Episode 4 Fix My Family

For a week, the peaceful island of Lusty Beg

in the Lakelands of Fermanagh

has become home to three families desperate to change their lives.

They're part of Northern Ireland's growing obesity crisis

and these families have decided to do something about it.

Isobel, Nick and daughter Rachael,

Ryan, Ellie, Mum Cara and stepdad Johnny,

and mother and daughter Rosie and Ellen

have come to the island to take part in a tough regime designed

and delivered by a team of experts to tackle the families' nutrition,

fitness and well-being.

It's a week of new experiences...

Relax. I want you to take a nice deep breath in.

..Of hard work...

Take it up.

..And the chance to open their hearts.

You would hear them saying something, you know, and I'd feel like saying,

"I know I'm fat but I'm not deaf."

It's midway through the families' week on the island.

They've already started to make progress towards their goal of a lighter, happier life.

Add 15 seconds to this one, OK? 15 seconds more to go.

-You're cruel, John.

-I am cruel!

Fitness expert John is introducing them to physical activity.

They're learning about good nutrition

and healthier ways of eating and cooking.

And intensive mind work with clinical psychologists

is allowing them to step back and look at their lives.

With by far the most weight to lose in the group,

Cara has thrown herself into all the activities.

People think that fat people are lazy people. People give the impression

that you're fat because you go home and you never do anything.

But with only a few days left before going home,

Amanda is concerned that Cara could fall

straight back into her old habits

and has asked to meet her in private for a no holds barred pep talk.

The reason I brought you up here, Cara,

and I'm going to be really frank, is that I'm worried about motivation.

You more than anyone have got a longer journey here.

There is a very real and present danger of diabetes.

There's a very real and present danger of premature heart problems,

the whole manner of things that are scary and horrible to look at.

Where is your motivation on a kind of one to ten?

At the minute, I would say it's probably a six or a seven,

but there's definitely room for improvement.

But I find, Amanda, that I get more motivated when I get into routine.

Routine is an essential part of any programme for me.

I mean the challenge with that is that life's not routine.

You just yourself into a routine and something happens.

A busy working mum of two,

33-year-old Cara has been a yo-yo dieter for years.

'I have always had weight issues.

'I suppose when I was a teenager in particular

'and had the money to start buying sweets,'

then I had the children, which was a great excuse to ignore what was happening.

There were so much more important things to focus on.

Now this is something that I really have to address.

I know people say, "Just take one wee bit at a time."

I find that hard. I'm a person that wants it all today

and it's just trying to just cope with doing it gradually.

What was your mum's relationship with food?

Sometimes daughters pick up mum's relationship with food.

Mummy loves to feed people. Mummy doesn't work.

-She's a feeder.

-She's a big, big feeder, even the dog...

She loves feeding and my auntie jokes the dog is ready to burst!

-And is that how she showed love?

-Yeah.

So food became something that was, this is what we do when you love someone.

Mummy cooks every Sunday and she doesn't just do a dinner and a dessert,

there's cake and tea after that.

Cos you talked about it being rude almost to say no,

-so is that how you've been brought up almost...

-Yeah.

When it's set in front of me I find it very hard to say no, I really do.

Time's going to tell with Cara.

I think we're going to know quite soon

if she follows through with the hard stuff.

If she has a conversation with her mother,

if she starts to take more control in the household.

All the things that will be uncomfortable, difficult, taking her out of her comfort zone,

that's when we're going to see is this a reality or is this just

something that's never going to quite hold.

You've now got a year's worth of work ahead, eight months maybe.

Next week, I want you to go to your doctor,

tell your doctor what you're doing, I want you to get your GP on board.

Think about it, get practical about it, say, we're going to do this,

because the weight will come off as soon as you start living even within

the realms of a healthy life, but if you start exercising a bit every day,

keeping the food real, keeping out of the junk, it'll come off.

There's no other way for it to happen.

I'm going to be hard on you today.

How is that different from any other day?

The families have all confessed to doing virtually no exercise at all.

Personal Trainer John Coulter hopes that a dose of early morning

physical activity will leave them energised and ready to take on

the other challenges of the day.

-Have a guess what we're doing.

-THEY LAUGH

We're doing the assault course.

And not only are we doing the assault course, I thought I'd make it challenging.

To make it challenging, we've got the kids versus the adults.

-In your face!

-Are we ready?

-Yes!

-Are we ready?

-YES!

Everybody, are we ready?

-Yes!

-Good! Three, two, one.

Let's go!

12-year-old Ryan and 42-year-old Nick

are probably the most competitive in the group

and they're not going to let a 30 year age gap,

excess pounds or lack of fitness get in the way of a good contest.

Everyone's approaching the task with grit and determination,

but Amanda wants to know if they've shown the same commitment

in their kitchens this morning.

I'm just going to check how much breakfast they had.

