The Biggest Loser

[KSH]

RM- you made a lot of really good points.

A lady I "know" on Beginner Triathlete... talks about the same thing... that the show isn't realistic when it comes to a normal person losing weight. She herself has lost 100 pounds, but it took 4 years, not 3 months.

In this day and age of, "I want it to happen RIGHT NOW", the show makes people think that they too could lose 20-30-50 pounds easily... with some gym work and eating a bit healthier. Which isn't realistic at all.

What has always frustrated me about the show is the weigh-in portion. They spend very little time showing what these people eat, how the sleep, exactly how many hours they workout... and then for a 2-hour show, 45 minutes of it is all the weigh-in and the vote off.

With that said, the show does encourage people to get off the couch (after the show?) and to workout. It shows people who think there is no hope... that there is hope... they just need to go out there and find some help and work hard. Unfortuantely, people who are overweight by 100-200 pounds... well, it's really hard for them to go find the help they need and to workout. But it does show them that it can be done.

[Tuckervill]

As a fat person, I always looked at TBL like this: "Yeah, SURE they can lose 10 lbs in a week! They have nothing else to DO but workout and eat the food provided!"

It's kind of like when Oprah says, "Cook like this and you'll be healthy." Well, SURE Oprah can say that! She has people who cook for her!

In other words, neither of those things are the real world. I don't look at TBL as any other thing. The "reality" part comes from it not being scripted, and using real people as guinea pigs.

One thing I DO get from that show is the transformation of *thought* that is clearly visible amongst the contestants. They are seriously obese, and they DO NOT BELIEVE they can ever be fit again or run a mile or lift weights or work out for hours in a day. By the time they get voted off, the way they think about themselves has obviously changed, because it was proved to them that they CAN do JUST what they CAN do, and that builds on itself and creates change in them. You can't change behavior without changing thought first. This show demonstrates that very clearly to me. That's the part I like.

Karen

[Eden]

While I do agree that they should be explicit about how they get their results. It can't be good for people to get discouraged because they are not seeing what happens on the show happen to themselves. I do think that what is good about the show is that is does show that these people, most of them severly obese, can lose a lot of weight only using diet and exercise. When you see that as compared to shows that chronical someone who does GI surgery to lose weight..... I think no matter how quickly they take the pounds off on Biggest Loser, it must be more healthy than surgically mangling your GI tract. There seem to be few people who do the show who fail to get motivated and lose at least some weight, no matter how long they spend on the show. I think that it shows great results and I like the message that a person can be in control of their own wellbeing.

[Pedal Wench]

When you see that as compared to shows that chronical someone who does GI surgery to lose weight..... I think no matter how quickly they take the pounds off on Biggest Loser, it must be more healthy than surgically mangling your GI tract.

I so strongly agree with this. Discovery has a bunch of shows that follow overweight people, and they always say they've tried everything, and they always end up with a bypass. I think if all candidates were sent to the BL Campus for three months, where every calorie was monitored and daily exercise was required, the number of surgeries would dramatically drop. The number of teenagers doing the surgery is so alarming to me. By virtue of their age, there's no way they've tried everything! As I'm slowly discovering on our own weight-loss challenge, it takes TIME to lose even a few pounds. At 17 and 18 years old, they don't have enough time alive to have lost the weight.

On the flip side, I realized how frustrated I was to have 'only' lost a pound last week, probably because I watch a show where people (women) regularly lose 5-7 lbs. a week.

[Tri Girl]

I've enjoyed reading all you ladies have said about the show. I agree with most all of it (like RM who said what about us who work out an hour or more a day and watch what we eat and can't lose .5 lb in a week).

I just have to say that my DH and I laughed at each other the other night when we were watching the show because halfway through I turned to him and said "you wanna go get ice cream?" He said we're probably the only people in America who'd watch a show about weight loss and want to get ice cream. Ha!

I'm impressed with how much weight they lose, and if I could work out like crazy for 4 hours a day I'd be one smokin' hot momma too- but one hour a day and some cutbacks will have to do to keep my weight sorta stable. Oh well. After seriously trying to diet for the last 2 months and only losing one pound- I'm thinking my body has found it's perfect weight (not perfect according to charts or graphs- but perfect for me). Such is life. I don't want to waste it chasing that "perfect body" that I had many years ago.