The version of your body currently running is not bedroom compatible

My gym is running some kind of 6-week body makeover butt blast boot camp bangarang. That's not what it's really called but you get the idea. It's especially for women. It says so on the flier. Also on the flier, central to the message and in large red type, are words to the effect of:

GET A BEDROOM BODY!

Now, the gym runs these kinds of things all the time, in which they propose to bulk you up or whittle you down or generally bring you up to code in a specified time period. This is the first one I've seen geared specifically to women. And it's also the first one I've seen that seeks to gently encourage participation by reminding people women that they will have to get naked for someone's enjoyment, and for the sake of that other party, they'd better get their asses in gear. Or no man one will want to sleep with them. And then what would their lives become? Why else would you want to get in shape anyway, womanperson? For sport? For functional strength? For your own damn self? Stop speaking nonsenses!

Presumably, men don't need bedroom bodies*. Their fitness activities are in pursuit of more lofty ends. Hunting! Fighting! Watching cricket with their shirts off! And since women have to sleep with them anyway (everyone in this hetero-normative dreamscape is 'straight', ok? Just play along), there is no minimum aesthetic requirement involved for men.

Also what we've learnt so far is that a "bedroom body" is of a particular type produced in a gym or other exercise situation. Somebody should tell that to the bodies everywhere that are at this moment getting into some pretty enjoyable situations in their bedrooms, garages and crawlspaces right now, and have no intention of changing their bodies in order to continue doing so. If this describes you, you are hereby advised to cease and desist, until such time as we have certified that you possess the appropriate, bedroom-approved body.

It's true, I suppose, that "a bedroom body" could mean something more all-encompassing: it could simply mean a fit body of any size and shape that allows you to - as a friend of mine likes to put it - spin on your headtop during sex. But then, nobody's asking a man to spin on his headtop. I guess he and his non-bedroom body can just lay there.

And what annoys me most about this stupid poster - when I have to see it every single morning because it is affixed to the changing room door at my eye level - is that it does not reflect what I always thought were the philosophy and behaviours of the staff at this gym. They've always seemed very inclusive about women in sport, women gaining strength just because they feel like it. They've always seemed to have a pretty open "we can all do anything we want" mentality, inclusive of men, women, the elderly, people with disabilities, everyone. But now, because they are letting this stupid poster speak for them, I have to acknowledge that somewhere, someone in this establishment either does not get it, does not think, or does not care. And since I spend some time there, time that I otherwise enjoy, that's a bit of a downer. Still, always one who's eager (w00t!) to embrace the all too familiar "humourless" tag, here I go tomorrow morning. To ask what that mess there on the changing room door is all about.

*I asked if there was a similar poster on the inside of the men's changing room, and was told 'no' by a jolly fellow who is also a member, and who added, "darling, any man that got a body, it ready for the bedroom."

Weight-loss surgery for all!

Dr. Super is loving this.

Usually reserved for the most obese people, weight-loss surgery is unlikely to be a last-ditch option much longer. Technological advancements are turning it into a one-hour, incisionless procedure -- making it more attractive to moderately overweight adults [...]; overweight and obese teenagers; and normal-weight people with difficult-to-control diabetes. Several new procedures are already in human clinical trials.

I think we're all getting a little carried away and assuming that just because a procedure is easy to accomplish, its effects are also easy to live with after the fact. As many have discovered, and as this same article notes, even though the already low morbidity rates for this type of procedure continue to decline and operation recovery times become shorter, patients still have to contend with medium- to long-term problems, including "nutritional deficiencies, diarrhea, regurgitation and bowel obstructions."

According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 19% of patients experience dumping syndrome, which is involuntary vomiting or defecation. Complication rates involving ulcers, wound problems, hemorrhage, deep-vein thrombosis, heart attacks and strokes range from 2.4% to 0.1%.

And where do we draw the line regarding preemptive surgery? One surgeon notes that "[p]eople 50 pounds overweight are the ones we should treat, before the problem gets worse," but isn't that number quite arbitrary? Unless we ascertain that at 50 lbs overweight (as opposed to 40 or 30), people start to see marked deteriorations in their overall health (in fact, we've been told that every 10 lbs packs its own share of doom), then the benchmark at which surgery becomes an option can arguably continue to shift downwards.

