| We need to talk about Kevin. Smith, that is. |
[Jan. 30th, 2007|11:16 am] |
 A week or so into January, Kevin Smith used his MySpace Blog to announce his intention to lose a large amount of weight. Apparently he'd lost a lot of weight (70 lbs) in 2005 and had subsequently gained it all (and then some: from what I can tell he's at about his highest weight ever?). In his own words:2005, leading up to and including the "Clerks II" shoot was a banner year for me all around, but in terms of weight-loss especially. Between August 4th and the end of November '05, I dropped 70 pounds. Granted, I was still a flabby fuck when all was said and done, but I can deal with that. I'll never be one of those cut dudes who can take his shirt off and not have people whisper (and holler) "Ewwww..."
I don't have a weight problem. There are people who can work their asses off to lose weight only to find that their genetics conspire against their best efforts. I'm not one of those people. I can lose weight - I just have a problem with getting off my fat ass. What can I say? I'm just a lazy fuck.
When I apply myself in the pursuit of better health, I get good-to-great results. But I know I'm not expressing anything new here when I write that eating right and working out aren't nearly as interesting or fun as eating garbage food and laying around. There are two many DVD's to watch, and too much pizza to consume while doing so. And I've always been able to justify my position by reframing the negative as "I busy myself professionally; the down-time is mine to do with as I please." I had to applaud his sense of accountability, and felt supportive of his intentions--I know what that breaking-point/a-ha moment of commitment feels like, and it's a big one. It can also be a fragile one, so more power to him for publically announcing it on ye olde internets. His approach sounded to be pretty sensible, too:So as of January 5th, I've been on a diet (again). So far, so good: I'm down fifteen pounds. But this time, it's not enough to fast and drop pounds only to slowly put it all back on; this time, I'm making a lifestyle change. Lifestyle change. There you have it! When it comes to health, fitness, weight sustainability... those are the words I like to hear. I was ready to join the crowd and be awed by his success.
Then yesterday, he posted hi week-two update, and I have to say, I was pretty disappointed. Disappointed and, in that distant way one feels for strangers, worried. Why, you ask?So here I sit, less than a week shy from one full month of being on the all-liquid diet OptiFast. Chewing food is all but a distant memory at this point. Say what? This is a lifestyle change? Now, this is just my personal interpretation of the word, but I really feel that a lifestyle change is meant to be permanent, or at least geared into the long-term. Like, introducing regular physical activity of increasing intensity. Or, reducing portion sizes and eating healthier foods while eliminating unhealthy ones. Maybe a small amount of time on a restrictive diet (calories in/calories out or one of the forbidden-foods variety), as a way of kick-starting that learning process and chalking up some motivational initial loss. But I severely doubt that this man is interested in drinking his dinner (and not in the fun way!) for the rest of his life. By my definition, this is the very opposite of a lifestyle change: it's a crash-diet, a quick-fix, and in every way both unsustainable and of dubious safety. That's a grand total of 21 pounds for our hero, since starting this new, life-changing regime, back on January 2nd. That's good enough to keep me committed another week. One Day At A Time, as the alkies say. There will be turkey meatballs in my future; just not in my immediate future. And when I do allow them back into my life, I'll make do with two, not twelve. Moderation is the key. Moderation is the key? What part of this plan involves moderation? Giving up ALL SOLID FOODS for at least a month (and he never mentions anything to suggest he's going back on solids any time soon). Oh, I worry. And I worry even more, because--So next week this time, I'll be ready to add exercise into my regime. I gave myself the first month to acclimate to a lack of food indulgence. Now that the month's nearly done, it's time to insult my body even further by - *gasp* - getting physical. Christ, is that gonna suck ass... I guess I'm kind of naive. I guess I thought a smart, successful guy like Kevin Smith would have caught on--or had someone trusted in his life who understands--how the yo-yo dieting phenomenon works. How rapid weight-loss is both dangerous and also almost always leads to not only weight gain, but gaining more weight than initially lost. How the metabolism responds to famine-conditions. Hell, the man himself has already apparently done this very thing before--lost a large amount of weight on a starvation diet, and then gained back more weight than he lost.
Here's the problem, though. There's a multi-billion dollar industry that thrives on this very concept: that your weight problem is your fault (often true), and that the extra weight you gain back after completing an unsustainable diet regime is therefore also your fault (the medical evidence would strongly suggest otherwise: it's the rapid weightloss itself that sets you up for the fall). And being rich doesn't teach you the truth, nor does it protect you from the lies. If anything, it just gives you more money to throw at quick-fixes.
I think the root of this problem goes a little something like this -- most of us who struggle with our weight realize that (except in some rare circumstances), to at least some extent, the extra weight is the result of a lack of willpower. Not having enough willpower to exercise regularly, not having enough willpower to eat smaller servings, not having enough willpower to cut back on unhealthy foods or empty calories. It's a dramatic oversimplification of a complex relationship with food/weight/lifestyle, but it does basically fit.
So if we have Being Fat = Lack of Willpower, then we quickly end up with the inversion: Activating Willpower = Losing Weight. Which, again, is kind of true. It takes willpower--commitment, if you will--to shed large quantities of your make-up, regardless of how physiologically unnecessary it is and how much you hate it. You have to contend with a generally screwed-up metabolism, deeply ingrained habits, laziness, emotional and stress triggers, and in a lot of cases, learning the basics of nutrition. It takes commitment and willpower to tackle all of that and keep moving in the right direction.
And of course, a natural extentions of Activating Willpower = Losing Weight is soon to follow (esp. if you are of a certain, driven personality type)--and here's where so many people meet their downfall:
< Exertion of Willpower = < Speed/Quantity of Weight Lost
You can see it all over Kevin Smith's blog, as his fans and sycophants weigh in (ha ha--see how I made a pun there?) with their awe, support and--in far too few cases if you ask me (which you didn't)--their concern. It takes a lot of willpower to eat nothing and drink only diet shakes for an entire month. That is a momentous feat of discipline, commitment, willpower. It is impressive. It is a hard thing to do.
But here's where things get sloppy. Willpower in and of itself is a benign tool--its application isn't inherently virtuous, healthy or right. Yes, going on an all-liquid diet is hard. And it's hard in roughly the opposite way that lying around eating junk food is easy, so it has all the trappings of being a great accomplishment and the way to achieve a weight-loss goal. But it's still an extreme and as much as Kevin Smith has typed out the words "moderation is the key," he doesn't appear to have locked in on the sentiment. He's traded one unhealthy extreme for its opposite, which is just as extreme and just as unhealthy.
I honestly and fervently believe that when it comes to fitness, weight loss and healthy, the best application of willpower is to apply it to patience. And longeviety. Rapid weight loss is tempting and seductive, and yet its accompanied by a sense of strong willpower and accomplishment, right from the start. What a potent combination to combat. But finding the patience to sustain many lifestyle changes into perpetuity, and to be patient with the correspondingly slower pace of results... that is commitment. And willpower. And probably most importantly, it's not doomed to failure, it's not inherently dangerous, and it is probably the only way to get to the place he sounds like he really wants to be. |
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