I thought I’d write a bit about this new NBC “reality show” called “The Biggest Loser.” The show premiered last night and I just had to watch it, due to my interest in health and weight loss as well as a grudging fascination with the reality show format. I’m not exactly a fan of the genre, but more like a rubbernecker. I watched the second season of Survivor, Another Joe Millionaire, the second (current) season of The Apprentice, and last but not least My Big Fat Obnoxious Wedding. I decided to take a look at The Biggest Loser and see how it stacked up on its premeir night.
Let me qualify this by saying that I didn’t catch the entire show. I turned to it a little late and had to switch a way a few times to see what was going on during the ALCS game.
The Biggest Loser is different from most reality shows because it involves as its central theme improving your health. Or at least this is the motivation that people talk about as their reason to stay on the show, although I imagine there must be some monetary rewards as well. It’s also very different in that these folks, on the whole, seemed to be all about supporting each other. They all of this common problem of being overweight and they all seemed extremely nice about wanting everyone to lose as much as possible. That was nice and different, but we’ll see how long it lasts. Also the host of the show is extremely nice even when she’s telling people they must leave.
The show divides the participants into two teams, a red team and a blue team. It seems on both teams there’s a variety of participants at varying degrees of overweight as well as both male and female. The premise is that the team that loses the least amount of weight total every week has to pick a person to vote off. During the show you mainly see participants working out and occasionally eating small plates of food. I can’t imagine this being particularly entertaining week in and week out, and luckily it looks like next week they’ve at least spiced things up a little by creating a “challenge” where the teams each have to bake some large quantities of some really fattening desert so that it can then be served at some event or restaurant.
Ok, so the show is different from a lot of reality shows, and that’s nice, but its differences clash a bit with the main structure of the reality show that it upholds – two teams who are competing against each other and participants voting off one of their teammates each week. The biggest problem I saw is that most of these people seem to want to be there because this is a big chance for them, as they see it, to conquer a problem that they’ve had throughout their lives. They aren’t there just for kicks, or to try to kick-start a modeling career, or any career. They are there, as far as we know, to improve their health. You can tell that they are committed and that it is a big deal to them by the emotion that so many of them express on camera during their interviews. In that way it is the most “real” of reality shows and so the voting off seems even more mean. These are people seeking health and you are telling them yet again that they have failed because they haven’t lost enough weight.
Speaking of weight, this is another problem I have with the show. Weight is the factor by which everyone is judged. For a public that has been given little respect for their intelligence for a long time, this makes some sense. The creators of the show, if they even recognized that weight probably was not the best measurement to go by, nonetheless decided to choose it because it is simple and it is what most people use to judge their progress in this area. The ridiculous amounts of weight loss that people had during this first week (many over 15 lbs and a couple over 20 lbs!), just shows what a ridiculous measurement it is. Maybe it doesn’t matter for a show like this, except that you keep hearing the word “health.” Losing large amounts of weight very quickly is generally not seen as the healthiest way to lose. Plus weight in and of itself only says so much. It’s extremely doubtful that anyone lost 20 lbs of fat in that one week. And that should be what these people are trying to lose – their excess fat. The other parts of them – organs, bone, and muscle – are not things you want to lose mass from! But with a 22-lb loss, you are undoubtedly losing something besides just fat. Probably some of that is muscle, despite their doing resistance exercises to theoretically increase muscle mass. But a lot of it is probably water, which is often a big part of anyone’s weight loss at the beginning of any diet.
This brings me to another point, which is how fair is the actual winning or losing? I realize this is a TV show and few of these shows are really fair, but still, I just think it’s really arbitrary that they are judged by the total weight of their team. True, some of this may be in their control – how much they work out and how much they eat, but they have these personal trainers that work them to death. One participant talked about doing five hours per day. Working out that much I doubt having an extra 500 calories in food is going to make that much difference. The other problem with this is that everyone is different. Women lose fat generally at a slower pace than men. People who start out heavier generally lose a lot more at the start, possibly because they have more water weight in them and this gets shed in the first week or so. Metabolisms differ dramatically from person to person and especially if you consider all the different ages of the participants, which seem to range from early 20’s up to maybe early 50’s. How could one evenly divide ANY group of people of varying weights, degree of fitness, etc. I guess maybe that’s not the point, but it will be interesting to see how choosing someone to vote off will be decided. For the premier, the person voted off was the person who lost the least weight. She was seen as not having as much weight to lose as others, thus not being able to “pull her weight” so to speak.
