Teddi Mellencamp Defended Her “Accountability Program”
Teddi Mellencamp Arroyave. Daughter of John Cougar Mellencamp, cast member of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, accountability coach. Your next question should be, “What in the Sam Hill is an accountability coach?” The short answer is, someone who needles clients via text to stick with their diet and exercise plans. So, the Devil. Here’s Teddi’s deal, she moved to LA in her teens to become an actress, was told she was too chubby, got super fit, and eventually reinvented herself as a weight-loss guru. Bing bang boom, a star is born.
Now her business, All In by Teddi, is being called out by influencer Emily Gellis Lande for promoting disordered eating habits. Emily previously exposed the dark side of the popular F-Factor diet, posting a bunch of nightmare user experiences on her Instagram stories. Now she’s doing the same with All In, a program that she says forces clients to sign an NDA and barely lets them eat 500 calories a day. What the…? That barely covers my nightly Häagen-Dazs fix!
The All In website lays out the program. It’s a two-week “detoxification” called “Jumpstart”, in which users goes on a strict diet and pay $600 for an accountability coach who “cheers them on”. If they survive, clients will move to the regular monthly program ($399/month), which offers a “slightly more relaxed” menu. After a minimum of six weeks, participants have the option of moving on to the “Weight and Workout” level, in which they’re made to send daily updates of their weight and exercise to their coach ($165/month). Finally, step four, “Maintenance”. $95 a month (but, but, that’s my monthly Häagen-Dazs budget!) for “casual” check-ins.
The backlash against the program began on Tuesday when Emily posted a link to a Thought Catalog essay about All In teaching users to starve themselves. She was soon flooded with screenshots and testimonials from former All In clients, who told her they were forced to sign non-disclosure agreements so they wouldn’t share specifics about the program (via the Cut):
Lande cropped the screenshots to protect users’ identities, but there appear to be dozens of accounts with fairly consistent details: 400 to 500 calories a day, a daily hour-long cardio workout, and coaches who encourage users to drink water if (and when) they’re hungry.
“This isn’t an acceptable calorie level for anyone,” says Abby Langer, a registered dietitian and the author of the forthcoming Good Food, Bad Diet. “They call it a ‘jumpstart,’ but you’re not jumpstarting anything. All you’re doing is starving yourself.”
Users sent in details of their daily meal plans (what about the NDA, shhh!), which include:
Oatmeal for breakfast, quinoa with cauliflower rice and broccoli for lunch, and a cup of tomato soup or chicken broth for dinner, with two half-cup portions of fruit allowed as snacks. Drinking alcohol is reportedly allowed only on “cheat” days,” on which users can have protein and green veggies for dinner instead of soup. (One user says her accountability coach chastised her for snacking on carrots, which have too much sugar.)
Users are also forced to send their coaches pictures of each meal and daily screenshots of their scale (GO STRAIGHT TO HELL, MELLENCAMP):
“[Mellencamp] proudly advertises that none of her coaches have any medical or nutritional training at all,” says Langer. “Nutrition is not just calories in versus out. There’s a huge emotional component that these people are unqualified to tackle. They will most definitely end up hurting people.”
Teddi took to Instagram to defend herself, recording a video that’s two quick clicks away from “Kool-Aid, Nike sneakers, and a plan”:
Teddi says she’s helped changed 15,000 lives, feels great about what she does, and clients know exactly what they’re signing up for:
“And if it something that you want to do and you want us to hold you accountable to your goals, we are there to do that for you. If it’s not something you want to sign up for, you don’t. That’s why I love that we are very transparent from the beginning.”
She finishes with, “We believe in you, we will fight for you, and we know that the best is yet to come.”
But I guess “the best” only includes positive comments from All In coaches, because Teddi seems to be deleting a bunch of the negative ones from former users. Paris Hilton’s brunette aunt/Teddi’s bestie, Kyle Richards, defended All In on Twitter when Camille Grammer Meyer called All In “suspect”:
Camille, you really need to move on and get a life. Teddi has helped so many people and changed their lives. What are you doing everyday? Tweeting about RHOBH? You befriend whoever you think will get you a 💎😂Talk about a mean girl 👋🏻
— Kyle Richards (@KyleRichards) September 15, 2020
Let’s be real, the whole program sounds like a nightmare. Even if users know what they’re getting into, All In’s methods encourage disordered eating habits/literal starvation/weight-loss obsession. A true lady only weighs herself once every few months on a friend’s bathroom scale. Then, the rest of the evening, she silently grieves and numbs those dark thoughts with red wine and pizza.
But there’s a far more important issue that Teddi must address: What gave this woman the right to believe she belonged on a Bravo reality television show? How, why, and who? Give me a deluded Teresa Giudice, Candiace “Mommy Issues” Dillard Bassett, hell, even Ramona Singer, who partied with Trump’s son at the height of the coronavirus. These assholes do the work, they provide the crazy, they entertain. But Teddi? No. No. NO. Honestly, her inclusion in this franchise a slap in the face and she should be held ACCOUNTABLE.
Pic: YouTube