Humiliation is a Great Motivator

Seeing yourself on TV is a true revelation. Was my double-chin really that big? Who knew my teeth were so crooked that it actually looked like I was missing a front tooth with those harsh stage lights shining on my face? Does my face always contort like that when I talk? There is a lot of opportunity to perseverate on every detail of how you look and sound, and then rewind the tape to stare at it some more. But this...this was simply so humiliating that it was almost surreal. I had been reduced to a character - a representation of all those other fat girls out in the world who felt demoralized and hopeless that they'd ever have the body, and likely the man, that they so craved. That wasn't really me. And, furthermore, I was going to prove to everybody I knew who'd watched my public shaming that I wasn't going to be fat forever.

I read Bob Greene's book. I decided that I was going to make weight loss and body transformation my top priority in my life...I watched the tape of that live show over and over if I needed any inspiration to motivate me. I began waking up every morning at 4:30am to walk on the Lake Michigan shores for an hour every morning before work. Inclement weather, exhaustion, illness... these were no deterrants to my rigorous training schedule. After a month, I began to jog as much as I could during these morning routines and joined a local YMCA to supplement my mornings with evening and weekend workouts. After two months, I had lost nearly 20lbs. and was able to run nearly a mile - more than my 26 year old body had ran since high school. My success was enough to prove to me that if I worked even harder and ate even less I just might actually reach my goal of being "normal" sized (I determined that fitting into size 8 pants would be my gauge of "normal" sized). In a word, I became addicted to working out and rationing my meals. I began running 5k's and biking 10-20 miles every day...yes, I worked out every day for at least an hour and was terrified to every take a day off as I didn't trust myself to continue this kind of progress if I had even the tiniest break in routine. I was filled with fear that one slip up would send me back on that road to weight gain and I couldn't face any more shame.

Almost three months after the airing of that live show I was contacted by the same Oprah producer I'd spoken with before who was "checking in" on my progress. I was elated to share with her that I'd lost nearly 34lbs. (almost under 200!) and had begun working out since the show. I was also more than eager to share my anger at my humiliating portrayal and my experience of feeling betrayed by the producers who failed to truly explain why they'd wanted me to participate in the first place. The producer then shared with me that the show had received a lot of mail asking about me and requesting a follow-up on my progress. Would I be interested in coming back to tape another show about maintaining weight loss goals over the holiday season with Bob Greene? I didn't confer with my friends this time...HELL YES, I was interested in redemption...I wanted my opportunity to shine and forever erase my title as the person who "thinks she'll be fat forever".

I sure feel like "The Biggest Loser"

I went. After some deliberation, and the support of good friends (what if they send you on an all expenses paid trip to some luxurious fat farm in Arizona...you'll never forgive yourself if you don't go!) I decided to take the limo ride to Harpo studios and sit in front of six producers to talk about my frustration with Oprah and my own journey with weight struggles. Forty-five minutes, and six crying producers later, I left with no idea why I'd been chosen to have this bizarre interview or what was going to happen next. They had told me they couldn't give me more information due to the "sensitive" nature of the interview's purpose...I found out three months later that they were casting for what would become a video series of Oprah viewers who followed her newest weight loss guru Bob Greene. I didn't make the cut, but I was contacted by producers to participate in a live taping of the show that was going to be focusing on weight loss. I asked for more information about why they wanted me to participate and I was again told that the frustrations expressed in that letter written almost one year ago was representational of so many of Oprah's viewers. I asked for some time to consider and again consulted with good friends. And, as you can guess, they consulted in my favor of my going (what if you become Oprah's new best friend and weight loss buddy...what if you get to hang out with HER??), so I agreed.

