Trapped in a Reality Show

I watch a reality show on BBC America called ‘You Are What You Eat.’ I love this show. It is simultaneously the best and worst of what reality television can be. We get people yelling at other people for they way they live – so you can sit back and feel vastly superior – and then you also get to view a really amazing 8 week detox / transformation in a half hour – learning about the benefits of zinc and exercise along the way. Perfection.

Only, now I’m not so sure. I feel like I’m trapped in my own version of this kind of reality show with no fast-forward button and no commercials for breathing space.

See, there is this moment where the diminutive and authoritarian nutritionist brings her victims into a room and shows them what they have put into their bodies in a week. It’s always gross – piles of pizza, gallons of coffee, ashtrays full of cigarettes, and a huge bowl of melted ice cream or something. She looks at them and says, ‘This is disgusting. You are killing yourself. Your loved ones don’t want this to continue. I won’t let this happen. It’s not good enough and you will change.’

They hate her then. They hate her, and whoever called her to fink on them and get them on the show, and they hate themselves because she’s right.

I met with my new boss yesterday. She explained, in very polite and respectful terms, why she doesn’t have a very high opinion of me. In astonishing detail, she recounted the four or five times where I had done something that was rude, or inappropriate, or not to her liking. I don’t recall most of the events myself, but given how I have been feeling lately, I’m sure they happened. I can certainly see how she’s arrived at the conclusions that I’m killing my career, my work isn’t good enough, and a huge change is needed.

I hated her then, as I burn with hatred when any one criticizes me. And I hated myself because she’s right. I’m just happy I didn’t cry during this two-hour long performance review.

Now, on the show, the nutritionist yells at people, but then soon leads them into another room with another table laden with fresh produce and plates of poached fish on beds of lettuce and brown rice pilafs and too many smoothies. She hands them an 8 week detox program designed just for them (‘I’ve added zinc to boost your sex life’ or ‘I’ve made sure there’s lots of tea to help wean you from your twelve cups of coffee a day.’) and she promises them to be there with them through it all, and gets all their family to promise too.

I got advice about how to schedule my time, which I seem to get from every boss – each plan different and slightly more simplistic. As always, I’ll give it a try–but it’s no eight week program. Sigh.

In the show, there are ten minutes for various shots of people fumbling at their first attempts at cooking, making surprisingly good smoothies, and falling down while rollerblading. The last five minutes of the show we get glamour shots of these same people – often 2-3 stone lighter. It’s BBC, remember. I have no idea how much weight that is, but it always looks like a lot. They have lost inches and their old clothes are really baggy. They also have glowing skin and (magically) new flattering haricuts.

I’d really like to get to the last five minutes of this show – right now. I’m not really interested in doing all the things necessary to get there – but I know I have to. As a child of the 80’s, I long for the rock song to come on in the middle of the movie and get the time-lapse montage of people dong all the icky things that they need to do to get to their goals. (You know the ones I’m talking about. It takes one song to fix up a house, or one song to learn how to dance like a pro, or one song to learn enough algebra to ace the test and fall in love with your tutor.) Alas, there is no background music for this. There is just a lot of work.

The book I’ve been reading for my therapy class had a really interesting passage about exactly this. The author calls it ‘successful imperfection’.

“The next step it to become successful at becoming imperfect. This sounds like a contradiction, but if, say, you want to lose weight, you probably will not look like a bathing beauty next week. Success for you will mean carrying out behaviors that will not have a perfect outcome. It means progressing through imperfect steps…We have already seen how perfectionism makes you worry about finding the perfect solution. You don’t need perfection – you need progress…Are you willing to take imperfect steps in order to become more successful?”

This question is, of course, a set-up for the passage that follows. That one is entitled Constructive Discomfort. Successful Imperfection means getting better at being uncomfortable. So many people who worry excessively or have anxiety or are depressed are that way because they spend a heck of a lot of energy trying to avoid situations they find uncomfortable. Like exercise. Or meeting new people. Or working in a new way for someone with even higher standards than your own.

I hate this. I hate not being good at something. I hated every second of French class, of every Math class, and I hate lots of board games for exactly this reason – I don’t like being uncomfortable. I don’t like feeling stupid. I don’t like getting it wrong. I hate, as The Communicatrix calls it “The Black Hole Between Okay and Fantastic.” It sucks.

I can rail against fate like a two year old I want. I can throw as many mental temper tantrums as I can. It doesn’t change reality. That nutritionist is in my head saying “Look at this table full of fast food and breakfast fry-ups. This is what’s going on. Seeing it like this you cant avoid it. Seeing it like this has to trigger a change.” I’m in for a painful 8 weeks. (I’ll be lucky if it only lasts that long, really, but I try not to dwell.) I will get much better at being uncomfortable. I will get much better at being imperfect. And some day, if I’m lucky, it will be just okay.