I guess what bugs me most is the issue that they have made a game out of something that is a serious personal stuggle for millions, for whom it’s not a game at all. Maybe that’s being overly serious, but still, the problem remains that they are judging people on one thing and one thing alone at the end of the day – how much they weigh. We already as a culture overemphasize the power of the almighty scale and that somewhat arbitrary number. This number, as millions have found, is incredibly hard to control. Those who’ve been thin all their lives won’t understand this because they haven’t had to struggle with it. They think it’s simply a matter of portion control and personal responsibility. While I’m not denying there is a lot of responsibility involved, it’s not that simple. Experts disagree on what the best way to lose and maintain that loss, and lots of facets of our (Western, in particular U.S.) culture get in the way, including a more automated, car-driven lifestyle, all-you-can-eat and largest portion for your buck thinking, etc. Our society also seems to want a one-size fits all magic pill solution which is odd since we pride ourselves on individualism. The point is, though, that you can’t just decide “I’m going to lose X lbs. this week” Despite the vast majority of experts that still tell people they are perfectly efficient input/output systems like a chemical reaction, it’s not just a matter of calories in vs. calories expended. It’s much more complicated and the huge differences in weight loss during the first episode of the show (3 lbs to 22 lbs) demonstrate this. So you are judging people on something that they really don’t have a huge amount of control over.
My fear is that this will just add to the schizophrenic attitude our culture has with food and weight. But maybe I will be wrong. Maybe making weight just another arbitrary thing to be judged on, like one’s voice, one’s business leadership skills, or survival skills, will actually bring it down in importance and people will just see it as any other aspect or “skill.” Maybe those who are overweight will then perceive less of a stigma and can simply find the best way to lose weight without feeling like it is a all or nothing battle for life. Hopefully this will be the case. And perhaps future episodes will give the participants and the show in general a little more leeway in figuring out what matters most and what aspects are most characteristics of a participant are fair to use as fodder for throwing them “off the island.” In all fairness even in this first episode one of the participants said that she had told people she wasn’t going to simply use the weight lost as the reason to vote against someone. Then again, she did end up using it anyway, probably because at least for this time it was the focus of things. With these upcoming challenges and probably individual losses becoming a lot closer as the initial water weight loss is no longer in effect, participants will find ample other things to cause them to vote someone off, like good old fashion personality clashes!
Update: Perusing their website, I was able to fill in a few gaps as far as what I’ve said above:
First off, they do, as I expected have a monetary reward – $250,000. That’ll by a lot of donuts, har, har.
Caroline Rhea is the host, who I thought looked familiar, but couldn’t place. She was on Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, but apparently is also a stand-up comic, which I wasn’t aware of. I don’t know what her stand-up routine is like, but she is not, at least on this show, the picture of Hollywood extreme thinness that is so often the prerequisite among Hollywood, so my guess is that the fact that she’s probably struggled with weight a little herself makes her a good (and compassionate) host for this. Don’t even get me started on hosts. The “host” for Another Joe Millionaire was seemingly mocked and despised by the participants and for good reason. All she would do was to walk into a room and spout off her lines without showing any kind of actual report with anyone. It was like she was there to show herself to the camera and little else.