Another stretch limo ride later and I found myself in the green room of the Oprah show with no idea why I was there or how I might be participating in the show. All of my colleagues, friends, and family were glued to their television sets waiting to see me in my big international television debut. It all happened so fast and seems so long ago now that I only remember quick snapshots of the next hour of my life:

...wow, there she is, she's really shorter than I would have imagined..."Hi, Oprah, you look great!"..."thanks," she said, "I'm wearing Prada."...there's a microphone pack clipped to the back of my plaid stretch pants that I bought specifically for the show...I'm seated in the front row with some other large people who seem to be in the same situation as me...the show begins with screaming, cheering women in the audience and it is revealed that this show is about Oprah's newest weight loss success with her trainer Bob Greene...it's all moving so fast, live TV is actually filmed in real time...suddenly Oprah call's out "where's Denise" and I stand as two cameramen run to the front of me...and then she says, "I HEAR YOU BELIEVE THAT YOU'RE ALWAYS GOING TO BE FAT AND SINGLE"...did she just say that?...yes, she did...did I say that?...yes, I did, in my producer's interview...respond, look intelligent and don't cry...I managed to say something about how hopeless it felt to have struggled all of my life with weight and how I felt unwanted as a larger woman...it's all over...the camera people moved back away...everything looks soft through the tears in my eyes...it's over and I'm back in the green room where my mic pack is ripped off, I'm handed a copy of Oprah's new book, and I'm ushered to a waiting limo...I'm dropped back off at work left to face my colleagues who have just seen this horrible series of events play out ON LIVE TV.

I didn't actually see the show until it was aired later that evening in Chicago, but I did see the look on my coworkers faces and I did receive dozens of voicemails from family and friends expressing what seemed to be more like condolensces than congratulations. It was worse than I could have imagined...who wears plaid stretch pants when they're trying to look smaller? I looked as though I had been punched in the gut as I stood up and heard Oprah's chilling reflection, smiling in stunned silence for a few perceptible seconds. There it was - the subtitle under my name read "thinks she'll be fat forever". I'm not kidding...it actually said "thinks she'll be fat forever".

And so it begins...again.

Hey there...whoever you might be. My guess is that if you found this blog you've had some kind of experience with being overweight or struggling with incorporating healthful choices into your daily routine. I am aware that these kinds of challenges do not make me unique. As a matter of fact, obesity and a sedentary lifestyle are becoming more and more common in our culture. It's just too easy to eat empty calories from a frozen one-skillet meal instead of nutrionally balanced, delicious, home cooked meals in our busy lives...to watch Biggest Loser on TV in your one free hour after a long day of work instead of treading to the gym for a quick workout...to work too hard for too long at a moderate to low paying job during the week and crash on the weekend from exhaustion than to balance and integrate healthful choices into each and every day. Perhaps I'm revealing more about my life than yours or anyone elses, but I refuse to believe that I'm that different or that my struggle isn't shared by lots of other people out there.

I must begin with a confession...I am a life-long fat girl. I have always been bigger than my peers for as long as I can remember. I was the only kid in kindergarten who couldn't use the swing that hung from the ceiling of our classroom because I was too big...by grade school I was regularly called "tub-of-lard" on the playground...by junior high it was clear that I wasn't exactly hot property in the eyes of the pimply, scrawny, silly boys that I was supposed to obsessively spend my time pining for...by high school I had learned that my keys to social and personal success were my intellect and my sense of humor instead of my looks or my affiliation with the popular girls or boys...by college I was busy smoking clove cigarettes, wearing black, baggy clothes that hid my every increasing waistline, and hanging out with my sullen, brooding, mostly unhappy art school friends who accepted me without much reservation, regardless of my size. When I arrived at my early 20's, I had completely internalized my identification as fat and felt as though I would always be the big, funny, smart girl that everybody liked by nobody really knew or loved for all that she was. And then, SHE happened...OPRAH happened.

Have you every made an unusual, split second decision that led to a life altering series of events? Perhaps you have and you simply don't know it or it hasn't quite played out yet. I did so in the fall of 1995...I actually wrote a letter to Oprah WInfrey after she aired a show in which she wheeled out a cart full of animal fat that was meant to be representational of the weight that she had recently lost on a liquid diet. I am not a person who writes letters to TV show hosts, I swear. However, my outrage at her arrogance, her grandiosity, and her irresponsibility, as well as the fact that I was working at an advertising agency directly across the street from Harpo Studios where I regularly saw her entering and exiting the workplace, led me to pen a scathing letter that I thought would disappear into obscurity. Apparently this letter was representational of thousands of other letters that were written after that show aired...at least that's what the producer said when she called me nearly 9 months later to invite me to Harpo studios to film an interview with other Oprah show producers about my experience of that show.