ABC’s My Diet is Better than Yours ended somewhat abruptly last week, I thought. The series has been showing two one-hour episodes back-to-back, which appeals to those fo us who are into binge viewing these days.
The first hour last week was the final week contestants would have their trainers.
I was looking forward to seven weeks, or seven hours, of watching them try to lose weight on their own. but that time period was all compressed into the final hour show with a final weigh-in ala Biggest Loser, except without the studio audience and confetti at the end.
My take-aways from the show:
- You have to let go of the anger and the sadness before you can take care of yourself. Two of the five contestants on the show were almost perpetually angry, a sign, I think, that they didn’t like themselves very much. One actually quit early! If you can’t let go of that self-loathing, you’ll never stop binge eating to hide from yourself.
- Family support makes it all so much easier. The winner (I won’t say who in case you haven’t watched yet) seemed to have the most family support. A spouse also changed eating habits to help and was dropping pounds as well. My experience is that family often doesn’t get it and that makes healthier eating, which is basically boring, so much harder to pull off.
- All the so-called diets came down to essentially the same principles — eat little to no processed foods, eat more vegetables and exercise regularly. Strip away the hype and our bodies are pretty basic.
- Magic bullets don’t exist and the road to health is a long one. Even after 14 weeks, all the contestants were still overweight and had more work to do. They can never go back to the way they ate before, nor should they. But if they haven’t dealt with the factors that drove them to that type of eating, they’re likely to skip back into old habits.
- Diet shows make me hungry. The more I watched the hungrier I felt, and the more I was thinking about the steaks and cakes I no longer eat.
The No Salt, No Fat, No Sugar Journal 
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