When the show The Biggest Loser first started coming on TV it was one of the reality shows that I would watch every week. At first I thought that the show was doing great things for these people who were severely overweight and had given up hope of ever being at a healthy weight. The show even inspired me to start exercising and eating healthier. As the show went through seasons and my knowledge of exercising and healthy eating habits grew I began to see a lot of problems with the show. Everything may seem perfect, but there are a lot of issues with this reality show. First of all, they make these extremely obese people exercise for 4-6 hours a day when they probably haven't done that much exercise for the last year. They start making these ordinary people train as hard as professional athletes and put a huge amount of strain on there bodies. Another thing is that these people are losing almost 20 pounds a week on a regular basis. This is insane. The commonly recommended weight loss per week is 1-2 pounds. So some of these contestant are losing 10x as much weight in a week than they should. Since they are so obese it is not uncommon that they would lose more weight a lot faster than someone who only needs to lose 20 pounds, but 20 pounds in one week for anyone is ridiculous. The weight that they are losing is also not weight just from fat. Since they are working out for so long each day, they lose a lot of water in there body, technically losing weight. One contestant Ryan Benson said in an interview he "regained 32 pounds in 5 days simply by drinking water." Another contestant, Kai Hibbard, consumed only sugar-free Jello and asparagus for several days along with jumping in and out of a sauna for six hours prior to the final weigh-in. So when they step on the scale at the end of the week to see who is above that line, a lot of that weight that the scale says they lost will come right back. Also a lot of these contestants that are now off the show have gained back a lot of weight, not necessarily back to the 400 pounds that they were, but a significant amount.
Dear Chase P,
ReplyDeleteI've never seen this show, but I've definitely heard about it. Before your post, I thought it was legit!
I never thought of working out long periods of time could be harmful, but it makes sense. These people probably havn't exercised in a long time, and I can't imagine how exruciating those work outs were on them and their bodies.
I'm surprised to hear about the drastic ways they were losing weight on the show (asparagus and saunas). If all the weight is going to come back, why even lose it the first time?
Good post, thanks for writing!
kelsey
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteDear Chase P.
ReplyDeleteLike Kelsey, I have never watched the show, but always thought that it was great for severely overweight people. After reading your blog I still think the show could work, but they should not be making these people who have not cared about their weight before train as professional athletes do. There is no way their bodies can handle all of the stress and even though they make it through the show and lose a lot of weight, is it even healthy? Thank you for your post.
falcon#12