When Can I Get Some Food Around Here_MASSIVE MEGA TRIGGER WARNING.  I’m going to be talking about an unbelievably annoying Weight Watchers ad.  If you don’t want to hear about a lot of icky concern trolling, food phobic, fat phobic nonsense, please skip to the bottom and look at the video with the Sparta the fighting Kitty in it.  (‘Cuz Sparta rules!)  Otherwise read on.

Scrolling through my facebook feed, I saw a post from a friend of mine calling out a recent ad from Weight Watchers.  Here it is, watch at your own peril…

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNPLuSx_06U?rel=0]

Okay, let’s break this down.  Weight Watchers took a happy little children’s song that happens to be all about being happy right now as you are and letting everybody around you know the same thing and turned it into a fat-phobic hate fest.  It basically says, if you’re happy and you know it, and you happen to also, you know, eat something, then you are bad.  If you are sad and you eat something you are bad.  In fact if you are doing anything in the whole wide world other than calculating the WW Points value of anything you are eating to eight decimal places, you are bad.  Because clearly, experiencing any emotion at all at the same time means you are EMOTIONALLY EATING.  (Well at least emotionally snacking to be precise about the lyrics.)  And everybody knows emotional eating is bad, right?  RIGHT?!

Except kind of not.  Just because we are eating an ice cream cone or potato chips or broccoli while we are sad or happy or lonely or angry or bored doesn’t mean we are eating those things because we are daring to have feels while we are putting food in our mouths.  It doesn’t mean that that food has no nutritional value or we are somehow not allowed to eat those things while we are feeling all the feels.  It’s the whole correlation versus causation argument demonstrated using snack foods and a rhyming children’s song.  I simply refuse to submit to the notion that the only feelings I am allowed to feel while masticating my meals is either:

1.  Guilt because clearly I am ingesting too many WW (TM) points, or

2.  Smug righteousness because I am ingesting the proper number of WW (TM) points.

Because, best I can tell, the commercial indicates that I shouldn’t eat when I am:

happy

sad

angry

bored

sleepy

human

Which pretty much covers all of the things.  Which means I am not supposed to eat any more ever.  (Which is kind of counter intuitive, because then how could I buy all the WW frozen, tasteless, low-points, you know, THINGS?)

No freaking way.  Sometimes when I am happy I will eat ice cream.  Sometimes when I am happy I will eat salad.  These conditions are also true if I am sad or lonely or bored or angry.  I am an emotional  person.  Hell, sometimes I dance around the living room at the mere thought of ice cream.  I have a special SONG I sing almost every night to signal that it is time to wear my jammies.    If I find that I am using food as a primary method for avoiding the feeling of any of these feelings, I may or may not choose to find some help to change that.  But I guaran-freaking-tee you that I won’t be seeking help from the double doubleyou.  But there is no way at all, that I’m going to let some company tell me that it is not okay to have feelings and eat at the same time.  Because I want to live!*

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMUmX7B5gOk?rel=0]

*Oh, in the interest of full disclosure, while I am from a “Jazzed Up Generation”, I haven’t killed anybody and most of my friends are pretty good.  Just so you know.

I want to live.  And I refuse to let a weight loss company tell me how I can live, including when I can be happy or when I can eat.  Or when I can look at ADORABLE CAT VIDEOS like the one below.

Enjoy!

Love,
Jeanette (AKA The Fat Chick)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qit3ALTelOo?rel=0]

P.S. Want me to talk about intuitive eating at your school or organization? Click HERE!

13 Comments. Leave new

  • sndsfnny
    December 3, 2014 1:21 pm

    I would love to be able to replace ads like that one with something like this:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zg0xBjegI7A

    (In case the preview doesn’t show up, it’s from “The Princess Bride”…)

  • Debbie
    December 3, 2014 2:01 pm

    Good points you make and I loved the video’s!! Thank you for sharing.

  • kimmaryelizabeth1
    December 3, 2014 2:43 pm

    Mine is a reply to the WW ad.

    I’ll bet this (disen)franchise is quite smug and proud of its message, but the organization really comes across as looking foolish. Apparently, no one in their senior management of their marketing department ever took a course in physiology. People need food, people need to eat, people are humans (not robots). To their credit, the ad DOES show a couple of token skinnies eating snacks along with the rest of us of more common size.

    BAD humans, BAD humans. Coming up with all these excuses (like LIVING) in order to eat. Oh well, on the PLUS side, more (repeat) business for us.

  • Sjw
    December 4, 2014 2:18 am

    To me, the video says, “be human! Eat!” Snacks are only a problem if you believe you should be artificially limiting your food intake.

  • Lisa
    December 7, 2014 11:15 pm

    Thank you for writing this. The commercial has always set badly with me. I feel like the sing-songy nature of it is mocking people who are emotional eaters (ahem, me). It makes me feel ashamed about it, like I should feel dumb that I do it. So 1) that’s incredibly rude, and 2) terrible marketing, as I would absolutely not go to WW for help since I feel like they’d be disrespectful. A lot of people are saying, oh yeah good for them! They’re bringing a tough issue to the forefront! Except… ieven if that is the truth, it’s really poorly done. And sure, there are some people who are bored and eat, or have comfort food after a bad day, but then there are people with actual disorders or mental illnesses who they’re seeming to forget about. And everything you said.

  • Amanda
    December 15, 2014 1:12 pm

    Thank you for posting. I was mortified when I saw the commerical and posted on my facebook page about how angry I was… My roomie and I saw the commercial during TWD and we were certain that it was fake. Up until a minute afterwards we were both speechless.
    I marched into WW last week and ended my relationship with them. I’ve officially started my Health at Every Size! I am that girl: Big and Beauiful with bright neon yellow shoes doing doubles classes at the gym! I will eat food for fuel and enjoy life!

    “Now, let us help with the hard part!” Thanks, but no thanks! I got this… (picks up weights and does power squats)

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