Wow - just finished watching this week's Biggest Loser.  Ok, so what's-her-name in the red shirt is a game player. We all knew that. There's something about her - is it the fake giddy laugh? the eye roll? The lying when Bob and Jillian confronted her about game playing? Not sure. But I think most who watch the show would be happy to send her home. What she did this week was to get under the skin of the green team in a very big way. She plopped a two pound penalty on their weigh-in. (Shocking to me that the gray team gave her - Miss-Eye-Roll-Red-Team - the gift of calling her family - I don't think she will learn from this gracious act) But this post isn't really about her. It's about what her actions did to the green team. They got mad - but they stuffed it. They complained, they pouted, and when they got on the scale it showed in their small weight loss. That failure put them below the yellow line and Migdalia went home. At the weigh in - as their numbers came up on the scale - Jillian immediately started talking about how stress causes your body to retain water. She also pointed out that during the weigh in when Migdalia started to cry, her green teammate Miggy told her not to cry. Essentially telling her to stuff her emotions, to stuff her anger, disappointment, resentment, discouragement. Migdalia asked to be sent home and the other teams (not Red of course) followed her wishes and sent her home. I don't think the Green team can be successful with their weight loss until they first confront, and second express, their anger. I know that that is the emotion that hatched my eating disorder. To insulate myself from my father's anger, I stuffed myself full of treats. Sweet treats to comfort the scared little girl. The more I ate, the less I could hear his voice, see his face. The food numbed my emotions and made it possible to survive the anger - but at what a price? When the threat of his anger was gone, the habit continued. I am learning to express my emotions. I'm letting myself cry. That one is pretty easy for me. Much harder for me to express anger. So much easier to stuff it back down with food. And what I'm finding is, the more I express my anger over the events in my life that don't go the way they ought to or the way I think they should go, the less I find to be angry about. Opening that valve - letting off that steam - just feels good.
234 again this morning. Went to the gym today - did 40 minutes of cardio and then did the weight machines. Left more sweat! I think the exercise is another way to vent the anger.