Her segment on the show will only be 22 minutes long when it airs later this month, but Maggie Latos made sure to warn her grandpa about the swearing.
“There were days when maybe I was out a little too late the night before or I forgot to shave my legs,” said Latos, a 29-year-old pastry chef at Oak Park’s Marion Street Cheese Market.
“You can’t really hide all that stuff,” she said. “You get an appreciation for reality TV, let me tell you.”
Latos recently wrapped up filming for Food Network’s newest show, Fat Chef, which began airing last week. The show documents the journeys of a dozen chefs from Chicago, New York, New Jersey and Ohio as they work with nutritionists and trainers to try to lose about 25 percent of their body weight.
Now about 30 pounds lighter, Latos said she’s learned to be “incredibly mindful” of what she puts in her body. But it wasn’t until a few months into filming that she realized why the weight loss plan for everyone else wasn’t working for her.
Latos, a graduate of the French Pastry School in Chicago, was working at a Bucktown boutique last summer when she stumbled on a casting call for the show through Craigslist. The posting didn’t mention the show’s name or that it would be on the Food Network, but once Latos lost her job, she figured she had time to fill out the long application.
She was told in September that she would be a participant, and found the timing too auspicious to pass up.
“It just seemed like a really interesting way to explore something that I clearly didn’t have a firm grasp on, just health and fitness and how that applies to my life,” Latos said.
Filming began, and a trainer had Latos working out 5-6 days a week for an hour or two each day at a gym they set her up with. She has attention deficit disorder, so switching up her exercise activities was important to keep her motivated. She’d use the elliptical, go biking, and do yoga or dance because a knee injury prevented her from running.
An internship at a restaurant and the job at the cheese market, which she picked up shortly before filming started, kept her schedule busy. And the cameras following her to the gym didn’t get any easier to adjust to.
“I had a really, really tough experience,” Latos said. “I wasn’t losing the weight in reality show timeframe.”
So for Latos and one other chef, the network flew in a nutritionist at the 11th hour. She said that saved the experience. Food allergy testing revealed Latos has a gluten allergy, and she learned about supplements to take and how to correctly manage her body clock.
Now, Latos said she’s eating for her body type — high protein, low carbohydrates — and is still blown away by the changes the nutritionist made.
“It’s tough but it’s so fascinating,” she said, “and the more interested I am in something, the more I’m going to stick with it.”
When asked what she wants viewers to take away from the show, Latos had a few hopes.
She wants it to shed light on how ADD ties to health. For others who are struggling to lose weight, “you have to consider that there are other things going on,” she said. “You can’t just assume that someone isn’t trying, because it’s detrimental.”
Aside from her episode, “I hope the show in general really drives it home that you just can’t blindly consume whatever you like.”
“It’s not impossible to work with food, this thing that you love so much,” Latos said, but “there might be a lot of trial and error involved, that’s for damn sure.”
Latos’ segment on Fat Chef airs at 9 p.m. on Feb. 23.