Joy Kong describes gaining weight unexpectedly and experiencing an identity crisis. She ran an experiment where TV trainers gained weight on purpose; all of them became depressed and wanted their bodies back. The takeaway: identity gets tangled up with how you look, especially in America.
I totally freaked out. I had an identity crisis because I've never been overweight before. I've never let myself go. And I realized how much of my struggles and being humbled was more so on the mental and emotional side. When I created my TV show on AE where we put other trainers through this experiment, every single one of them went through the exact same thing of an identity crisis where at first it was fun, people were laughing and joking and eating the food and having a good time. But then after about a month, all of them got depressed, all of them started crying, all of them started complaining about how they didn't want to do it anymore. They wanted their body back. It taught me a lot about body image and why we create our body image as our self image, meaning our identity is our physical look in reality. I believe personally that there's more to us than just our body composition. There's more to us than just our physical looks. But we're obsessed about looks here in America, as you can tell.
