Weight-loss reality TV shows have benefits, dangers

Speaking as a D-list celebrity who recently took part in VH1’s sixth season of “Celebrity Fit Club,” I feel the need to stomp on a couple of the nasty fires you set in your article [“TV’s Tip of the Scale,” June 2].

Obviously, there have been a handful of contestants who’ve used the show for publicity’s sake and, frankly, came off looking silly in the process. But I can tell you that the boot camp version of the show I took part in was no joke. You can say what you want about the majority of us being a bunch of “has-beens,” and you can go ahead and quote L.A.-based personal trainer Harley Pasternak (whoever that is) saying that we are people in “a last-ditch effort to get some media attention,” but it all comes across as mean and ill-informed.

As for this D-list celebrity, I had parents who both suffered with, and died from, heart disease and cancer. I lost them in my 20s. Now that I am in my mid-40s (and inherited high cholesterol and high blood pressure), I felt the show was a great opportunity to get some diet and exercise structure and give me a better opportunity of staying healthy for my three kids ages 18, 3 1/2 and 4 months. I elected to do the show between seasons of a successful poker show I co-host on GSN. This town was gripped in a writers strike and I felt fortunate to be able to stay busy for 10 weeks while getting healthy and pocketing probably more than most journalists earn in a year.

I dropped 16 pounds, lowered my cholesterol and blood pressure and no longer have to depend on painkillers for all the various ailments I’ve amassed over the years. I’m happy to say, since the show ended six months ago, I am still at the gym and still at the same weight. And that has as much to do with my attitude as it does with what drill instructor Harvey Walden did for my head and Dr. Ian Smith did for my dieting techniques.

I didn’t do the show to look better for paparazzi (who goes out with three kids at home?) and, speaking for some of the celebrities I worked alongside, the last way you should refer to Tina Yothers, Erin Moran and Willie Aames is as “has-beens.” TV icons is more like it.

A.J. Benza

Burbank

I’m a former bodybuilder who is a middle-aged lady and a hardly exerciser and just a little overweight. I watched “The Biggest Loser” for the first time, and was so inspired by the folks on the show.

While watching, I decided to lose a little bit of weight, just enough to make my pants looser and maybe enough to buy a size smaller. As a former gym rat and calorie counter, I knew that I wouldn’t have dramatic results. My life isn’t consumed by bodybuilding anymore.

By making simple changes – a glass of club soda instead of snacks, no popcorn while watching TV, no six olives and cheese before dinner – I reached my goal. I did add a little bit of exercise to the mix, maybe one to two days of lifting a little bit of weight.

I feel better, and my pants are loose. I lost enough weight so that people who haven’t seen me in a while notice it.

I started to snack a bit more (“Biggest Loser” was my support group so I watched my calories while watching the show), so I’ll cut that out. I’ll also weigh myself more often.

Mariellen Boss

Cathedral City

I understand that in order for a TV series to be successful it has to generate high ratings, but to promote fitness programs that risk permanent damage to the participants and implicitly suggest that this is the best route to rapid and permanent weight loss is absolutely unacceptable from where I stand as a physician.

When I see massively obese people being coerced to jog at full gallop, jump on trampolines with already injured limbs and punch heavy bags that a pro boxer would find challenging, I have to raise some serious objections to the message being conveyed.

In our book “Dump Your Trainer,” one of the most important points [coauthor Ashley Marriott and I] stress for those starting out on a weight loss program is to start off slow and avoid injuries. We caution that the injuries you sustain in an effort to lose weight too quickly can rapidly derail a weight loss program and can lead to long-term damage that can come back to haunt you.

Sure, anyone can lose weight in a boot camp environment, but to lose weight and keep it off in a normal life setting is an entirely different situation.

Having personally lost almost 60 pounds in less than six months and kept it off for more than nine years, I can attest to the fact that you need to integrate a good diet and exercise program into your everyday lives and begin with a safe and effective program.

I implore people to ignore the boot camp-type approach to weight loss and instead incorporate a realistic program that does not risk permanent injury to the joints, tendons, spine and heart.

Marc L. Paulsen, M.D.

Newport Beach

I have taken off more than 100 pounds and kept it off for nearly two years. After a lifetime of yo-yo dieting, I believe I have finally learned the real cause of obesity and how to control it.

Obesity should be recognized as an addictive disorder and treated as such. It is principally caused by using food in much the same way other people abuse alcohol and drugs. There is no moral judgment here. It is a legitimate, chronic ailment that has become epidemic.

