I was watching the Channel 4 programme, Supersize vs Superskinny last night.  A programme where they show two extreme examples of an overweight and an underweight person. It details their diets and gets the individuals to swap their diets and shows examples of why their actions and diet choices are the problem, and are effectively killing or damaging them. 

Last night, the Supersized woman (Helen Simpkin) was 25 stone, 17 stone overweight.  Here’s what she ate and drank in a day: 

• Breakfast: Left over chinese (two full portions) and 2 red bulls.
• Lunch: 8 choc fingers for lunch and 2 red bulls.
• Snack: A pack of biscuits.
• Dinner: 14 inch meat pizza for dinner (probably about 5000 calories), 2 red bulls.
• Evening snack: Kebab, 2 red bulls. 
• Midnight snack: Pasty and pack of custard creams, plus 2 red bulls.
  (10 cans of red bull over the course of a day). 

Healthy eh??! :-S  The red bull alone was around +1,100 calories a day: +7,700 calories a week: over +2lbs a week!  :-O

It really surprises me that people can think that this kind of eating is ok.  She genuinely thought (before she went on the programme) that her portions and types of food she ate were ok.  She was eating 15 days worth of food in a week, not doing any exercise, and ‘drank the red bull to give her energy to look after her kids’. 

To help her change, series presenter Dr Christian Jessen went with her to San Francisco to meet the world’s heaviest woman, Pauline Potts, whose obesity has ruined her life. 

Pauline is morbidly obese and had her 16 year old son looking after her.  I felt some level of sympathy for Pauline, but then when you looked at her diet and what she drank, she had it so very wrong as well… so you could easily say she got herself to the size she is and got her the misery she’s in now. It really made the supersized woman open her eyes anyway, and she’s been successful in changing her diet and has lost weight.

The Superskinny one was shocking too (Elaine Chapman)… 6 stone 5, 3 stone underweight, here’s what she ate and drank: 

• 15 cups of tea over the course of a day.
• Lunch: A bag of crisps.
• Dinner: Vegetable Soup.

That was it!  Scary biscuits (without the biscuits! 😉 )  They did a thing on how having that amount of tea affects you.  The contents of the tea, the sugar and the milk: anaemia along with other complications including hair loss, and lack of vitamin absorption.  

I do eat often, and I eat a lot of different things.  I eat chocolate and have treats and fast food, but tend to eat healthily and varied most of the time. And I train lots (burning around 5000-6000 calories a week), so can effectively afford to eat what I want anyway.  I drink mainly water, which helps and don’t go for coffee, tea, red bull or fizzy juice (apart from the odd occasion). 

I guess I’m lucky that my Dad taught me to have a healthy and varied diet, not restrict food all that much and exercise regularly.  🙂 

He also let me know when he thought I was looking ‘comfortable’ weight wise (BMI verging on 25 through settled and happy living), which was the thing to kick start me into exercising more regularly and with purpose in June 2008. 🙂 Thanks Dad. x

I know the examples above are really extreme, but they just make me wonder: 

• How can people get it SO wrong with their diet? 
• Why there wasn’t a trigger for them earlier, to realise that perhaps they should do something about their weight, diet and lifestyles?

And, if they get their diet and lifestyles so fundamentally wrong, I wonder how much else in their life is wrong?
(ie exercise, relationships, bringing up their kids, work, life in general).

After I posted this, I got a comment from a guy Tom Ravell who has done a rather entertaining review of the show, you can read it here. 🙂  Enjoy.