Fat March
So, Fat March. It’s apparently getting great ratings and stirring up some controversy, so I took a little march around the Internet to find out what people are saying about it. Miriam says:
The notion of a group of fat people having to support one another during a walk from Boston to Washington isn’t inherently a terrible one. But it can’t possibly be a sane idea to have people who haven’t been exercising start out walking distances which leave their feet bleeding and toenails peeling off and so on…Bottom line is that the health message allegedly being sent by this show is seriously flawed.
This USA Today article hits both sides of the story:
“It’s obviously a terrible idea. It violates everything we know from exercise physiology about a safe, progressive exercise program… this show sends a message that walking is painful, you get blisters, you get hurt and it’s humiliating. They’ve made a spectacle of people who did this with all good intentions…”
Lorrie Henry, one of the show’s two fitness trainers, says the walking wasn’t “as arduous and unhealthy as everyone is trying to portray it.” Before she worked on this show, Henry says, she probably wouldn’t have advised someone who weighed 400 pounds to walk 5½ miles on his first day of physical activity, but she has changed her mind. “Our bodies are made to walk. We do it every day.
Lara Frater points out the problem she has with both of these points of view:
I don’t know what’s worse, the fitness people who chastised the producers for making the fat people (who [they] seemed to assume were out of shape because they were fat) for walking too much or the push of weight loss over fitness. Some of the producers were surprised over how well the fatties were doing. My concern (besides the stupidity of the show) is what happens afterward. Will they continue walking (which I think is a great idea) or stop when they stop losing weight.
Beauty Is a Commodity tries to reconcile what she’s seeing on the show with the fat positive messages out there:
If people over, let’s say, 230 are so healthy, wholesale with no exceptions as many people try to get me to think, what about the contestants on this show. Experts are saying that walking several miles a day…not running…walking…is too much for these people to take physically. If the typically healthy person could do this without injury…then doesn’t that mean that these people have compromised health?
Are you guys watching this show? Am I leaving out anything important? What do you think?
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Exercise, Fat March, Health, TV, Weight Loss
Email us
On the last point: If someone weighs 400lbs and has not been physcially active for some time, sure – walking a few miles is going to be hard. Then again, I’ve known people who weighed 120-150lbs who hadn’t exercised in ages who also were exhausted and sore after a few miles’ walk.
I think most sensible exercise coaches and personal trainers who aren’t being paid by a reality television show would say that a daily 10-15 minute walk, and some gentle stretching, is a more appropriate ‘first steps’ exercise program for someone who’s been sedentary, then working up from there. With care, even very very fat people can build up appropriate muscle and heart-lung strength to do all kinds of physical activity. Fat Girl On A Bike is 300lbs, I think, and does triathlons, for example; and there are plenty of other people well over 250lbs doing all kinds of physical activity regularly. I think Kelly Bliss has a case study on her site of a woman who weighed about 500lbs getting active – by starting slowly.
The thing that bugged me the most (I reviewed this too) is that the trainers have so little to offer the walkers except to say “Keep Going!” There seems to be no reason for them to be there other than to provide contrast to the marchers and remind us what pretty people who aren’t Fat Marchers look like (they look like Barbie and Ken). No words of wisdom, no ability to diagnose how serious an injury is, nothing.
Also, the food on this show looks terrible. You can make healthy food taste good, but they don’t bother. So the message seems to be, “Eat food that tastes bad but is good for you, or food that is bad for you but tastes GOOD, like the donuts.”
And the all-or-nothing attitude that eating one donut (as one of the thinner marchers did) is going to undo all the good of doing a long march.
Obviously, there are a lot of things about the show that bothers me. I’m sure it will do some good for some of the people who manage to finish — at least I hope so.
Hmmm. I haven’t seen the show, but I’d agree with the start-slowly suggestion.
Back when I was a teenager and probably about 150 pounds, our school made us go on an Outward Bound trip involving a lot of hillwalking. And despite the fact that I’d done some preliminary walks to break my new boots in, I tired very quickly, was very slow, and yes, got horrible blisters. It had little to do with my weight and lots to do with my levels of fitness, which were… low.
You need to train appropriately for these things. If you usually don’t walk over a distance, your feet won’t be very tough and they will blister, especially in new shoes (and if you have little experience of exercising, it’s hard to tell how comfy shoes will be when buying them). That is not rocket science. And if you overdo any new exercise, your muscles will hurt. That isn’t, either.
