Thintervention: Crying! All the Time!

Welcome back, lovely readers and watchers of trash.  It’s time to talk Thintervention!

Last week, Kim dropped out of the program due to some crazy lymphedema complications.  Bryan revealed past molestation, and Nikki told us about how she was abandoned as an 11-yr-old.  They all ran up a big mountain together, and all seemed chummy.   Right?

Uh, right.  Let’s just go see what happens this week, shall we?

We open with Stacy, the half-fat complainer.  She only lost two pounds last week, so she’s really ready to hit it hard this week.  We see her get a clementine out of her fridge.  Joe’s measuring out about a half-cup of brown rice, because he’s extra-committed this week, too. (He gained a pound last week, remember.)

Fleshbeard Crosseyed Craig meets with Jackie at the gym, pre-basic training with the group.  He’s trimmed his beard and looks way better.  Anyway, they’re planning to bring the pain this week.  No more Ms. Nice Guy.  Both seem pretty gleeful and cheerful about it.

“So you’re going to scare these guys with your flesh-bush, right?” “Right.”

Not so fast!  Jackie heads out to the lobby to bring everyone back for their pain buffet.  Jackie’s hard and crabby–absolutely no sunshine at all.  All of a sudden, everyone looks pretty scared.  So they all hit the treadmills and spin bikes, and Jackie shouts at them about kicking their asses.  Stacy makes a dumb joke about Jackie having something big up her ass.

They’re all sweatin’ it up on the cardio machines, and then Jackie reveals that this is just the warm-up.  THIS is the group kicking their own asses while waiting for the tardy Nikki to show up.  Drum-beat sound effect, and everyone’s PISSED.   Shay and Jeana whine about making sure Nikki’s going to run, too.  “Can we sit and watch her??”  Jeana screeches.  She sounds like she’s 13.

And stupid Mandy is running with her hair down again!  HOW HOW HOW can you do that?  I employ a heavy arsenal of hair bands and elastics and barrettes when I work out, and I don’t have thick, luscious, Polynesian hair!

Eventually, Nikki strolls in with her giant bag.  “Oh hi, darlings,” she drawls.  Actually, no, but she takes her sweet-ass time getting her purse put away and her hair put up in a ponytail.  (See, Mandy?)   She keeps moaning about not being well.  “Food poisoning,” she says.  Riiiiight.  Jackie’s yelling at her to do pushups, and she’s dawdling.  The rest of the group is literally shouting at her to get moving so THEY can take a break.  Nikki’s croaking, “Shut up!  God!”  and taking her time.

Funny moment #1 for this week:  As Nikki’s doing her half-assed push-ups, Stacy’s running on the treadmill, counting down in full (LOUD) voice:  “5!  4!  3!  2!  1!”  And then she steps off to rest and is all of a sudden completely out of breath and panting.  Bryan immediately calls Stacy out for this, and she’s all “Focus on yourself, jerk!”  Boy, it’s tense in there today.

Jackie calls the group out for the bullshit shenanigans–because now Nikki’s running to her bag to get lip gloss.  “You have to fully commit to the group.”  Well, the group feels like Nikki needs to fully commit to them before they’ll fully commit to her, and they’re right!  I think Nikki doesn’t care enough about other people, though, to worry about how her lip gloss and “food poisoning” tardiness affects them.

Enough of this.  Time to actually work out.  They’re going to split off into two groups again. One group will run on the treadmills–backwards and sideways.  The other group will do crazy sets of strength training to failure.  Note that the treadmills have no incline.  I’m still doing my own “walking backwards on a crazy incline” at the gym trick, but maybe I’ll try jogging (slowly) backwards next time with zero incline.  We’ll see.

I’m so irritated with Shay in this next piece, I almost can’t tell you all about it.  But I kinda have to.  Stacy and Shay are next to each other on the ‘mills, and Shay steps off to take a break.  Fleshbeard Craig shrieks at her to get back on, as does Stacy.  She does her diva act, telling Craig, “Ya know what, baby? My body was telling me I need a break.”  No, your body doesn’t know what’s good for it because you are 50% bodyfat, so MOVE.   Shay says she needs the break so that she can keep going; Craig says that because she takes breaks like that, she’s a fat-ass.  (I kinda want to agree with Shay here.  I do lots of endurance events, and sometimes, the difference between finishing or not is taking a break.  Even a teensy one, as a mental thing more than anything.  I dunno.  I wouldn’t do it if I were 50% fat and on a TV show with people yelling at me, though!)