People with a weight problem must learn to listen to their bodies so that they become aware of their physical and emotional feelings from eating different kinds of foods and how to manage obsessive-compulsive food cravings. (Some crave sugar, some crave carbs.)

Obese people must substitute other activities to replace food as an important and central source of pleasure in their lives. If not, they will likely become overwhelmed by the sense of deprivation that defeats nearly all dieters.

Like other kinds of withdrawal, cravings and triggers lessen over time.

Most people fail to keep the weight off because they are unprepared for relapses, which can be managed. Long-term weight loss control comes from understanding the addiction and related behavior patterns.

Martin Zelbow

Palm Springs

Water exercise for joints

I read your article this morning about the lady with knee problems and exercising [“Knee Injury Short-Circuited Her Best Intentions,” June 2]. You would do a great service by investigating water aerobics exercise.

You get the same results without the impact, and there is great strength building also. Water exercise has been overlooked. Its value to older and damaged joints is excellent.

Susan Sinclair

San Dimas

More info on preventing falls

We are delighted to see the recent article [“Life With More Balance,” May 26] to help raise awareness about the risk of falls among older adults and preventive measures available in local communities. We at the Fall Prevention Center of Excellence take a multidimensional approach to this topic, suggesting that effective prevention occurs through appropriate physical activity, medical management and home modification. Established in 2005, the center is California’s foremost information source, coordinator and advocate for fall prevention activities.

Our three main goals are to establish fall prevention as a key public health priority, create effective and sustainable fall prevention programs and build a comprehensive fall prevention infrastructure in California. Our website, www.stopfalls.org, is an online clearinghouse that provides a vast array of timely information on fall prevention geared toward individuals and families, service providers, researchers and educators.

We hope the readership of the L.A. Times Health section will benefit from this additional resource.

Jon Pynoos

co-director, Fall Prevention Center of Excellence at USC

Los Angeles

A childhood cancer survivor remembers

I read your article on adult survivors of childhood cancer [“Cancer as Kids. Now What?,” May 26]. I do not know if I should champion this article, or vilify it, not because it isn’t accurate or well-written and researched, but because I am a first-generation survivor myself. I started to read out of curiosity and interest, but ended with sadness, anxiety, depression, frustration and tears.

In 1971, at the ripe old age of 8, I was diagnosed with a brain tumor. I was not told about this. After a full day of diagnostic tests, I was rushed to the hospital, and when I was left there on my own overnight, I thought to myself that I must have done something very wrong to deserve this.

I remember getting a very painful shot in my rear and being put on a gurney and seeing my mother sob, and me trying to reassure her that I would be OK. I woke up with an indescribable pain in my head, no feeling or use of my body and the sound of my mother’s voice saying “It’s all over, babe … it is all over.”

How little did she know that it was just the beginning.

Years of pain in my neck, head and shoulders were kept silent because I did not want anyone to know, feeling shamed and just not right, not enough to compete in life. This operation took about 20% of my cerebellum with it, so learning just to balance again, stand up with my eyes closed, touch my nose with my fingertip, to not fall over dizzy when I turned around, were difficult challenges. Let alone school and the outside world.

All this ended up, six years later to the date, with diagnosis of another brain tumor. I had follow-up radiation to the brain, and many different side effects from that.

Somehow, somewhere, for some reason, this experience does not leave one easily. Many of the same effects you mentioned in your article linger with me as an adult: depression, unsecured job or career, learning problems and [problems with] health insurance or lack thereof. I realize that I still have physical pains, but I have hidden them for so long that I forget about them until they incapacitate me.

On one hand, I am elated that this is being spoken about and written about and is no longer in the dark. I am sad, though, that it missed me – that it was not acknowledged at the time I needed it.

Damian J. Evans

Pasadena

What to do with unused drugs

In the May 26 People’s Pharmacy column, a writer asked how to dispose of expired prescription medicines. The authors said there was “no coordinated system for disposal of unused pills.”

I found a nonprofit group in Orange County willing to accept some medicines that I no longer took – my doctor had changed my prescription – but were still “good.”

Couldn’t there be such a clearinghouse set up for such medicines so that more are not flushed, or end up in the landfill – but benefit people who may not be able to afford their own prescriptions?

Kathy Lee Scott

Cypress

Letters should be brief and must include the writer’s name, address and phone numbers. No pseudonyms. Letters are subject to editing and condensation. Mail to Letters in Health, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012; or e-mail to health@latimes.com.