I suppose weight-loss surgery is now poised to enter the realm of cosmetic procedures, where if people opt to risk their lives and health in order to try and feel better about themselves, then they have that right. The rub lies in the fact that most elective cosmetic surgery is not covered by the majority of insurance plans or universal health care systems. And so it will be interesting to see - especially in the context of the raging US health care debate - how this particular argument evolves.

You're fat because your chicken breast is bigger than your fist

If you watch The Biggest Loser, you know that it is essentially a weight loss competition where overweight people form teams to see who can lose the most weight collectively. Each week, whoever has lost the least as a percentage of her total body weight is eligible to be sent home. By the end, one person will have been declared the biggest loser, and will receive a $250 000 prize (in the UK it's £10 000. We can't catch a break) amid much fanfare and confetti. Sound potentially problematic? Well no kidding.

The contestants exercise for hours and hours every day on a restricted-calorie diet. So clearly the show is just about entertainment for its viewers, since this lifestyle is not practical for anyone outisde the show who's not a professional athlete, a member of the Armed Forces or from the planet Krypton. (They do have a Biggest Loser Club, though, which is essentially a less psychotic, online diet and exercise support plan geared toward weight loss, and based on the show.) I've watched a couple episodes of the US version, and even though I have several issues with almost everything about the show's premise and execution, I at least found the trainers/team leaders entertaining.

Celebrity ubertrainers (or should that be ubercelebrity trainers? Whatever. They're uber) Jillian Michaels and Bob Harper each take a team through daily workouts and help drive their success. Jillian is your typical, tough taskmaster, who often appears bewildered and victimized when progress does not occur as expected; while Bob is a positive-thinking, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed sort who I'm almost positive is being dosed with happy pills without his knowledge. He seems to think that fat people are just broken thin people. And doggone it if he ain't gonna fix 'em. I'll admit: I've often caught myself liking Bob despite myself and all the things wrong with his apparent philosophy. He's just so earnest.

The UK version is decidedly worse. Because it features all the things wrong with the show - the unrealistic, stress-inducing workout regimen; the weight-loss as competition dynamic; the stripping down of contestants for weigh-ins as if they're livestock at market, and as if to remind us that they are in fact huge and have the rolls to prove it, in case we'd forgotten - but has none of the entertainment factor. Yes, I acknowledge the problem with this statement: why do I want to be entertained by the show if I concede that the entire thing is a mess? I don't. I've only watched it a handful of times in order to be able to make an informed judgement. But I notice that the UK version has not one redeeming factor: the trainers - whose personalities are meant to be at least interesting enough that their interaction with the contestants creates some intrigue - are dull as grass.

One also gets the impression that the UK producers were aiming to recreate a similar match-up to that of the US version: one of the trainers is a tough, non-bullshit-having woman, and the other is a focused (but milder-mannered?) man. Both try too hard. And the result is a big pile of snore.
But today, my second time watching the show, there were some fireworks, and by 'fireworks' I mean extra-loud yelling, dramatic camera shots and plenty food- and fat-shaming. Trainer Angie stops by the house for a surprise lunch inspection. Don't you hate when that happens? She walks in to find Jennifer, the mum in the mother-daughter team above (contestants are paired up in this series), eating chicken breast she had just prepared. Angie then begins to yell at Jennifer, in front of everyone including Jennifer's daughter Sadie, about the fact that there are no carbs or vegetables on the plate, and that she is eating more than a single portion of chicken. She also belittles her for having had steak the night before. While Angie stands there bellowing, pointing at the offending meal, flailing about and otherwise losing her sh*t over this unforgivable food transgression, Jennifer sits there looking morose, embarrassed, and most of all, hungry. Sadie, who is directly next to her, tries to pull it together for the both of them by agreeing to eat some spinach.