Porridge - that's a good sign.

So they had porridge this morning, brilliant! (Let's sneak back out.)

I'm going to sneak into Rosie and Ellen's house.

No sign of any cooking, but fruit. Hmm.

I'm thinking they slept in and didn't have any breakfast.

Nick and Isobel's lodge.

Ahh. Looks like they might have had a smoothie. That's good news.

They've made smoothies and they've had some of the fruit.

Very good.

Doing well. Keep it up. Keep it up.

-That's it!

-Just a few days ago, none of the families would have

thought they'd be starting the day with an assault course,

let alone enjoying it.

John hoped that by pitting the adults against the children

it would push all of them beyond their expectations,

and it's paid off.

But sometimes there's just no way forward.

-Push on the next tyre, that's it.

-Leave it to me, Mother!

-I can't!

That's all right, it's only one penalty point.

Don't worry you tried hard.

Team adults, I've got you!

Despite Cara's valiant efforts,

the children have still beaten the parents hands down.

Look at that! Yes! Great work! Great work! Brilliant!

High five for the winning team. Good. Great work.

-Well, how was it?

-I was exhausted after it.

It was horrendous. The hoops were...

I knew I couldn't do the hoops before I started, so that was a big dread.

-So you had to default on them, then?

-Yeah.

-But I done the rest.

-The kids are gloating that they won.

They're smaller, they fit through the hoops easier.

-It's nothing to do with fitness then?

-Not at all.

Clinical psychologist Dr Rachel Andrew

specialises in working with children and young adults.

She understands the pressures they'll be under when they go home

and all the obstacles that may stand in the way of success.

Well, in the last session when Ryan had been talking about being

a superhero and that idea, it had made me think about life

being a battle sometimes.

It can feel like you're dealing with one thing after another.

I was thinking about you and the qualities you have that might

make it more likely that you would win that battle and also about

the people who would be on your side with it,

and I guess that for me would be these soldiers.

So then, what do you think the dinosaurs and the bugs would represent then in that battle?

-Things trying to stop you.

-Yeah, exactly, well done.

What about for you? Is there anything that you're immediately thinking that

would get in the way, or that would help me?

I think people putting you down,

or bullies or whatever. I think they try to stop you from doing it,

-sort of making you think that it's wrong.

-Right.

I think you're saying something really important about the things

that other people can say to you and then that you can internalise a bit.

-They become things that make you doubt yourself.

-Yeah.

I think people rarely have the opportunity

to have some space to think about why they do the things that they do,

and what is helpful and what isn't helpful.

So therapy, to me, would be about just providing that space.

I was hoping you might be able to draw out your own battle scenes.

'I don't think enough people self-reflect.

'I think we can be so busy and spend so much time just doing

'that we forget about being,'

and don't really reflect very much on the choices that we make day-to-day.

Would you tell me a bit about your picture, Ryan?

There's a war going on and I'm sort of in the middle of it.

Two sides are fighting - evil Mr Sugar and he's saying, "Fitness is not important."

Then this is all the qualities that will help me beat him.

-Yeah! And you're the Lightning Kid?

-Yeah.

-I like that, I like it a lot.

I've really enjoyed today.

I love seeing the pictures and how you see things in your mind,

so thanks for that.

As part of the week's new approach to food and nutrition,

Amanda wants to give the adults' digestive systems an extra boost

and she has a special surprise for them.

Colon hydrotherapy, sometimes called colonic irrigation,

involves flushing out the bowels with water

to remove impacted waste and toxins.

-How are you feeling?

-Nervous.

-OK.

If you were to describe your stools...

-do they have a...

-They've got a fun-loving personality!

-And if you can tell me...

-It's something you don't normally look at!

It's always a good idea to look at your stools.

It tells you an awful lot about how the digestive system is coping.

So what would you say...

I'm going to get you to put on a very nice pair of little knickers.

With colon hydrotherapy the clue's really in the title -

the hydrotherapy.

Its principal aim is to try to hydrate through the gut wall.

Now the gut, sometimes called the bowel, and even more confusingly

sometimes called the colon, is all the same part of the body,

It's the waste pipe at the end of the digestive system that resides in the lower gut area.

When you said they were quite small,

you didn't say, "I'm giving you a paper posing pouch."

You found out which way round they go on?

-Oh, they're still in there!

-They're still in there?

It's a treatments that people feel really worried about.

So first things first, I'm just going to lift here.

What we now understand is that you can collect waste in that part

of the body and it can auto-intoxicate

through the bowel wall into the blood stream causing a whole manner of problems.

-Are you ready for me to insert?

-Yeah.

Yeah, so we're going to work with your breathing. OK.

So just relax. I want you to take a nice deep breath in.

-Oooh. Ahhh? Owww!

-And breathe out.

