A Positively Inspiring Chat with Ruby
If you don’t recognize the name Ruby Gettinger you may not be alone, but after watching just one episode of Ruby on the Style Network (Sundays, 8 p.m. ET) you’ll feel like you’ve known her for years. Unlike other weight-centric reality shows that feature competition, round-the-clock workouts and elimination ceremonies, Ruby follows its namesake star on her quest to shed hundreds of pounds on her own. NeverSayDiet chatted with Ruby, who talked about her journey so far, how she manages to keep a positive outlook and why she feels so connected to the people who watch her show.
NeverSayDiet: Season 1 of Ruby is now out on DVD. What made you decide to document your weight-loss journey on national television when there is so much scrutiny about people’s weight in day-to-day life?
Ruby: On my show I wanted to be the guinea pig. I want to know why there are so many people out there suffering from obesity. There is such a big market out there, and people are making millions of dollars from diet products, but people are still getting bigger. There’s a big disconnect somewhere. I say that I’m on a journey and people are following along with my show.
NSD: You’ve lost over 100 pounds since your journey began. How were you able to drop the weight and how are you continuing to lose the pounds?
Ruby: The thing that worked for me was the Ourlife Health program. I had to go cold turkey and eat nothing but healthy food. I was mad and I was pouting. It took me six months; it was like a rehab program for eating. But the hard way is the only way to achieve your goals.
Food journaling really helped me, too. We have the Internet now and can find the calories for everything. Turn the package over and find out the serving size because it will shock you. If you keep up with it you’re not going to fail. Even people that aren’t dieting will start [looking at serving size] because you’re cautious about what you’re eating.
I’m restricted to 1,700 calories a day and some restaurant meals are a week’s worth of calories! Even [restaurant] salads are bad. People think, “Oh, salads are good for me,” but some are 1,500 calories by the time you add everything in it. If I’m going to eat that many calories just give me some chocolate!
NSD: In Season 2 of Ruby we’ll get to see you leave your hometown of Savannah, GA, and meet people from all over the country. What has it been like connecting with your fans?
Ruby: I love connecting with the fans face to face. I get to hug their necks and kiss their faces. It’s unbelievable how sweet everyone is. I never knew how lonely some people are. They don’t have anyone to walk with. A lot of people made themselves shut-ins because people didn’t accept them. They are now finding other people to be accountable to and it’s changing their lives.
People are so sweet and it’s just amazing. Even thin people who used to think, “Why doesn’t she just go on a diet?” are saying they understand my journey and are learning that it’s not that easy.
NSD: Why do you think fans feel so connected with you?
Ruby: I think people share their stories with me because I share with them. I am so open with my journey. People walk in my shoes. They hear me and they can relate to me and I can relate to them. We share our stories together.
When I started this thing it was about trying to find out the truth. People are now actually making changes with me. People email me or send me videos and tell me the addictions they’re dealing with. People tell me they’re losing 50 pounds, 80 pounds and sharing it with me.
NSD: Any stories in particular that have impacted you?
Ruby: In Philadelphia a young girl told me she wanted to commit suicide. She said she saw the show and decided not to do it, because she wanted to be happy like me. I told her, “Whatever you have to do [to lose weight], you have to do it.” This is what happens to kids, because they’re getting so verbally abused at school they can’t handle it.
Somewhere down the road of life someone always tells us something negative. We might not remember when, but someone tells you can’t do something and you think they’re right, but it’s bull. You can cross over it.
NSD: You’re such a positive person despite your struggle. How do you manage to keep a smile on your face even on the hardest days?
Ruby: I’ve always been a happy person. Even at 716 pounds I was happy. I love life and I love to laugh. When I start feeling down or feel like I can’t make it, I tell myself, “No. You’re not going to do this.” Sometimes I scream at myself, “Shut up!” because if I go [to a negative place] I’m never going to get to my destination.
Whatever your passion is and whatever burns inside your soul that is your purpose and your destiny. You have to do it or you’ll never be happy. Do whatever it takes to get it. It’s not worth living your life if you’re not doing what you’re passionate about.
Ruby airs on the Style Network Sunday nights at 8 p.m.
—Pat Sandora
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July 01, 2009
Looking into the Abyss on ‘Clean House: Messiest Home in the Country 3′
If you’ve been a fan of Style Network’s “Clean House” since its premiere in the fall of 2003, and especially if you’ve watched the previous two “Messiest Home in the Country” specials, the “Dirty Little Awards Show” and the just-completed “Search for the Messiest Home in the Country,” you may think you’ve seen the worst of what host Niecy Nash calls “mayhem and foolishness.”
I beg to differ.
