Carnie Wilson has been battling with weight problems for over a decade, and has been in the public spotlight most of this time. In a way she has demonstrated how difficult it is for many people to lose weight. She daughter of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson and singer in the band Wilson Phillips.
Gastric Bypass
At her heaviest she reached around 300 pounds. She started dieting many times and often lost some weight only to regain it again after losing interest in the diet. In 1999 she decided to have a gastric bypass which did prove successful for over 4 years. She lost a lot of weight, dropped down to a size 6 and in 2003 she posed nude for Playboy magazine to show off her new body.
Celebrity Fit Club
She failed to maintain her new healthy lifestyle and started putting the weight back on again and by 2006 she appeared on Celebrity Fit Club in an attempt to lose weight again. She lost around 22 pounds, but after the show ended, she regained her weight again. By 2008 she was very overweight again, and she declared that she would get back into shape to do another Playboy shoot. This never happened though.
A Fresh Start on The Fresh Diet
Earlier this year she became the face of a new diet plan called The Fresh Diet, which is a healthy meal replacement plan that helps people to control calories while eating a healthy diet. The Fresh Diet plan allows you to eat 3 healthy meals and 2 snacks each day.
She started the diet herself to prove the effectiveness of the diet plan, and did lose around 10 pounds of weight.
However, the manager of The Fresh Diet discovered that Carnie was also promoting her own range of cheesecakes. It is assumed that this was in breach of the contract. She had also failed to lose a significant amount of weight, and this may not have helped.
Why Did She Fail To Lose Weight?
Her story really helps to highlight the problems of trying to lose weight, and many people go through the same steps as Carnie Wilson has been through. One of the reasons why she has never maintained weight loss is that the solutions she has opted for have always been external, that is to say that she has treated weight loss as a disease that can be cured with a pill, rather than real action.
The gastric bypass was the first of the changes that she made. All a gastric bypass does is make it impossible for people to over eat to start with. In time the stomach stretches more, and overeating becomes possible again. If you do not confront the reason why you overeat, you will never maintain a healthy weight in the long term. Carnie Wilson is proof of this.
The Celebrity Fit Club worked, for a while. It proved that peer pressure is an effective way to lose weight. But again, for long term weight loss you cannot rely on peer pressure, you have to have the self motivation to lose weight and stay healthy. Carnie Wilson just does not seem to have this. Finally she decided to work directly with a diet company. The idea is that you have a financial incentive to lose weight and get fit.
However, such an incentive is great when you are signing the contract and everyone is positive and excited about the future. But the reality can be very different, when you are then again left alone to follow a diet plan to lose weight.
Carnie Wilson is, like so many other people, someone that needs constant guidance to stay in shape. She needs not to be told how to do it (really, we all know what to do), she needs someone telling her every day exactly what to do.
Most people are like this to a varying degree. Some people do manage to motivate themselves to stay in shape without a problem, but many are on the verge of becoming overweight, always battling to control their appetite, even when they know that overeating is wrong.
Others are constantly battling to prevent themselves becoming obese, always bordering on the BMI 30, never getting far below though. Weight loss is really a psychological game. It is a battle between the concious mind (driven by personal goals and ideas of the perfect body), the subconscious (driven by hormones that make us want to eat). So often the all powerful subconscious wins and the result is that we become overweight. Our bodies are the victims of our weak wills.