“Honey, you can suck this.”

Stacy is such a child.  She’s doing her lat pulldowns, yelling, “I’m pissed at you.”  Jackie’s like, “Whatever, nerd, that’s fine.”  Stacy, though, didn’t get enough attention, so she says, like a 5-yr-old, “Cuz ya know why?”  Jackie says, “I don’t care.” Then Stacy says, “Well, I don’t care that you don’t care!”  OMG, what a fucking child!!  Anyway, want to know what she’s pissed about?  She worked out every day last week and ONLY lost two pounds.  Here’s where you, I, and the whole television audience gets mad at JACKIE for expecting these people to lose weight any faster than that.  Two pounds a week is healthy. More than that is not.  Jackie is an asshole.

Then there’s Pull-upGate.  Shay steps up to try an assisted pull-up, with Jackie boosting her from below.  Right away, she’s like, “I can’t.”  You can!  “I can’t.”  You can!  She doesn’t even really try, then falls over and is pissy.  She yells at Jackie for expecting her to be able to do it, but then says, “I’ll do it later,” then says something about not being a dummy and knowing her own strength.  MAN, she is defensive.  I really hate her a bit right now.  Jackie yells at Shay for not listening to her, not trying, and having a princess attitude.  Shay tells us she hates being talked down to.  Um, you’re not being talked down to, you’re being TRAINED.  Dumbass.

Stacy’s turn:  she tries but can’t do it, and whines very Stacy-like about the whole thing.  Actually, she cries.  What?!  Stacy cried??!!  I know, right??  She was scared she was going to fall.  Jackie was much more soothing with Stacy, telling her she’d never let her fall.  Joe’s glowering at Stacy from the spin bike.

“Unless you shift your bulk unexpectedly, I won’t let you fall.”

Finally, Nikki steps up, does a fuckin’ pull-up or five and gets down.  See?  That’s how it’s done.  As Joe said, “We’re fat, it hurts, figure it out, and move on.”   Done and done!  Everyone cheers!

Oh, now Stacy wants to try it again!  And she does it (just barely!), and she cheers herself on the back for trying again.

But there’s little time for celebration–Joe and Bryan are pissy that the girls are taking so long with doing these pull-ups.  It’s extending their time running backwards and sideways on the treadmills.  Joe, in particular, is explosively angry about it, which sets off Shay and Stacy, the two biggest whiners.  Shay accuses Joe of being a bigger diva than she is.

So, remember how Jackie and Craig were maliciously rubbing their hands together in glee over their plan to bring the pain?  And how grumpy she was to start the workout?  Well, now she’s admonishing the group for being in such a bad mood.  Um, hello, it’s all your fault!  But anyway, I guess it’s like the Army, where they try to break you down totally so they can build you up again their way.  She tells the group that they’re only as strong as their weakest member (and everyone eyes Nikki, but I think it’s Shay/Stacy.)   Shay’s making that smug asshole face of someone who knows they’re a dickface but will tell you YOU’RE the dickface.

In order to promote this super-healthy group dynamic she’s fostering, Jackie tells the group that they need to have a group pot-luck dinner tomorrow night.  Mandy volunteers with her simpering smile.  (Something about that smile bugs me.)

Time for the pot-luck!  Mandy went all-out for everyone, with sweet potato “martinis,” salmon, scallops, shrimp, tuna tartar, and some other things we don’t see yet.  She even has cute little teapot-shaped plates that she uses to write out the nutritional information for each dish.  Wow.

