Late to the Party

There are a lot of popular shows out there that I don't watch. Don't get me wrong, I watch a ton of TV, but in general I only watch at night and my husband holds higher standards for his viewing than I do (yet South Park is his idea of amazing TV). One of the shows that I have never watched is The Biggest Loser. I'd heard plenty about it and I always enjoyed the clips they showed on the Soup. Now that Faith is at preschool for 2 days a week, I've decided to try watching a season of The Biggest Loser, mostly because Kari and Alyssa are always talking it up.

In case you aren't familiar, here's a break down of the show's premise: Really fat people apply to go on national television and live on a ranch with all the fitness amenities that anyone could possibly want, but their fitness journey will be publicly scrutinized in return. Weekly, the fatty who loses the least amount of weight gets booted from the ranch and has to return to their Cheeto-filled hovel.

Oh, and they also have to do humiliating "challenges" for the viewing pleasure of our obese nation.

Struggle fatty, STRUGGLE!

Since this generously girthed group has access to only healthy food and 4 hour daily workouts, they lose a shit ton of weight every week. It's funny to me how SAD they are when they "only" lose 4 pounds in a week. Granted, these people have a lot to lose, but the last time I checked it's only healthy and sustainable to lose 1-2 pounds a week (since a pound is 3,500 calories). You'd think they'd be more sad about how they look exactly the same as week one (to me anyway) no matter what that scale says.

Don't worry about the self esteem of the contestants, they have attractive people telling them uplifting things all the time.

Pretty man is saying words

Just to enforce the stereotype that women are emotional and unpredictable in the workplace, we have Jillian the screamer:

I have several of her workout DVDs, so her demeanor wasn't exactly shocking. I've done her 30 day Shred DVD enough times to be immune to her oddly erotic interactions with the workout models and endless yelling. I actually prefer someone screaming at me when I workout, as it reminds me of martial arts training. Ideally, the screaming isn't in English, but I can compromise.

For reasons that weren't explained, they always make the contestants weigh in in as little clothing as possible. I don't see why they can't just wear the same shirt and shorts every week. Seeing man boobs bigger than mine is almost enough to kill my appetite for my pile of Oreos (the dairy free cookie of champions).

So...much...pale...flesh

Don't worry, I take the motivational speeches of the trainers to heart and push through the discomfort and finish my cookies.

The theme of this season of The Biggest Loser is childhood obesity, which is somewhat eye opening because seeing the numbers and percentages of children dealing with obesity related diseases is shocking. Of course, the little cynic inside of me was questioning their methods in gathering that information and wondering if they didn't skew the statistics to generate the most shock value, but I can't argue that kids today need to move more. I can't even imagine trying to make my kids eat healthy foods, mostly because this is the most true Venn Diagram of all time:

Besides, I actually have to HIDE salad from Faith until she's eaten most of her dinner or else she just wants the cabbage and lettuce and refuses to eat anything else. I have to do the same thing with berries because she would drop a cookie and run over it to get to some blueberries. Also, I have grand plans of making her bike as I run as soon as she is old enough to tolerate my Jillian Michaels style of fitness parenting.

Of course it has to be a ginger kid

I know this show has been on forever and I'm so late to the party, but indulge me here: Do you think this show is actually helpful to people who want to lose weight? Does anyone benefit from this, or is this just schadenfreude for people sitting on their couches watching this show?