I became derailed from several attempts to get fit because I did too much too early and hurt myself. I think it’s fine to go for the burn once you know what your limits are, but when you’re starting out? No.
I haven’t watched the show but wanted to comment on the surprise of the producers that so many of participants were doing so well.
Weight does not directly correlate to fitness. About 3 years ago I went on a 2 day, 60 km (about 36 miles) VERY hilly hike with three friends, all men, all slim and fit looking. At the time, I was overweight, but very active (weights, cardio and HIKING). Two of the friends expressed doubts about my ability to keep up and it was only the third, who was my partner on many previous shorter hikes, who pushed for me to go.
On day 2, the doubting-Thomases could barely rise from their sleeping bags, but I was up and (relatively) spry. And while we were all sore, my recovery lasted a day or two, while theirs lasted over a week.
Now I do understand that these individuals are all new to long distance walking, but I have to echo the previous commenter in saying that a slim person who was new to ling distance walking would also experience soreness etc (and losing toenails is a combo of pooly fitted shoes and not cutting one’s nails short enough… very experienced runners and hikers still lose toenails on a regular basis).
“If people over, let’s say, 230 are so healthy, wholesale with no exceptions as many people try to get me to think . . .”
Is anyone actually saying that? I guess she and I are reading different blogs and articles. What I’m reading – what I believe – is that people *can* be healthy when fat, not that they automatically are. No one is healthy just because of their weight. No one.
I haven’t seen the show and have no interest but I’m going to go out on a limb and guess they didn’t look for fit fat people who exercise regularly because that would have ruined the whole show, huh? I’m guessing if it was a bunch of thin couch potatoes it wouldn’t have sold either.
230, what a weird cutoff. I’ve heard 300, 400, 500 as The Weight Above Which You Could Drop Dead At Any Second, but not 230. Glad to know I’m not fat after all! I’ll alert the insurance companies that called me “uninsurable”!
The straw man in the last quote is really striking. Oh, so we’ve been trying to get you to believe that EVERY fat person is TOTALLY fit and healthy with NO exceptions, huh? Bull.
I have watched a couple of episodes but I was really OUTRAGED after watching the first show.
I cannot believe that someone thought a show where they make large people, who had not exercised any length of time in their recent history, walk miles and miles, then make them sleep on the cold, hard ground and feed them almost nothing was good television. Then, to add insult to injury, to tell them for every person that drops out, even if it is for medical reasons, you lose $10,000…I was LIVID for days after seeing this. This show is just WRONG!!! (can you tell that I am still a little angry here… :) )
I feel like the show is sending out the wrong message–fat people will only lose weight if they are punished for not working our at the pace set by some skinny drill sergeants.
I’m a big gal–I work out 4 days a week and eat healthy most of the time (chocolate calls, ya know!) but had that been me on Boston that day, my first words would have been “Oh HELL no!” and my fat little bum would have been jiggling right outta there. I work out on my own terms, not someone else’s!!!!!!
I wish the contestants well but seriously…why do we need this? Can’t we be happy being who we are???!?!?!?!?!
I haven’t seen this show because it isn’t aired in Australia (yet) but I doubt that I would watch it. It sounds like yet another “let’s snicker at fat people while pretending it’s all in the name of health” show like The Biggest Loser. Shows like Fat March, TBL, etc are cheap entertainment and nothing more. Losing weight and getting fit are a long, slow process – but then, that doesn’t make good entertainment, does it?
The title is offensive too, recalling the death marches of WW2 and similar atrocities. Surely the producers were aware of that?
I haven’t been watching, but TV Without Pity has been doing recaps, and there’s an extra about a network memo about other “Fat …” show ideas if this one is a success. I think the whole thing is really gross.
I’m sure they went out of their way to cast the most unfit fat people they could find. If they had turned that around and featured fat people who can run marathons (I know a couple) it could have been inspiring and informative, but I don’t think that’s what they’re looking to produce here.
Yuck.
Holy Crap. This is the first I’ve heard of this appalling show.
Oh, well. Ignorance was bliss, but forewarned is forearmed. Now that I know it exists, I can actively avoid it.