Stacy arrives first, with piles of Tupperware and flowers for the hostess.  The kids greet her with a kiss on the hand, which is again so sweet and yet will soon become creepy as they get older.  Hope Mandy knows to teach them that.  Stacy’s charmed all the same.  Everyone else starts filtering in.  Joe brought mini cheeseburgers made with bison meat (yum!), and Shay bought brown rice and grilled veggies to share.  Finally, Jeana arrives with her chef (!), so he can cook her food for her at Mandy’s house.  Um, rude much?

Anyway, they all make plates for themselves and head outside to each together at the outdoor table. Everyone’s kinda been dreading the night, because they all work out together all the time, and now they have to actually fraternize with each other.  The horror!  Stacy knows Joe’s going to take the opportunity to attack her.  (And she’s half-right!  Just watch!)

Right away, Stacy asks Mandy about her perfect life and what’s simmering beneath the surface.  Were these people given scripted questions to answer?  I would never think to barge into my host’s private innards like that on my own.

“So when you wipe, do you go front to back like you’re supposed to?”

Anyway, Mandy really is a sweetheart and from another world.  (I mean that as a harsh indictment of OUR world, where people are mean.)  She says that her mother always believed in being kind to others, because then your own children would be lucky. Isn’t that sweet?

No time for sweetness, it’s time for Shay and Joe to attack each other.  Basically, it goes like this:

Shay:  I feel comfortable with everyone but Joe!  Joe, I feel like I can’t trust you.  <smug asshole face>
Joe:  <shellshocked and immediately defensive, NO WONDER> Um, okay, well, we’re forced to work out together, which is fine, and I don’t need to be your friend.  And you keep talking about being a diva, and I think that’s stupid.
Shay:  <nonspecific interruption>
Joe:  Stop interrupting me.
Shay:  <condescending “apology”>
Joe:  See that?  Right there?  That’s why you suck.
Shay: <condescending comment>
Joe: <explains himself maturely and succinctly>
Shay: <condescending interruption>
Joe:  We’re done.
Everyone else:  <holy shit, can we all go to the bathroom and not have to watch this?>

I feel ya, man.

Then Joe’s (and Bryan’s) issues with Shay, Stacy, and Nikki fucking up the group workouts come to light.  He’s sick of them holding him back.  Shay laughs it off condescendingly, and Stacy starts to cry right away.  OF COURSE.

Stacy’s all, “I don’t know what I’ve done to you to make you hate me!!! WAAAAH!”  Bryan keeps quiet and Joe prods her to explain herself better, which she does.  Turns out she’s angry with herself for sucking so bad.  She’s angry with herself for not losing weight faster.  She SHOULD be angry with herself for crying at the drop of a hat all the time.  Nikki, sitting next to her, is suppressing giggles.

Finally, Bryan says his piece, which goes a little something like this:  We’re all here to lose weight, we all need to work hard, we all need to push ourselves. YOU need to push yourself.  MY problem with you, Stacy, is when you’re shouting with a full voice but then whimpering and wheezing two seconds later. He does it in a funny way, though, which breaks the tension.  Even Stacy laughs and agrees with Bryan, she IS full of shit.  It’s funny moment #2.

Nikki says, “If I can get through the workout drunk and hungover, you can do it sober and fat, too.”  She encourages Stacy to, for real, keep up with this and lose the weight.  Stop playin’.  Stacy takes Nikki’s words to heart because she has a girl-crush on her a little bit.  Nikki is pretty great, it’s true.  I’ve officially come around.  Oh, wait, it gets better.  Stacy, ahem, confides in the group that she “used to be morbidly obese.”  Nikki’s like, “Record-scratch–USED to be??”  HA!!!!!

Time for the next group workout!  It’s at the Rose Bowl.  Jackie warns the group that it’s going to be a toughie, so suck it up.  Nikki jokes about how they’re “fat-letes, not athletes.”  So, anyway, they’ll be doing field drills with sprints and jumping on hoops and things.  Some people work hard, some people don’t work so hard.  But they all do it and it’s not really worth the time to recap.  (Surprisingly, though, Shay and Stacy work hard.  Good.)

So, as a “reward” for the field sprints, the gang gets to run stairs.  It’s basically an endurance challenge–who can keep going the longest?  You know Shay, Stacy, or Nikki is going to drop out first.

