Abby smiles, and I weep.
Ugh, you guys. “The Biggest Loser” started again tonight. I am a sporadic viewer (I try to avoid it, and you’ll see why), but Roomie is a die-hard. She turned the show on and left me watching it with a big bowl of pasta in my hands. While she went to a dance rehearsal.
So now I’m alone with pasta, while the rest of the world exercises. How gross do I feel right now? (Actually, I’m a little bit proud that I COOKED.) (Okay, boiled water.)
Living in LA, I often get irritated with weight-loss products and commercials because half of the people I see around here desperately need to eat a cheeseburger. Stop telling supermodels that they need to lose five pounds! But seeing these 400-plus pound contestants… okay, I get it. America is fat.
And… “The Biggest Loser?” Really? Isn’t that sort of a cruel joke of a title?
But I’m not here to talk about that. I’m here to talk about one of this season’s “Biggest Loser” contestants, Abby Rike. There’s a part toward the beginning of tonight’s episode (before the team-picking and weigh-in) where everybody talks about what made them fat (sort of?). Abby started to talk about her husband and kids, and right away I said, “They’re dead.”
Rachel didn’t believe me, but sure enough… Abby’s husband, five and-a-half year old daughter, and two-and-a-half WEEK old son were killed in a car accident, in October 2006. “In the blink of an eye, every role that I cherished was gone,” she said. OMG. SAD SAD SAD. She’s trying to figure what her purpose is… why she wasn’t in the van with her family on that fateful day.
Rachel asked me how I knew, and I couldn’t even answer because I was CRYING. (Her reason for not believing me: “You always think that everyone is going to die. You thought I died in the shower the other day.”) (True, I am very morbid… but everyone IS going to die. Sob!)
You guys, every time I see Abby or think about her story, I am going to cry. And then I am going to think about Joe Biden’s (similar) story, and cry some more. I am not even going to be able to talk about Abby out loud (er, aloud) without crying. Hence, I’m getting it all out on the blog.
These are the kind of tragedies that aren’t even really on my list-of-worries to worry about, until… now they’re on my worry-dar. There are more tragic possibilities in this world than I can even attempt to list. Ugh. WHY, life, WHY? Where do you go from losing everything? (Gain weight, I guess… if you’re the gain-weight-under-stress type.)
Even if she loses weight, gets married again, and starts a new family… so much underlying sadness. It won’t be the same! Ugh, I need a tissue. You’re tearing me apart, Abby!
The amazing thing is, Abby is so flipping positive. When she weighs in at 247 pounds, she says, “It surprises me but it doesn’t define me. I choose to get out of bed every day, and now I choose to be here. And I’m gonna be better.” She has a Southern accent! I love her so much. She needs to write a book about… how she lives. Somebody give her a book deal!
At the weigh-in, Abby says that unlike everybody else, she’s not doing this so that she can live a longer life for her family. She’s not afraid to die, because death would be easy. “Even when life seems so hard, I want it to be the best life that it can be,” Abby interviews tearfully.
Abby even makes tough-as-nails trainer Jillian cry. Jillian says that she always thought that if she went through what Abby has gone through, she’d probably kill herself. But now Abby is making Jillian stronger. (Okay Abby, you are DEFINITELY getting a book deal.)
And Abby and her teammate had 5.94% weight loss. That’s a lot! Everybody cries tears of awe.
The thing that annoys me about this show, is that the people start off totally obese, and end up weighing less than I do! (Well, some of the girls do, if they’re short.) But, I mean… whatever. I’m not being whisked away to a magical weight-loss ranch. And I don’t eat fried chicken for breakfast. (I eat Dannon Coffee Yogurt with Fat Free Cool Whip and Wheat Germ… it’s delicious!)
I mean… you know I’m joking. They work hard. I’m just sitting here being jealous, instead of dragging my butt over to the closest 24-Hour Fitness. (But also… I’m not morbidly obese to begin with. So… I win?)
But yeah… this show depresses me to no end. And now I can’t turn it off. Because I’m a cynic with a tender, tender heart.
Okay, time to refill my pasta bowl. Well, after I rinse out my TEARS.
“The Biggest Loser” is making me fat.
xoxo…
Great Article!
If I could write like this I would be well chuffed
The more I read articles of such quality as this (which is rare), the more I think there might be a future for the Web. Keep it up, as it were.
How about another blog like this? Very good. I dabbled in technical writing back in college, and this had the two most critical segments of a good article, engaging and fun to read. Thanks.
F. Wilson
Obd II code reader