Thanks for the heads-up on TWOP, Sony. I just looked at the recap of the first episode. Here are the opening sentences:
It’s 2007, and fat is the new black. By which I mean fatsploitation is all the rage these days.
Well, they got that right.
I haven’t seen the show, but I’m already horrified. Are they really feeding them a restricted diet?
From what I’ve heard, People who go on long grueling hikes, like the Appalachian trail, say, need a huge amount of calories to keep going! And I mean multiple ramen noodle packets, snickers bars, and jerky kind of calories.
I find it hard to believe that this is going to lead to healthy weight loss. It sounds more like a Death March.
I’ve been training for a walkathon…..60miles in 3 days. I started out a bit slow and have increased my miles. But to tackle something like this, on TV, with trainers yelling at me?
F–K that
This show is totally ridiculous, but I watch it anyway. There’s something really motivating to me about seeing people do more exercise than I would ever dream of (the same goes for The Biggest Loser). It makes me feel lazy, which motivates me to get off the couch because if they can run at 10 miles per hour, so can I.
But then I feel guilty because these are people, not commodities, and I wonder if I’m just falling in to the manipulative emotional trap that these shows set for viewers. Is it right to feel moved by a show that’s using people’s vanity and desire to make them do unhealthy things to their bodies? Would I be “motivated” by watching a reality show about starving children in Africa? Maybe that’s not a fair comparison since Fat March and The Biggest Loser’s participants are all consenting adults, but there’s something unseemly about watching people sweat off insane amounts of weight in front of millions of viewers for money.
You can watch all the current episodes here:
http://abc.go.com/primetime/fatmarch/index
First of all, it didn’t look like these people knew what they were signing up for. I’m going to assume they knew it was a weight loss show but they do not appear to have known it was going to be walking every day for 500 miles and camping! How do you get that far to be accepted by a reality show and then stand there and say no??? That’s a little fucked up.
My biggest complaint about these weight loss shows is that they are distorting the concept of healthy weight loss which I feel will drive people to take dangerous measures. These reality show people complain and get all upset if they lose four pounds in a week—they lose TEN pounds or even more in one week’s time! That is SUPER EXTREME! Even gastric bypass rarely makes that happen! People who try to emulate this are going to hurt themselves pretty badly!
I was telling my husband about this yesterday – coincidentally while we were out hiking – and he said it sounded like an early Stephen King novel, The Running Man. It’s about a group of people who run until they literally drop dead as a spectator sport. Shudder.
Okay, I’m not watching the show and have no intention to, but that quote from Beauty Is A Commodity is pissing me off:
Experts are saying that walking several miles a day…not running…walking…is too much for these people to take physically. If the typically healthy person could do this without injury…then doesn’t that mean that these people have compromised health? (emphasis mine)
That’s a pretty big “if” in my book. I remember a few years ago, I spent a morning wandering downtown with a friend of me. She: tall, willowy, maybe a size 6. Me: short, fat, a size 22. We walked probably two miles that morning, and we started running short of breath right around the same time. The size of our asses had nothing to do with who got winded first.
Seriously – where does BIAC get this idea that “typically healthy” (which I assume we’re supposed to read as “thin”?) people could manage to walk five miles a day for several days in a row? I think most /actually/ healthy people (i.e. people of all sizes in good physical health) could manage a five mile walk in one day. But to have to do another one the next day? And the day after that?
The only people I know who I think could manage that are, well, people who are already walking several miles a day as it is. Everyone else I know, regardless of size, would be wrecked out after a few days of that level of exercise.
The only people I know who I think could manage that are, well, people who are already walking several miles a day as it is.
Yeah! It takes a long time to build up your stamina. My hubby and I have been hiking every Saturday for years. Sometimes we’ll do a 20 km (about 12.5 mile) hike. But we both always need a nap afterwards. And we don’t exactly feel like getting up and doing the same thing the next day.
I realize this is an ANCIENT post, but just in case anyone’s going through the archives like me (love this site!) and is curious, the Stephen King story was actually called “The Long Walk”, and was published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. “The Running Man”, also a Bachman story, had to do with a futuristic game show in which one man was hunted by everyone and whoever turned him in won a huge prize. It’s been a while since I read either, but both are worth a look. This concludes your Stephen King nerd moment; we now return you to your regularly scheduled awesomeness.