And they’re off!  Bryan and Joe are sprinting up the stairs, which seems like a silly thing to do if this is an endurance challenge.  Then again, there’s no prize, so who cares.  By the way, they’re actually running the bleachers, not the stairs between the bleachers.  It’s a little harder because of the way the seats are spaced.

Pull your pants up.

Shay and Stacy are struggling but keep going.  Mandy and Nikki are the first to poop out.   Jeana’s still going, but Nikki takes this time to call her out for her enormous beer belly.  (“Who’s this drunk man coming?  Oh, it’s Jeana. Whoops!”)  Jean’s done, actually.  Stacy has some knee pain, so Jackie makes her stop.  She wanted to keep going, though, so that’s good.

Now it’s just Shay, Joe, and Bryan.  Bryan craps out, though, so it’s just Shay and Joe.  For a while, too!  Shay’s about to fall over, dizzy, but she won’t stop. Jackie makes her, though, so Joe technically wins. I hope he’s impressed that Shay gave it her all.  (Oh, and he is impressed!  He even says so!  But then he accuses her of being likely to go home and eat four gallons of ice cream.  Nice.)

Therapy’s coming soon.  Ugh.  Jackie asks them to bring a photo of themselves as a child, in a happy moment.  Ugh!!

Before therapy, though, Stacy gets to have dinner with the “in-crowd” of Nikki, Joe, and Bryan.  She’s very excited, and she shouldn’t be, because she’s going to get torn apart.  She will NEED the therapy when they’re done with her!

We’re off to a tame start.

Nikki orders her Grey Goose on the rocks with a little soda, then asks Stacy if she’s drinking.  She can’t drink.  Nikki sneers and says, “Gah, what’s the point of you?!”  Ha!  It’s the PCOS striking again–the meds Stacy’s on for the PCOS prevent her from drinking.  Nikki’s like, “How embarrassing that you just said that, never say it again at the table.”  Way to marginalize someone who already feels on the fringe!

Stacy’s a glutton for punishment, though, offering up that she’s got a blind date coming up.  Nikki wants to dish, but Stacy doesn’t have good dirt.  Joe interrupts to ask Stacy about the friend who set her up–”what kind of guys is SHE banging?”  Wow, that’s…just aggressive and not really cool.  The rest of the smell blood in the water and attack, asking if Stacy will date chubbies, joking that men will like her only for her personality, etc.  Wow.  Stacy, don’t eat dinner with them again.  (Stacy makes a good point that I’ve already made here myself, that Nikki picks on others for what she hates in herself.  So does Joe.  That’s why I think those two will be totally doin’ it sooner than later.)

“Darling, we totally did it just now!”

In the “We’re back!  No, We’re Not!” spot this week, it’s still Stacy and her tormentors at dinner, talking shit about Jeana being old and boozy.  Then they take a photo of their dinner.  That’s it.  Bye!

Back to work.  Stacy’s meeting with a friend who helps her write her comedy shit, and she gets interrupted by Jackie’s call.  She’s been summoned to meet Jackie at some undisclosed location.  Bye, writing friend!  P.S.  Write better jokes!

Jackie had Stacy meet her at some steps in some neighborhood in the hills.  (“Release your inhibitions, feel the rain on your skin!  No one else can do it for you!”)  Jackie wants to show Stacy how to do stair climbs for maximum booty poppin’, once all that fat melts away.  Stacy’s excited to be getting some one-on-one training time.  And they climb stairs.  That’s it!

Tiiiime for therapy.  Again, UGH.  So what are we doing with these childhood photos?  Well, we’re going to talk to our photos of ourselves as children in order to be kinder in our self-talk now, as adults.  The reasoning being you’d never talk to a child the way you talk to yourself.  Wow, that’s true.  I say some hateful things to myself, and I’d never say anything like that to a little kid.  Hmm.  I may need to embark on this challenge for myself.

Bryan goes first.  His photo is cute, and apparently he’s pretty thin in the photo.  Not true now, honey!  So, what would he say to the little boy?  “You are loved.”  He doesn’t tell himself this now, and by golly, he oughta start.