The segment is interspersed with video clips of the other contestants remarking that Jennifer knows she's eating too much, and that they've tried to speak to her about it. The implication is that the only thing that will get through to her is a good old verbal flogging delivered by Angie who, I'm sorry, seems to have no idea how to do the tough love thing, if it is even appropriate here.

I suppose none of this should be surprising, given the premise of the show: let's haul some fatties in here and beat them into shape. But I admit that I was alarmed by the abuse this woman was forced to suffer. First, as the slowest loser to date, apparently, Jennifer was trying to accelerate her weight loss by eating low-carb. Ill-advised though this may be, it does indicate a level of effort and an unwillingness to once again be in the spotlight as the weight-loss failure. Do they expect to throw these people into a competition under extreme physical and psychological conditions and have no bad/compulsive habits develop? I'd be more surprised if they didn't all end up with patterns of disordered eating.

Second, the woman is obviously hongray! During the entire dressing down, she sat there staring longingly at her delicious chicken breast that was going cold and was probably now covered in spittle and hate. And it isn't necessarily because she's greedy, as she was forced to mutter. It's because a body her size probably can't subsist on the fist-sized portion measure that Angie was waving in her face. That's not to say that it's impossible to stick to the diet and lose weight. Clearly it's not: almost everyone on the show loses. But they're not all the same person. Not everyone can change their bodies by sheer force of will. Hunger is not a figment of the imagination, and it won't be exorcised by another hour on the treadmill.

Sadie was worried that after the embarrassing talking-to, her mother would tell Angie where to shove her fist(-sized portion) and give up. And I would think that's a very real concern with anyone who's struggling to lose weight. This show already makes no secret of its extreme methods of trying to get all bodies to look and behave the same. Now they've added express public humiliation to the mix. I don't think the contestants are the only 'losers' here.

Dr. Super, the obesity slayer

The Hospital is a Channel 4 programme which questions whether the NHS is "being asked to pick up the pieces of an increasingly self-destructive society". The show interviews consultants, surgeons, nurses and midwives about the problems they face in treating illnesses and their symptoms that we have, they seem to suggest, brought on ourselves.

Last night's episode was a re-airing of the final in the series, and examined "the cost of Britain's increasingly obese teens."

At Heartlands Hospital in Birmingham, younger and younger patients are being referred for help in tackling their weight and, increasingly, they are asking for a gastric band.

While doctors and dieticians see the £6,000 operation as a last resort, some patients seek them as an 'easy' solution to their weight problem. But NHS weight management clinics can only help those who help themselves, and health professionals are hampered by young patients who don't tell them the truth about what they are eating.

Now, while it might be useful and interesting to examine health care provision from the point of view of the providers and the challenges they face, I have trouble understanding how health professionals are the ones 'hampered' by unsuccessful treatment. Ultimately, it's the patients who have to suffer the effects of failed care, even if, as the show suggests, it's their own fault for lying. But this is just the tip of the iceberg of how problematic I found this show.

The programme was set up as a look at two different approaches to NHS-assisted weight loss. They interviewed professionals at the weight management clinic who are responsible for referring patients for the gastric band surgery, if they find it is indicated. If they do not so find - if they think the patient's lifestyle doesn't support it, or that he might see results from a less drastic method, they support the patient in a programme of weight loss through diet and exercise. The other angle was an interview with Dr. Paul Super, a surgeon who seems to have a bit of a reputation for churning out gastric band surgeries by the hundreds each year. His philosophy seems to be that obesity is expensive and ugly, and that all fat people should just have a gastric band operation so they could stop costing the NHS money and just stop being unhealthy and unattractive. This man was a real gem. I could barely take my eyes off him.

The staff at the Center, though earnest, weren't exactly writing any journals with their methods. They did explore the patients' psychological histories and relationships in order to create a more complete picture than "you're fat because you eat too much", but once they had gained that information, I'm not sure they quite knew what to do with it. In at least one case, where they discovered the woman had started binge eating after her family had been abandoned by their father, they kept checking on her progress with that relationship as well as with her diet and exercise; and the mere fact that they seemed to care and were willing to talk about it rather than simply scold her for overeating appeared at least in the short term to help motivate her in her efforts.

