Watch I Used To Be Fat

I Used to Be Fat was a self-improvement improvement reality show that aired on MTV for one season. The framework of every episode was the same. It would open with an introduction to a recent high school graduate whose extreme obesity had negatively affected his or her life. MTV would arrange for a trainer to make daily visits to the student's home for intense all-day workouts. The trainer also went through the student's kitchen and threw away all of the food that was not healthy. This would generally cause a great deal of resentment among the rest of the family members, who usually felt as though they were forced to go on restrictive diets whether they wanted to or not. Family support was touted as a major component of a healthy lifestyle, especially since many of the overweight subjects of the show had initially become heavy due to poor nutritional choices on the part of their parents.

Each subject set a weight-loss goal that would take him through to his first day of college, which he would enter as a brand-new, confident young adult. The trainer arrived early every morning to start the full day of exercise. Almost every subject resisted the process at first. Some of them even found that their parents encouraged them to give up on their weight loss goals. One subject cheated by cooking fatty foods as soon as her trainer went home. The young adults were filmed while they shopped for new clothes and attempted to choose healthy foods off of restaurant menus. They found out that maintaining their new weights without changing certain aspects of their social lives was going to be nearly impossible.

Despite the setbacks, every single subject lost a substantial amount of weight. Most of them, having become accustomed to working out on a regular basis, continued to get smaller after going away to college. They really did incorporate their new healthy habits into manageable lifestyles. Their families would also come around by the end and admit that they had been wrong about the long-term prospects of such dramatic weight loss.