Obesity has become a major public health concern in modern society, often considered an epidemic. Weight loss documentaries and reality TV shows have emerged as a popular genre, chronicling the journeys of individuals battling obesity and seeking to improve their health. This article provides a comprehensive overview of various weight loss documentaries and reality TV shows, exploring their themes, approaches, and impact.
Reality TV Shows Focusing on Weight Loss
Several reality TV shows document the weight loss journeys of individuals, often with a focus on the emotional and physical challenges involved.
My 600-lb Life
TLC's "My 600-lb Life" tells the powerful stories of morbidly obese individuals, each weighing over 600 pounds, as they attempt to save their lives. The show follows their medical journeys as they confront lifelong emotional and physical struggles and make the courageous decision to undergo high-risk gastric bypass surgery. The show also features follow-up episodes that check in on the participants to see if they have maintained their weight loss and continued working toward their goals.
Skin Tight
This companion series to TLC's "My 600-Lb. Life" presents profiles of people who undergo extensive surgeries to remove up to 50 pounds of excess skin after massive weight loss.
Celebrity Fit Club
"Celebrity Fit Club" is a reality television series that follows eight overweight celebrities as they try to lose weight for charity. Split into two competing teams of four, each week teams are given different physical challenges and weighed to see if they have reached their target weights.
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From Not to Hot
June Shannon, also known as "Mama June," gained fame as the mother of young beauty-pageant contestant "Honey Boo Boo" on various reality shows. This show documents her weight loss journey.
Ruby
"Ruby" is an American reality-documentary television series that follows the weight loss journey of Ruby Gettinger.
De Afvallers
"De Afvallers" is a Dutch reality television series that premiered on SBS 6, documenting the weight loss journeys of participants.
I Used To Be Fat
"I Used To Be Fat" is an MTV reality series that follows overweight teens striving to achieve weight loss through diet and exercise. Each episode follows one teenager who is paired with a motivational personal trainer. The trainer teaches them new exercise and eating habits over the next few months while offering emotional support. The series documents students sharing their personal trials and tribulations. Several episodes of the show have covered a high school student's last summer before college.
The Fatty
This show follows four larger-than-life best friends as they battle morbid obesity using hard work, heart, and a wicked sense of humor. Eight brave participants in the transformation share their story. They discover that not only indiscipline in eating, but also emotional overeating and other factors are behind their excess weight. On the way to their dream figure, all the participants have to grapple not only with unfamiliar foods or healthy eating, but also with healthy and regular exercise.
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You Are What You Eat
"You Are What You Eat" is a dieting program that aired in various forms between 2004 and 2007 on British broadcasting company Channel 4, and presented by Gillian McKeith.
Documentary Films Exploring Weight Loss and Health
Several documentary films explore the complexities of weight loss, health, and the food industry.
Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead
"Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead" is an American documentary that chronicles Australian Joe Cross's 60-day journey across the United States, where he embarks on a juice-only fast in a quest to reclaim his health.
The Weight of the Nation
HBO's "The Weight of the Nation" is a multi-part, multi-platform project that examines the causes, symptoms, and treatments for obesity in America. It offers possible solutions to restore individual and collective health. The project features four HBO documentaries and 10 supplemental films, launching one of the most far-reaching public health campaigns on obesity.
Super Size Me
A comedian replies to the "Super Size Me" crowd by losing weight on a fast-food diet while demonstrating that almost everything you think you know about the obesity "epidemic" and healthy eating is wrong.
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Forks Over Knives
"Forks Over Knives" examines the claim that most, if not all, of the degenerative diseases that afflict us can be controlled or even reversed by rejecting our present menu of animal-based and processed foods.
Food Matters
Exploring myths, facts and everything in between, this film provides a humorous yet shocking account that prompts reflection on our everyday foods. It challenges common beliefs about the purported health benefits of milk and milk products.
In Search of the Perfect Human Diet
Journalist C.J. Hunt's global quest for a solution to the obesity epidemic and diet-related disease. It explores modern dietary science, previous historical findings, ancestral native diets and the emerging field of human dietary evolution.
Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story
Filmmakers and food lovers Jen and Grant dive into the issue of waste from farm, through retail, all the way to the back of their own fridge. After catching a glimpse of the billions of dollars of good food that is tossed each year in North America, they pledge to quit grocery shopping and survive only on discarded food.
The Connection
Diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, journalist Shannon Harvey went in search of the missing link in healthcare. Featuring interviews with leading scientists, "The Connection" proves we have more to say about our health than we thought.
Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead 2
8 people, 22 diseases, 28 days on juice… could the results of this four-week "juice-only" experiment show that the answer to treating most chronic disease may be cheaper and simpler than we think?
