also went through DV she has finally been referred to a program to assist women who have experienced Domestic Violence, and the outreach worker there is fabulous. Nevertheless, she can only work wonders not miracles.

All this with the time pressure of School starting next week and having to get her daughter into a new school at the start of term. She’d prefer not to have to move her part way through the term, but what if it drags on?

And then there’s furniture. She needs to find money to buy a new lounge (destroyed by husband), dining table (left behind), fridge (left behind), TV (left behind and destroyed by husband). What about cookware and plates? Pretty much all she doesn’t need to replace is the beds and the clothes they are wearing.

The there’s the joint accounts. And the car which is in his name. To contact him about this or not? It’s hard to know which way to turn. And them, of course, there’s custody and visitation rights to the kids. What a nightmare. Anything or nothing could trip him into a violent rage. He’s only an hour a way and – need I remind you – the cops have done nothing to ensure her protection.

My sister is daily in tears about how it’s all too hard. And it is. It’s ridiculously hard to safely extract herself from this violent relationship and to create a new life from practically nothing. Having to contend with homelessness, poverty, fear and more…

Are you starting to get the picture now about why women might not be able to extract themselves from a violent relationship?

NB: Wearing pink, buying pink products and posting cryptic memes to your facebook status are not listed above. I’d say sorry for being a grumpy bitch, but I’m not really.

NB2: Links are Australia-centric because that’s where I am. But I am sure similar organisations exist in the US and other countries.