Dr. Phil is an idiot
Maybe you already knew this. Or maybe you lost a lot of weight because of him, and to you he’s a genius. I wish I were you.
The other day, I happened to catch an episode of Dr. Phil, and the few times I’d seen him in the past, I liked his humorous no-nonsense approach. But this time he was just flat out unfunny and wrong.
The episode featured stories of two women, both overweight. The first woman was several hundred pounds overweight (I think she weighed about 500lbs., but I can’t recall exactly.) She was unable to get out of bed by herself, and couldn’t do any household chores. Her husband did everything - cooking, cleaning, personal care - you name it. After a while, understandably, her husband began to resent being the cook and maid and started abusing her. He knew what he was doing was wrong; he knew he had a problem and he just didn’t see a way out. He was extremely apologetic and totally owned up to his behaviour. Both of them, it seemed, felt trapped.
In the course of the episode, this woman detailed specifically what she ate and how much. It was not very much at all and was corroborated by her husband, since he cooked it all. Her one vice was soda pop, which they calculated if she gave up she would lose about 125 lbs. in a year. Which is remarkable, but it doesn’t answer the question of where the other weight came from and if she’s only eating a couple of eggs and a sandwich a day why the several hundred extra pounds are still there.
So in comes Dr. Phil, armed with the woman’s skeptic relatives, who all say that she HAS to be eating more than that, that she’s lying about how little she eats, and he accuses her of cheating and her husband of being a low-life scum.
The second woman was maybe 150lbs. over “normal” weight, and had aspirations to be a BBW model. She was really, really pretty and had very supportive, encouraging parents. Yet she had a boyfriend who was the true low-life scum…he was forever telling her there’s no way she could be a model and to just give up her dreams of ever being one. He was adamant and showed absolutely no sign of compassion for his girlfriend or her dream. I thought his lack of remorse actually bordered on psychopathic. This dweebus really deserved the wrath of Dr. Phil. Which he got, but it was exactly the same speech as the first guy got.
Here we had two spouses, both treating their women badly, one highly repentant, the other not at all. Why did he go for the jugular with the first? To me, it was obvious that this man loved his wife; he just couldn’t set boundaries with what he would and would not do. And the prospect of hiring an attendant either didn’t occur to him, they believed they couldn’t afford one, or they didn’t know how to apply for one through SSDI (a LENGTHY process that gets you entangled in a HORRIBLE system).
Now, Dr. Phil surely has had obese people on his show before. Maybe they all ate out the company store, and all they had to do was cut out a few hundred thousand calories per day and they lost their excess flubber.
But what if - horrors - she WAS telling the truth??? What if she didn’t eat more than 1000-1500 calories a day and wasn’t losing weight? What if she had a blood sugar problem or a hormonal disorder? What if she was on the Horror Diet????
Oh, Dr. Phil. You really disappointed me. I’m so sorry, but I must crown you the Horror Diet’s new (and first) Village Idiot. Since you are full of tough love, I know you will wear the crown proudly. And besides - when it comes to weight loss, there are innumerable ignoramuses running their mouths off about it, so you’re in plenty of company!
I used to like Dr. Phil. I used to think he was no-nonsense, common sense, normal. I think success and abundance has gone to his head. He’s become mean, snarky, abusive, in my opinion.
I do agree with your comments about him going for the jugular. He seems to have forgotten what it feels like to try to walk in someone else’s shoes.