Tonight, July 1, at 9 p.m. ET/PT (with repeats at that same hour on Thursday and Friday), Style premieres the two-hour special “Messiest Home in the Country 3,” which visits the Cincinnati, Ohio, residence of Sharon Baglien, 57, a recently retired police detective, and her 20-year-old daughter, Brigitte, who made the desperate call to “Clean House” to get the junk out and transform their home.
Somehow the women got up every day and navigated around piles of stuff and expired food everywhere — the result of 30 years of shopping and hoarding — while also dealing with a non-working kitchen sink, a dripping bathroom shower with a bucket in it (in, by the way, the only bathroom) and a broken stove, dishwasher, and washer and dryer.
Oh, and the washer had overflowed at some point, soaking the giant mounds of stuff in the basement, which were still in place, along with long-expired food. At least the mice were happy.
The only thing greater than the sheer tonnage of junk stuffed into every corner of the house, from groaning attic to packed garage to long-neglected storage unit to the basement — where, as designer Mark Brunetz pointed out, eyes wide, “You can’t even see the walls” — is the depth and breadth of Sharon’s denial.
“I don’t believe,” says Brunetz, “at any point, Sharon and especially her daughter Brigitte ever lived in a house that was orderly. It’s like speaking to someone in English, but they’re hearing it in Greek, and that’s what makes it so difficult.
‘In many ways, while we were there, we were trying to invent a new language in which to communicate with her.”
Sharon Bagliens’ response to questions about the state of her home usually involved a smile and the use of the word “overwhelmed” (along with a few words that will be bleeped at airtime).
“She definitely has a way of dealing with perhaps not understanding what’s going on,” Brunetz says. “Her veneer was just, ‘I’ll smile and look like everything’s great.’
“The thing about Sharon, she told her own story. We really didn’t have to do much. We just opened the doors and turned the cameras on and asked her some basically relevant questions, and her story was just told by virtue of how she communicated — or lack of communication — and then really what he house looked like.
“Oftentimes, you really want to dig deep into a story, but we tried, and we could only get to far. But I think, a picture speaks a thousand words. In this case, it did.”
Nash — who, with Brunetz, has been with the show since the beginning — is usually firm and unflappable in the face of the most mind-boggling heaps of junk, but was reduced to tears in the basement.
“That was very real,” Brunetz says. “I’ll tell you what was interesting about doing that. Niecy never really gets (very far) into the house, especially the basement.
“So when she walked into it, it was her first walk into that basement.”
The junk there was even deep enough to entirely hide “go-to guy” Matt Iseman, and he’s not exactly small.
In the end, “yard-sale diva” Trish Suhr had to use a 7,000-square-foot empty department store to house the Bagliens’ stuff for the yard sale.
(By the way, while yard-sale proceeds usually go to financing the redecorating, in the case of the “Messiest Home,” the money goes to the residents’ charity, and the show picks up the tab for a total-house makeover.)
But between the beginning of the sale and the final reveal, both women, at different times, stormed off the location.
“We closed the show without (Sharon),” says Brunetz. “It speaks to this idea that, in many ways, ‘Clean House’ stays fresh because, although the main themes of the show are the same — that being the clutter and the people — how the story gets told and the outcome and all that, constantly changes.
“The show will follow up with her, but that will be ‘To Be Continued.’ For now, this is how this played out.”
Nash often says that clutter is an outward manifestation of something going on inside, and that’s a consistent theme of the show. Every junk-laden house contains stories of a life or a relationship gone awry.
Brunetz is even working on a book about the psychology of clutter and our consumer culture, which should come out about this time next year.
“Clutter,” he says, “keeps people from being present to their lives. It’s a principle of the show — when you have all this stuff, and you create a life around this stuff, it keeps you anchored in the past. It doesn’t allow you to be present in the very moment you’re living in.”
For example, Sharon Baglien refused to let Brigitte discard any of her childhood possessions and spoke of her daughter in nostalgic terms — even though she was standing a few feet away.
“She was so torn up,” says Brunetz, “around missing her daughter that she didn’t realize her daughter was standing right there.”
In the end, “Clean House” tries to organize lives, not just houses. Asked if the show might, in some small way, be doing work on behalf of the Almighty, Brunetz laughs.
“You know,” he says, “I’m going to actually take that compliment in, because normally I would slough it off. I’d like to think that one of the things I do, and we’re doing it as a show, is walking in the truth of what it is to be human.
“So I consider that high praise, and thank you very much.”
After all, no matter how silly or benign or frivolous TV reality shows may start out to be, they still have, at their core, human beings with real, human feelings.
“The cool thing about reality is,” Brunetz says, “sooner or later, you’re going to run into real people, and we definitely ran into some real people at ‘Messiest Home 3.’”
Posted at 08:06 AM in Television | Permalink
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