In June I was signed up to help with the production of the TV show – To Fat and Back. The show is a journey following “Britain Most Hated Woman” Katie Hopkins on her journey to gain fat and become overweight before losing it. My role was to ensure she gained the fat as without her piling on the pounds there was no TV show. At the end of the 3 month phase she had gained 4 stone! This can be seen in the photo below which she tweeted out with a typical Katie Hopkins tact –
If you have not heard of Katie Hopkins, she is known for saying controversial statements and generally winding all and everyone up. Despite her public persona I found her very nice and lovely to work with. To most people, the idea of gaining weight by eating more sounds fun and hardly something that you would need help in doing!! In reality though this phase of the show was for Katie every bit as hard as it would be for most people losing weight.
This is because it is about changing behaviours. Where Katie would naturally not eat when she got busy and was a very active person (she is an ex athlete and went through military training in Sandhurst). For her to eat more and stop moving it was a complete 180′ turn. For me I just took the same approach as I would with any normal client except I reversed the advice on what to actually do. Through using a Fit Bit I could track her movement each day and spent most of the 3 months nagging her to stop moving!! Food wise the calorie intake was dramatically increased and we ended up only using the highest calorie and worst foods we could find.This extended into ensuring only the worst chocolates, crisps or any other junk foods were consumed.
Eating more is every bit as hard, if not harder than under eating. While it is fun over Christmas or sounds fun in general after 3-4 days of maxing out your food intake you will have little desire to eat more. Then it becomes a real challenge to keep feeding yourself. Most people haven’t gained their body fat through maxing out their eating. They gain it from slightly overeating subtly yet consistently for a period of months to years.
The two part show will air in January. I did a few days filming in it but not sure If I will make the final cut as she did a lot of things for the two part documentary. We shall see in a couple of months.
The show has been criticised saying it will not show anything new about losing fat nor help anyone. Time will tell on helping people but the message behind the show and Katie Hopkins on fat loss is one I agree with. Though I would never phrase it like she does, the message is “There is nothing stopping you losing weight or transforming your body”. This has been my experience of working with people over the last 12 years. It is not a physical issues that stop you getting in shape. It is behavioural and thinking issue that prevents you. This should be motivating to hear as it is much easier to change your behaviour than a unresolvable physical issues such as “unlucky genetics”. One place to start would be with my book – Change Your Thinking, Change Your Shape
To see more about the show watch Katie talk about it here on This Morning. Follow Katie on Twitter.
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