A lot of people have a very sluggish digestive system,

so it's a chance to clear out excess waste,

to help actually stimulate peristalsis,

improve the bowel tone, if you like, and get that hydrotherapy...

really improving.

OK. What we were hoping to see as the treatment progresses

is that we can see quite often through the tube,

is that the tube starts to move as the colon starts to work.

So at the moment, there isn't an awful lot of indication that

there's much tone or strength in your colon and again that's where

your fibre in your diet is going to really help your colon to get stronger.

It's kind of like the workout for the colon.

All right, Johnny.

-Getting quite a lot of gas there. Can you hear it?

-Yeah.

Good.

A few little bits of stools coming through.

So really starting to stimulate the colon to work.

-OK?

-Mm-hm.

It's just so weird!

Surreal experiences!

Keep coming, duck. Keep coming, the kitchen's that way.

Crispy duck! Yummy!

No, I hope Amanda doesn't hear me after our big motivational talk.

That was only a joke.

With meat on their minds, the lunchtime Greek salad gets a poor reception.

You haven't even tasted it, guys.

Anything that's green is good for you.

And you like tomatoes, don't you?

-No.

-Do you not like tomatoes?

-No.

Nutritionally, the meal isn't lacking but the absence of meat

clearly feels like deprivation to some of the group.

Disappointing, in a word.

After invasive therapies, et cetera, et cetera,

I was expecting something a little more substantial than a bowl of leaves,

which was ultimately what we were handed at lunchtime today.

We've got some tomato and cucumber there.

I was disappointed more for the children than the adults.

-Do you want an omelette?

-I'm OK.

There were four very long faces this afternoon when lunch was revealed

and it was lunch for everyone.

Is there none for the rest of them?

I see no reason why it couldn't have been salad with a slice of ham,

salad with a piece of fish, rather than salad.

How's your side salad?

As part of their journey to a healthier future,

it's important that the children become much more aware of and in tune with their bodies.

Amanda has arranged a yoga session for them.

Stay really focused on that point, good.

Now try reaching the arms all the way to the sky. Good, really lovely.

Come all the way down. Good. Breathe in, reach all the way up.

Good. Exhale, hands back to your heart. Good.

The practice of yoga...

it really allows kids to feel grounded.

Breathe in, dip your back, lift your head, your tail.

'It gets them connected to their body'

and to their emotions.

Sweep the back arm around. Pull it all the way back,

open your chest and shoot it to the sky.

It helps with their concentration,

their focus, their balance and also with mental and physical flexibility.

Can you feel the person in front of you, the person that you've got your hands on?

Can you feel them breathing? Can everyone take a deep breath?

Breathe in...and breathe out.

'They cultivate this beautiful inner peace that

'they can connect to at any time and I think'

all of that allows them or helps them

to make really healthy, good lifestyle choices,

Feel your body.

It creates this unbelievable self-awareness

and it makes you conscious of all the choices that you make.

Raman's therapy sessions are also about developing self-awareness

and being in control of life choices.

So far, Cara hasn't found Raman's style of psychotherapy particularly helpful.

Not easy to start?

I'm totally distracted now, Raman. I'm in a bit of pain.

I hurt my foot.

Just stood up and walked and I've hurt it

and I'm really frustrated.

I think I'm more conscious anyway today.

We'd done the assault course this morning and...

they all could finish it and the last one was jumping through the hoops

and there was more of me, to tell you the truth,

than there was of the hoop. And I tried to do it but I just couldn't possibly do it,

So that...I didn't think about it at the time,

but I'm thinking about it now.

Perhaps that moment this morning felt a bit humiliating?

Yeah, very much so, yeah.

I think one of the most difficult things for you

is not only having to keep in your mind that this is a long haul,

but also having a relationship with yourself where

-you're not humiliating or belittling yourself when things go wrong.

-Yeah.

When it comes to weight, it's a very private subject to me.

It's not something that I... or when people I feel humiliate me,

I kind of do like to keep it to myself or I would get upset, you know?

But the other way is maybe it goes more inside of you

and that can contribute to you

comfort eating to deal with that discomfort.

I suppose it was like the time I was going to look at wedding dresses,

and I went into one particular shop and as soon as I walked in,

I could see the reaction on the woman's face as if to say,

"God, no. You're going to be a problem," before I'd even said hello.

And some people even, you would hear them saying something, you know,

and I feel like saying, "You know, I know I'm fat but I'm not deaf."

One of the most difficult things for you to do,

if you put the weight problem to the side,

is in your mind to deal with all of these things.

You know, the reaction of other people to you as you are

and then trying to manage the humiliating responses,

the negative responses,

because your natural personality is to kind of let that bounce off you,

but privately it has a massive effect on you.

Cara has uncovered feelings that were deeply buried.

The next step is to work on breaking the vicious cycle of negative thoughts and comfort eating.