Jeana’s photo is of her on a couch, and she jokes that it’s the same pose she often used in her Playboy shoots.  Dr. Whatever thinks Jeana needs to open up some more, so she starts prying.  She accuses Jeana of being detached, and she’s right.  The rest of the group watches eagerly, since they’ve also been unable to break that detached stance.  Jeana’s looking pretty haggard right now, I have to say.  And she’s shutting down more than ever because everyone’s jumping on her.  So she says she’s just so dang busy and has no downtime.  Then there’s a whole conversation about “being alone vs. being lonely”, and how Jeana must be lonely despite all the people around her.  Jeana DOES NOT get it.  She keeps saying, “There are always people around.”  Not the point, Jeana!  Anyway, Dr. Whatever got her to cry, so that’s good enough for ratings and we’ll move on.

Ratings!

Mandy cries when she talks about how food = love for her.  And that’s that.

Stacy starts to cry when talking about her evil grandmother who always told her she was ugly and untalented.  Wow, that’s not nice.  Grandmoms are supposed to love you even when you’re an ugly asshole!  Nikki turns her head and laughs as Stacy’s sobbing histrionically about grandmom, which is also not nice.  (But I get it.)

Shay’s negative self-talk is about hating her body, and Jackie tells her to tell the little girl in the photo that she hates her body.  Shay can’t do it, so she shouldn’t do it to herself now.  GOT THE POINT YET?  Jackie takes this moment to break into Shay’s defensive diva posturing, and it works.  Shay’s not an asshole for once.  Maybe she’ll get a grip in future workouts.  Maybe not.

Nikki’s turn.  She jokingly looks at her picture and says, matter-of-factly, “You’re an ugly, fat little girl.”  Then she starts to cackle maniacally.  Everyone just stares.  Did she NOT get the point yet.  Christ.  What’s more, Dr. Whatever and everyone else are kinda pissed and shocked that Nikki would, even pretendingly, talk to a little girl like that.  Nikki senses the group’s disapproval and starts to cry.  She’s not crying because she had a personal emotional breakthrough.  No, she’s just embarrassed for revealing herself to be a heartless cad.  Shrug.

Joe’s turn.  He has a photo of himself wearing a shirt from his dad’s deli.  His parents got divorced and it was rough on the family.  They had nothing, no toys, were on welfare, etc.  Little Joe was the man of the house. And his time with his dad on the weekends was full of cheeseburgers.  Well, that’s where that cheeseburger belly comes from.  Joe’s chin flutters a little as he holds back tears, and my chin flutters a little too.  Poor Joe.

Cute Joe.

Well, enough of that.  Weigh in time!

Mandy:  2 lbs
Nikki:   2 lbs
Stacy: 3 lbs
Joe: 5 lbs
Shay: 2 lbs
Bryan: 3 lbs
Jeana: 1 lb

Jackie tells Jeana that one pound “sucks,” and she otherwise beats up on everyone for “only” losing 2 or 3 lbs.  Because that’s really supportive, and it’s also super healthy, right?  They’re all well out of water weight loss territory and are heading into the rigors of real, lasting weight loss.  And she tells them they suck, they must not be following the program to the letter, etc.  I don’t think all of them actually ARE following things totally to a T, but I don’t think 2-3 lbs a week “sucks.”

Oh, time for Jackie tears!  They are SO fake and stupid.  She’s “invested” and “wants to see it through.”  Whatever.  I’m not wasting my time on crocodile/TV-rating tears.

Next week:  It’s a Jeana breakthrough!  She cries!  On the beach!  Jackie and Nikki take a one-on-one hike up a hill and talk turkey.  Joe’s jealous of the personal time he’s apparently not getting. There’s a challenge involving firemen and their equipment (heyoooooo!), where Bryan has a physical collapse and is taken away with oxygen on his face.

(P.S.  Weekly report from Dr. SexyPanda’s scale:  Down another 1.6 lbs this week.  Woo!  What am I doing?  Honestly?  Putting less food on my plate.  That’s it.  Not eating different things, not pushing a harder workout than usual, not cutting back on the booze I love so dearly.  Just eating less.)

See you next week!