Ajay Rochester - the Human Yo-yo.

Article in today's paper about the former host of The Biggest Loser and the winner of Excess Baggage.  Whilst I think its written in a somewhat sensationalist style (ah...the joys of alliteration!), she conveys the problems associated with working on the effect (the excess weight) and not the causes (emotional eating etc.).

Use the link if you want to see what some of the (numerous) comments have to say.  There's very little compassion there.  

What do you think?  Can you feel for her?  Have you experienced that cycle of weight gain......panic..... emotional eating.......weight gain?

If you're reading this, Ajay, get thee to a psychologist immediately, if not sooner.  Bypass the lemon detox diet and personal trainers.  Learn to feel your feelings (good or bad) without trying to eat them away.  I'm praying (in a non-Christian way, of course) for you.

http://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/diet-and-fitness/i-am-eating-myself-to-death-20130417-2i0g9.html

'I am eating myself to death'

Published: April 18, 2013 - 8:23AM

She's had her ups and downs, but Ajay Rochester fears her compulsive eating will kill her.
"I am eating myself to death," she told 2Day FM's Kyle and Jackie O on Wednesday morning.
In the interview, the former Biggest Loser host opened up about the emotional stranglehold food has on her. Her obsession with food is so strong "I would want to marry it," she told the talk show hosts. "If junk food was a sex aid I would be a very satisfied woman."

Despite dropping pounds to win last year's weight-loss reality show Excess Baggage, she said it was not sustainable.

"I would do the stupid lemon detox diet before I'd go on air, so I'd drink lemon juice for 3 weeks and lose 15 kilos and then just eat nothing during production." It didn't work "because then out of production you are just like 'Oh yeah, all you can eat buffet, are you ready!'''
This has led to a 48 kilogram weight-gain in the past year.

"So it's breakfast for 3 people. Two pancakes, big plate-sized pancakes, three bacon strips, a plate sized hash brown, a plate, I'm not talking the little Macca's ones, two eggs, two sausages. So I'll eat that," the 43-year-old said. "Then I just lie down all day because I can't move because my arteries are so clogged. And then I drive past 'Karl's' and get a burger and fries. I'm laughing about it. But it's really serious because I am eating myself to death."

It is the latest confession in a sad saga of yo-yo dieting and emotional eating. "I have always battled my weight and it has always been an emotional baggage kind of thing," she said. "If there is an emotion, I'll use that to eat. Any emotion. If I'm extremely happy, I celebrate by eating crap food, If I'm really sad and depressed, I'll eat crap food. That's why I was really looking forward to a show that actually delved into that issue. Obviously Biggest Loser is a fat camp. Let's lock up the fridge's and lock you up and train you X amount of hours a day and punish you and make you feel humiliated and give you a 200,000 dollar carrot to do anything to your body to get to that finish line. Of course you'd do whatever it takes! But it doesn't fix anything."

Previously Rochester, who rose to fame after writing about her 50 kilogram weight-loss, has spoken about where the compulsion comes from. "I was seriously obese and, when I lost my mum, I spiralled even further,"she said"There were lots of punishments around food. If I didn't eat everything on my plate, my adopted mother used to force the food into my mouth and hold it closed. When my birth mum died, I used food as it was the only support system I had."

Psychologist Deborah Thomas, who specialises in disordered eating, says the cycle Rochester finds herself in is "scarily common".

"What she is experiencing is really quite typical," she says. "It's a shame spiral... Intense shame about weight leads to deprivation, which leads to binging, which leads to shame."

While many people are not as extreme or as publicly exposed as Rochester, it is common even for those who want to lose a small amount of weight. "It starts with feeling bad about ourselves," Thomas says.

Breaking out of the spiral involves acceptance and a reality check. "It's having to accept 'this is where I am now.' It's not going to change quickly," she explains. "It's having to take a long-term view and building your life so that you have other things to focus on, not just weight and diet."

As well as taking individual responsibility, Thomas believes that we need to take a look at our societal obsession with weight and the pressure to look and be a certain way.

"If we could have a lot less shame about our bodies and just focus on being healthy, it would go a long way to solving this problem for a lot of people."