This promo spot for WeTV’s new show, I Want to Save Your Life, is taking some heat on the feminist blogs today for perpetuating the notion that all overweight women secretly want to be saved.

Is this show sensationalist and ridiculous and overdramatic? Yes. It’s all of those. Will I be watching it? Nope. I’m sure listening to this guy talk for more than 30 seconds will make me want to throw a cupcake at the TV. But these are willing participants — you better believe everyone on this show signed a waiver. They’re there voluntarily. They want to change their lives. And maybe they do want to be saved.

Listen: I’ve struggled with damn near every eating disorder under the sun in my life. Anorexia, bulimia, bulimarexia (I didn’t even know it existed until I was diagnosed with it), over-eating, over-exercising, the whole bit. I’ve been there. And I’ll tell you why my eating was so fucked up: Because I was fucked up. Because there was a lot of shit that was wrong in my head and in my life, and it manifested itself through all sorts of food issues. Those issues are long in my past now. I haven’t struggled with my relationship with food in years, and that’s because my family and friends intervened, and I got real, aggressive help, and I got better. I’m now on the high end of the healthy weight for my height, but I eat reasonably and I exercise and, quite frankly, I think my body’s pretty goddamn hot.

Is this guy “real” help? I don’t know. Probably not. But I’m tired of this same old feminist refrain that tells women that they shouldn’t want to change their bad eating habits. If you eat healthy and you exercise and your body still happens to be on the larger side, that’s fine. That’s healthy, that’s your body, and you should own it and you should love it. But let’s get honest here: Many women (and men, for that matter) who are overweight or obese — especially women who are relatively young — have an unhealthy relationship with food, and there’s usually a reason there. As feminists, we would never hesitate to tell an anorexic woman to seek aggressive treatment and to deal with the underlying issues. Overeating is an eating disorder, too, it’s just so prevalent in our society, and it kills so much slower, that we somehow think we should defend it. I disagree. If you’re overeating or you’re eating crap all day, that’s an unhealthy relationship with food — it’s an eating disorder — and women should be encouraged to seek help for that, not to “embrace” it.

I also think it’s why diets don’t work for most people — we’re told to change the way we eat, not to change the way we live. We would never tell an anorexic woman she needs to eat more. We would look at why she’s not eating — we would look at the root of the problem. We would tell her that a lot more needs to change than what she eats, and we would work with her to do that. Until we take the same approach to obesity in this country, it’s going to continue to be a leading killer and an economic drain. I think this guy has the right idea, frankly, even if I don’t much like his delivery.