Cafe Gratitude: A Film About What's Possible
Frank Ferrante is 54, weighs 290lbs., had a lifetime of drug & alcohol abuse and as a result contracted Hepatitis-C. He's on multiple medications including anti-depressants, undergoing chemo and drinks 10 espressos a day to stay awake. One day Frank stumbles into Cafe Gratitude, a Raw food café in San Francisco, and meets Ryland, the café's manager. Ryland asks Frank, what is one thing you'd like to do before you die? Frank answers 'I want to fall in love one more time, but with a body like this, no one will love me, because i don't love myself.' Watch as Ryland, his brother Cary and best friend Conor, help Frank take on his weight, health, relationships and loving himself in just 42 days.
The Healing Effect
The Healing Effect movie is a new documentary about the healing power of food. The film features cutting edge interviews with best selling authors and experts such as John Robbins, Joel Fuhrman, David Wolfe, Charlotte Gerson, Daphne Miller, John McDougall, Philip McCluskey, John Bagnulo and many more. The movie explores the power of prevention; why bad genes are not your destiny; food and lifestyle secrets from the healthiest, longest lived people on the planet; and simple steps to get started right now in changing your life, one bite at a time.
Crazy Sexy Cancer
Crazy Sexy Cancer is an irreverent and uplifting documentary about a young woman looking for a cure and finding her life. Weeks after she was diagnosed, filmmaker Kris Carr began documenting her story. Taking a seemingly tragic situation and turning it into a creative expression, Kris shares her inspirational story of survival with honesty, courage, and lots of humor. Crazy Sexy Cancer is more than a film, it's an attitude! It's about rising to the challenge of life, and no matter what, refusing to give up who you are at your core. This story is as funny as it is frightening, as joyous as it is outrageous.
The Gerson Miracle
In 1928, Dr. Max Gerson, a German-Jewish researcher, stumbled upon a therapy that claims to have cured tens of thousands of people worldwide since then, including patients's previously thought incurable by their doctors. For the first time, this film chronicles the epic "true story" of Gerson's miracle. A troubled 15-year-old boy attempting to cope with the recent death of his mother sets out to research Dr. Max Gerson's claims of a diet that can cure cancer as his first assignment for home-schooling in this documentary from filmmaker Steve Kroschel (Avalanche, Dying to Have Known). Garrett is a boy who has always been close to nature. He lives on a reserve with a menagerie of orphaned animals, and over the years he's become especially sensitive to the nutritional needs of the diet-sensitive animals he's charged with caring for. When Garrett's mother suffers a tragic and untimely death, the boy falls into a dangerous downward spiral and nearly flunks out of school. Increasingly concerned for Garrett's well-being and determined to strengthen their bond despite the many challenges on the horizon, his father makes the decision to begin home-schooling the distressed teen. Garrett's first assignment: study a controversial book written by Dr. Max Gerson, a physician who claims to have discovered a diet that's capable of curing cancer. Is Dr. Gerson's therapy truly the legitimate, alternative cure it appears to be? In order to find out the truth behind this long-suppressed treatment, Garrett interviews not only Dr. Gerson's family members, but various doctors, skeptics, and cancer patients as well. His studies completed and his findings revelatory, Garrett now sets out to tell the entire world about The Gerson Miracle.
The Man Who Would Be 14 Stone
A BBC3 production on the health-related effects of obesity. The movie is part human anatomical dissection done by medical practitioners, part interview with clinically obese individuals from the UK.
America's fattest kid
Shocking documentary focusing on young teenagers who are overweight but under age, and the life threatening health dangers they are exposing themselves to. In this documentary a British doctor named Ian Campbell travels to the far south of Russia to uncover a disturbing story.
Hungry
Story of a man who suffers from morbid obesity. His wife takes care of him but also supplies him with the junk food he loves so much. He finds a team online which is willing to help him. Only thing standing in the way is his inability to control his eating habits.
Secret Eaters
An American documentary that chronicles Australian Joe Cross's 60-day journey across the United States, where he embarks on a juice-only fast in a quest to reclaim his health.
The Obesity Epidemic
Obesity has become one of the most overwhelming diseases in our modern society, even now considered to be of epidemic proportions. This documentary film dives into this sensitive, but socially powerful topic and exposes shocking statistics of the fattening of our culture. Kenny Saylors, overweight himself, faces his own fat in his life as he embarks upon a 55 day, Doctor supervised, water fast to see the effects of this ancient practice on our bodies today and to examine if healing properties truly do exist within our own bodies in this extreme method of food restriction.
Family By The Ton
The Andersons, who weigh in at over 3000-lbs for the 6 of them, all have debilitating food addictions and include two family members who weigh in at well over 600-lbs.
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