The two trainers seem very different based on what they show on the website:
Bob Harper, who is working with the “Blue” team, seems to be a trainer to the stars who spends his summers in the Hamptons and teaches aerobics to the masses. Bob seems to be all about aerobic exercise as his preferred type. His preferred diet is called the “Eat More Diet.” Here is what the site says about it: “Members of this team will eat four to six planned meals a day to boost their metabolism. The high volume, lower fat and lower carbs will give them energy for their workouts and help them burn fat.” Hmmm. Well, lower carbs doesn’t really give one energy for aerobic exercise. Of course eventually, after a couple of weeks on a low-carb regime people often find they have more energy in general, but it’s more of an prolonged energy good for endurance, not necessarily for doing lots of highly aerobic stuff. Not that I mind that he is saying “lower carbs” but I just wonder what exactly his view of “lower carbs” is, since this seems to be very subjective for some people. Maybe it just means 150 grams per day, which IS lower than the average American diet filled with starches, but certainly is not even at the maintenance level of most self-labeled low-carb diets. Anyway, the issue of low fat also makes his approach a bit confused. Is it low-fat or low-carb? Of course you can have lower amounts of both of these macronutrients, but that only leaves the third, protein. So is it then mostly lean protein? It doesn’t really say. Let’s hope so, because with his emphasis on lots of cardio, and seemingly not as much on resistance (weight-training) exercise, there’s a lot more of a possibility for muscle loss.
Jillian Michaels is a fitness trainer who seems to have a different set of qualifications as Bob. She’s certified by various entities and has some recognition in “Advanced Exercise Nutrition.” She was a martial arts expert for many years and she has specialized in many areas of fitness including lots of weight-training related areas. And in fact I did see her participants doing lots of exercise with weights, plus push-ups, sit-ups, etc. Her diet is termed the “Eat Less Diet” and this is what the site says about it: “Diet Philosophy: Burn more calories than you take in. Members of this team will calculate their basal metabolic rate (BMR) to see how many calories they burn without exercise. Then we will factor in the calories burned with the exercise on top of their BMR and deduct the appropriate amount of calories for desired weight loss. Team members will eat a high fiber, high protein, low carb diet with emphasis on portion control. Consuming less calories than they are burning will lead to… WEIGHT LOSS!!” Well… maybe. I do like the fact that she emphasized bother lower carb and higher protein and doesn’t get hung up on fat. Lowering your carb intake can have beneficial effects on insulin levels which in turn has lots and lots of positive physiological effects. Read Protein Power and you will learn a lot about the science behind this, not just as a weight-loss tool, but as something that improves health. Protein is frawned upon by many of the extreme low-fat (because protein usually comes with a good deal of fat in the bargain) and also veg*n (because there are few non-animal sources that are particularly high in protein – soy being the only notable exception) advocates. But protein is what makes up much of our body – muscle is pure protein, but so are much of our organs. Maintaining good muscle mass can help increase metabolism and strengthen bones, despite the constant unfounded myths that increased protein consumption actually depletes bone mass and causes cancer. While I don’t think fiber is as big of health boon as some make it out, foods that are high in fiber are often low in carbs as well – lots of greens and other veggies. Portion control is important for everyone and even though most low-carb plan don’t put specific limits on protein and fat, neither do they encourage people to pig out, at least not explicitly. Indeed often those on low-carb plans find themselves less hungry. The increased amount of fat tends to make them fuller. This is used somehow by critics to “prove” that low carb diets are low-calorie diets in disguise. Why this is a bad thing, I’m not really sure, but then again, much of the criticism low carb has received turns out to be idiotic and unfounded. Now, I do remember hearing a part of Jillian’s speil about her diet and kind of deemphasizing carbs, and what I think she was doing there could be construed either way. I think on the one hand it could be construed as being a bit defensive, and not wanting to be criticized as many are for their support of a low carb regime, but on the positive side I think it might be a good thing that she is suggesting that it isn’t all about the carbs, but as much about getting adequate protein and not pigging out on, say, processed foods that just have a label saying they are “low carb”. The one problem I have with Jillian’s overall approach is that it gives too much credence to the aforementioned calories in vs. calories out, incredibly dumbed-down way of looking at how the human body works. In the end, though, I think she still has more sense backing up her approach than does Bob, and so I guess if I’m going to have to root for one team over another, it’ll have to be red. As it turns out, red did win the first week, albeit from an admittedly pretty insignificant less than 1lb per participant.
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It recently occurred to me how much time has become a factor in all things technological. It’s a bit obvious, given the fact that speed is something that has been constantly sought after with everything from transportation to computers. When people talk about “power” or performance what they are really talking about is time. How much can be accomplished in X amount of time.
Over at 
I finally came across the first 
