'Fit to Fat to Fit' fan recap: Why, JD, why?
Season 1 | Episode 8 | “Fallon/JD” | Aired Mar 8, 2016
When I finished watching the latest Fit to Fat to Fit episode, my jaw was on the floor. I was shocked and I was very, very upset. JD completely gave up on himself, and it was the most disheartening thing I’d seen in a while. Maybe it’s because I’m also losing weight, and the fear of regressing is very real. But regardless, seeing JD just give up made this the most depressing Fit to Fat to Fit episode yet.
The episode starts with Fallon, a trainer who gets an initial profile, like most trainers do: She’s enthusiastic about exercise and doesn’t understand how people who are overweight can’t just realize that it’s all about taking in fewer calories and exercising more. JD, conversely, gets an initial sympathetic profile, what with him saying how he’s depressed because he’s the only one out of his friends who isn’t married and nesting. With his story, I expected for JD to be like Ray from the first episode, who also wanted to start his family, or like Alissa from episode three, who wanted to find the man of her dreams after gaining confidence from her weight loss.
But no, we didn’t get that story at all. Instead, we got the dark side of the weight-loss journey; the realization that a weight-loss journey is only successful when the person who has to lose weight actually wants to lose the weight. Otherwise, all you get is a bunch of self-sabotage and denial. That’s what we saw play out (and what we saw on TV was only half of it; you can hear more from Fallon herself in the latest Fit2Fat2Fit Experience podcast).
Let’s list the ways in which Fallon puts herself and her health on the line for JD. First, she’s gaining weight; she goes from 125 pounds to about 162. Next, she has to get a tooth taken out from eating too many sweets. Third, her menstrual cycle goes out of whack from the weight gain, and she has to undergo testing to make sure she isn’t wrecking her reproductive system. Throughout all of this, though, Fallon has a great attitude and even shows her body love instead of hating her bigger size. (As she says in the podcast, she didn’t like the cellulite that came with it, but she had to put her money where her mouth is and do what she tells her clients to do, which is to love yourself through the weight-loss process.)
When she finally gets to the weight-gain goal, she and JD have a joyous reunion, further setting the stage for what I thought was going to be a tremendous success story with a client and trainer who later become friends. But the reunion was only a setup for the depression that was about to occur.
From the outset, JD is complaining about his legs, which is admittedly understandable when you haven’t exercised in forever. But JD keeps complaining about his legs during every workout. He keeps wanting to stop when, as Fallon tells the camera in her confessional, pain doesn’t always mean you have to stop. JD wasn’t committed to pushing himself, and it didn’t even seem like he understood that in order to lose 100 pounds in as short a time as four months, he’d have to be in some level of discomfort virtually every day. Raela from episode five had 80 pounds to lose in four months, which is just as tough as losing 100. But she made a sizable dent in her goal and kept going after the episode was done. Once she got her mind around the process, she got with the program and lost the weight. And poor Mateo had painful flareups of gout in his leg, but he still put in the effort and lost his weight for himself, so he could be around for his much younger fiancee.
Even with JD’s complaining, I still expected him to pull it out, get with it, and drop some pounds. To his credit, he had lost weight, during the four months Fallon was gaining and while he was training with her. He had actually reached his goal of getting to 400 pounds. But it seemed like he committed self-sabotage and decided that since he’d reached 400, he could stop. That’s what it looked like to me, anyway.
After he hits his first benchmark, he starts missing workouts, blaming it on work. At his job, covering celebrity events, there’s a lot of sweets and free food, and it begins to look like he’s had some of this food when he goes to his weigh-ins and he suspiciously weighs more than he did the week before. This pattern continues week after week. Again, listen to the podcast to find out what else Fallon had uncovered about him when it came to reneging on his diet. In short, he’s not following the plan, but still tells Fallon that he’s just eating “kale salads and protein shakes.”
The remaining motivator Fallon has is the doctor. After drawing some blood, the doctor tells JD that his numbers are all over the place. His testosterone is low, his bad cholesterol is high, he’s pre-diabetic, and he’s got the health of a 65-year-old. This news brings Fallon to tears, but JD, while he does look in shock, doesn’t seem to let the information enter his emotional and mental barriers.
The episode ends with JD basically putting all the onus on Fallon. During the course of this episode, Fallon had gone out of her way to accommodate him. She was willing to do whatever it took to get him to train, whether that included him doing what he was good at, staying away from leg exercises, etc. But no amount of one-on-one meetings or even writing out a contract will get JD to the point where he wants to lose weight for himself, for real. He bails on Fallon and she has to lose the rest of her weight alone. Meanwhile, JD is trying to maintain his weight, but still steadily gaining; by the end of the episode, he is around 414 pounds. But he does come away with one lesson: No one can motivate him to lose weight except him. All that’s left up in the air is when he’s actually going to commit to the tough process of doing an extreme weight loss.
What did you think of this episode? Give your opinions below!
Fit to Fat to Fit airs Tuesdays at 10/9C on A&E.