But in general, the system seemed to be that they would either (a) recommend the surgery and then send the patients home to lose some of the weight first, through diet and exercise; or (b) not recommend the surgery and send the patients home to lose weight through diet and exercise. And since most fat people have tried exactly that a gazillion times before, the only difference here is that now they get to show up at this clinic every few weeks to be 'assessed'. Still, if a patient doesn't dread these appointments, but instead finds the doctor understanding and the environment reasonably stress-free, then I suppose it's better than the alternative. And a couple of the doctors seemed to really want to be warm and understanding. So that was something.

Dr. Super, on the other hand, the belly-reducing surgeon extraordinaire, was - in short - a real a*shole, and really did no favours for the 'surgeons are jerks' stereotype. Below are some of the many awesome Dr. Super philosophies on fat people and their really fat fatness.

Back, beige food!
Between surgeries, the doctor stops for his regular lunch of a can of tuna - it's convenient, tastes great, and has no carbs. Carbs are evil, you see, and are just hiding in the shadows waiting to make you fat. But you can detect them and foil their plan. How? Easy. They're all beige!

Listen to this guy.

So no pasta, rice or potatoes. Because they're beige. But you don't get beige meat, so that's fine. Or beige fish, so we can eat...wait....um...

And notice how he shames his own colleagues about eating crisps, sneering at them and taking their food so he can prove what undisciplined slobs they are. "That's right...go on eating your crisps (you big fattie)!" How much fun must this man be to live with? Thankfully, his colleague seems not to give a crap about him and his colour-coded diet. But this is certainly not a healthy approach to food for a doctor who focuses on nutrition to have, outlawing an entire food group and advocating a can of tuna for lunch. Now there's no denying that some food is not generally healthy if we consume too much of it. I'm no fan of a steady diet of processed junk in crinkly bags. But there is nothing wrong with rice and potatoes, as long as you don't first deep-fry them and then coat them in equal layers of lard and white chocolate. And all food can be consumed as part of a healthful diet. It's the categorization of some foods as good and others as bad that leads some to diet-binge cycles. I dare say Dr. Super has issues with food.

They're fat AND they lie
Another part of the programme that struck me - in fact this caught my attention in the clip advertising the show - was the disgust with which Dr. Super condemned patients for lying about their diet. This is not a direct quote, but he sneers something to the effect of: "They'll try to convince me that they only have a salad for lunch. They lie! But the scales never lie." One of the patients at the weight management clinic acknowledged that when she first saw a doctor there, she did lie, because she was embarrassed about the volume and nature of the food she consumed. And this is to be expected. But eventually, she felt safe and encouraged enough by her doctor to be honest in her journals. The doctors there realize that even this is a process, and allow this trust to evolve naturally. Not Dr. Super. He just snickers and hauls the fattie onto the scale so he can yell "Salad my ass! Look! You weigh a tonne!"

"Look how it wiggles!"
Following Dr. Super into surgery, we watch as he jiggles the belly of an anaesthetized patient and jokes to his colleagues that he can feel the ribs. You see, it's funny, because he can't possibly feel ribs in such a big, disgusting mass of flesh. See? Lawl?

The glaring absence in this piece is the lack of focus of both Dr. Super and the producers on the possible risks of the surgery. The surgeon seems to believe that this method is your proverbial magic pill, and actually says that all fat, young people should have it. Apart from filming one of the subjects after she has been fitted with the band and has some initial discomfort, and then acknowledging that her weight loss occurs at the same rate as another woman who opted for diet and exercise alone, the procedure is not presented as the life-altering decision that it is.

Later, fatties. I'm outie
At the end of the show, our lovable surgeon is leaning up against a wall in his hospital, and a large woman passes by escorted by two doctors. He has just been talking about when surgery doesn't work, and as she passes by, he snickers at the still fat woman and says, "That was one of mine. Life goes on," and lopes off into the sunset. And the sad lesson is, even our noble hero can't wrangle all the fatties. But he's going to keep on trying.