Why British TV Personality Katie Hopkins Gained and Lost Weight for TV
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Courtesy of TLC(NEW YORK) — British TV personality Katie Hopkins, known for her biting beliefs on obesity, put her words into action for a new TV special.
Hopkins, 39, gained nearly 50 pounds, hoping to turn around and quickly lose it, all while being filmed for the two-part special, Fat and Back.
“The reason I’m losing the weight is to prove how simple it is to lose weight if you really want to, and the only way I can do that is by becoming fat myself,” Hopkins says on the TLC special.
“I really believe that fat people’s solution is in their hands,” she says. “They don’t need to put so much into their face.”
Hopkins, a mother of three, gained the weight by eating over 6,000 calories per day, despite a doctor telling her on the show that her weight fluctuation “is not a good idea.”
During the show’s filming, Hopkins also traveled to the U.S. to meet people fighting obesity who struggle to see eye-to-eye with her opinions on weight.
“I look at you and I think, ‘You are a wreck of a human being,’” Hopkins tells one overweight woman, who is later seen on camera calling on her cellphone to report a hate crime.
American author, TV personality and transformation pro Chris Powell says that Hopkins’ weight experiment discounts too much.
“She’s focusing so much on the physical aspect of weight loss and she’s totally ignored the psychological and emotional component of it,” Powell, the host of ABC’s Extreme Weight Loss, told ABC News.
Hopkins’ journey to gain and lose the weight took six months and was something that even Hopkins concedes was not as easy as she had hoped.
“It actually turned out to be a real ordeal,” she says on the show. “I understand that when you are fat, you don’t want to put your trainers on and go running out the door because you think people will laugh at you.”
“I know how hard it is to be fat and carry that weight around and I know no one wants to be fat by choice,” she says. “It’s about the amount you put in and how you burnt it off.”
“I don’t think it has to be quite as intimidating,” she adds.
The two-part special Fat and Back airs Sunday, Jan. 18, and Sunday, Jan. 25, on TLC.
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