How far would you go to prove a point?
British businesswoman and columnist Katie Hopkins gained 43 pounds and lost it just to prove that obese people are lazy.
Her 12-week journey of eating a 6,000 calorie per day diet with taking under 1,000 steps a day and losing the weight was filmed for a two-part TLC special "Fat and Back," premiering Sunday at 10 p.m.
The "lazy" lifestyle choice caused her to gain 43 pounds. After that, she burned off the weight with nothing more than diet and exercise - which she says is all obese need to do to shed their pounds too, she explains to New York Post.
"Watching ourselves get bigger and bigger isn't really something that I'm OK with," Hopkins told NY Post. "It disappoints me, and it seems that whatever solutions we're trying at the moment - which seems to be a lot of tea and sympathy - isn't really working. And I suppose that's where my approach comes in, which is a little more tough love."
Critics said Hopkins would be able to lose the weight quickly because of how fast she put on the weight, so she started a fat club with four people with long-time weight issues. The four others in the group lost 90 pounds among them in five weeks.
"None of us had a gym, a personal trainer, we didn't pay for anything, we just went out walking," she told NY Post. "That's the message for me - this doesn't have to cost you anything but you can make a difference."
At the beginning of Hopkins' journey she weight 124 pounds. After gaining weight with her "lazy" lifestyle she weighed 167 pounds. At the end of her three month journey, when Hopkins burned off the weight, she weighed 136 pounds.
"I signed up for this thinking this would be a physical process. But actually it turned out to be much more of an emotional journey," Hopkins told NY Post. "I've had two weddings and I didn't cry at those, had three babies and I didn't cry at any of those childbirths. I don't cry easily but this reduced me to tears loads because I just became a person that I'm not. I realized that actually being fat is hard."
Despite the emotional journey the weight gain took her on, most of her controversial opinions on obesity remain the same.
She still believes parents should be held responsible for having fat children, remains opposed to people being allowed to get weight-loss surgery through the U.K.'s government-provided health coverage, and she still won't hire someone who is overweight.