The body is a product of what we put into it

and the eye can reflect the way we eat.

The practise of iridology, based on scientific study,

uses analysis of the iris to flag up potential health issues.

The tone of the bowel is really out of balance.

There's a lot of diverticular pockets and these little openings,

and there's a constriction there, so that's in the ileum.

Can you miss? Do you have a tendency to miss when you go to the toilet?

-No.

-You go every day, no problem?

-Oh, yeah!

-More than once?

-Oh, yeah!

All right. He's proud of that.

Iridology is just fascinating.

When you realise that someone can look into your eye and tell you all the strengths and weaknesses

about how your body works and maybe what you've inherited, your genetic predisposition,

it really is a very insightful analysis of how well your body's operating.

That's the uterus area there. See that big opening there?

-With your menstruation, did you have problems?

-In the past, yes.

Iridology originated in Germany, but is used extensively

in countries like Australia where it's quite normal, everyone knows what it is.

We've got a lot of dark in the middle of the eye,

so there's under-activity in the digestive tract.

It's not a diagnostic tool.

Our iridologist isn't telling them they have a disease or a certain condition.

It's more a feeling of how well their body systems are operating.

It's a little bit wobbly here, so you can be a little bit anxious

and stress easy. Can you get really affected by stress?

Out of ten being really bad, where would you put your stress?

-Probably between seven and eight on average.

-So it is really high.

I got a bit of a surprise.

I had set it in a box marked new age mumbo-jumbo,

but then expecting nothing but that,

was told that I had had respiratory problems,

that it was my left-hand side and I was told it was the lower lobe of my left lung,

and she was right on all counts.

I was very surprised at that.

So maybe I'll take it out of the box marked new age mumbo-jumbo

and pay a bit more attention to it.

For these families caught in the takeaway trap,

Amanda needs to give them practical healthy alternatives.

It's Rosie and Ellen's turn to learn some new cooking skills

as they make dinner for the others.

Right, your turn for Thinner Dinner.

What I thought we'd do is a take on fried chicken.

What we're going to do is chicken drumsticks, so it's still quite familiar but done in the oven

with a tiny bit of salt, a bit of pepper and a little bit of soy sauce, nothing else.

Pre-scooped out some potatoes, which we're going to fill

so it's a bit more interesting than a baked potato.

Do you want to start scooping them into the potatoes?

Do you tend to have roasted vegetables?

I like roasted vegetables. The children wouldn't really go for it, but let's see.

The carrots and parsnips need nothing more than a light drizzle of oil and a little seasoning.

-It's a press a button.

-The baked potatoes, refilled with a sweet corn,

red pepper and potato mixture, are a filling alternative to chips.

They can be finished with a sprinkling of Parmesan.

Not too much cheese when people are trying to lose weight,

but Parmesan is really strong so you need very little of it.

A little oil, light seasoning and soy sauce is a quick and easy way

to make drumsticks delicious.

So we have half an hour while that's all in the oven. Is the table ready?

For busy families, cooking together is a great chance to spend time in each other's company.

Even young children can get involved in mealtimes by helping to lay the table.

And research shows that families who eat home-cooked meals together are happier and healthier.

-Hello.

-Girls, you've really excelled yourselves.

-Chicken in a basket.

-It's chicken!

-LAUGHTER

It's real chicken not surprise chicken.

There you go.

Now, I know you really, really want this,

but I thought I might do you a salad?

LAUGHTER

Speechless!

It's not only Nick that's happy.

Everyone's enjoying Rosie and Ellen's inexpensive,

simple to prepare and super healthy chicken in a basket.

As a treat after dinner,

it's movie night, but there's more than just a movie on offer -

a tempting array of crisps, sweets and chocolate,

as well as healthy snacks, has been laid out.

It's the first real test of the week.

Look, Minstrels.

There's marshmallows.

Oh, it's a trick. They wouldn't be this...kind.

-Take one square and leave it?

-No!

The group has done really well over the last few days,

as they've left their high sugar, high fat habits behind them.

Can they resist temptation and do the right thing?

Just think about this.

It's your decision, I'm not going to make it for you,

but I'm just telling you we've had a hard week,

if you want to go back to that way of life, it's up to you. No pressure.

Cara's resolve, like everyone else's, is standing firm.

Amanda should be proud.

Anybody else for water?

What did you just do?

Remove temptation.

In the end, we all got through the movie,

munching on our carrot sticks, our celery and our fruit,

and I think we all feel better for it.

Next time...

I'm really angry that you've decided to kick me where it really hurts.

Why would kick me? Do you not think I'm good to you?

It's the loss of this, the loss of five of us and the kids.

That bond seems to be very strong.

Sometimes I'll get very shallow and say, "No, I do care.

"I want to be the way I used to be." There's no harm in it,

but it would be nice to have somebody to flirt with you.

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