We have a winner! The show is degrading.

Me too, Cleo. I hadn't ever heard of it, when my car broke down while I was away from home and I had to get a hotel room. (We don't have cable TV of any kind at home, only a DVD player/VCR.) Naturally I flipped channels a bit, since what the heck else am I going to do with my car in the shop and no family to hang out with in the freezing cold. I ran across that show and was literally aghast that it airs on television. It seemed unreal to me. (I haven't watched much network television in the last decade or so, and it only reaffirmed my aversion. Blech.) I don't know if its always as bad as it was that night, but they were all voting on who had to leave, and then having to explain to the person who got kicked off why they sucked... :shudder: Its like a really bad dream; don't get why anyone would stand for it. Like we who are overweight don't already know of enough reasons society thinks we should loathe ourselves. Sheesh.

I saw an episode and I swear it was like watching a really fat Hulk Hogan dip his face into chocolate fountains and then come up against Rick Flair with body parts all a-jiggle, doing that fake tremble he did when he was Hulking up to go after Flair.

And then fat Flair throws himself on the floor and rolls around in pizza and cries to Jillian. She yells at him, "Go for his HAIR!" and then Rick jumps up and...

... and then, you realize something. WWF and the Biggest Loser are like bad wrestling pants. You look with your mouth wide open for awhile and then you try to forget you ever saw it--or that the guy you know who's always been a little funny in that way no one ever speaks of in polite company bets on the outcome, even though it's rigged.

I'll tell ya, another thing that bothers me is that some of these people are so desperate to lose weight and get healthy and are so in need of help, only to be voted off and sent home to their own devices before they feel they are ready. I know it's been said that this is just a competition/just a show, but when you see how these people come in with such hope to be able to finally change thier lives, you start to consider the seriousness of it all and it seems wrong to turn losing weight and getting healthy into this fiasco of how fast can you get it off and if you don't - you're OUT! You can see their desperation when they are asking, "what am I going to do if I'm sent home?" Yes, I assume a lot of them figure out their own way of continuing their success with weight loss and getting healthier, but it's sad to see those who say they are fighting for their lives and are so scared to be sent back home. If they feel they are getting the proper tools to be able to continue thier success at home, then why are they so scared to go back there? Oh, yeah, I forgot one solution they offer - chewing a piece of sugar free gum is how to avoid the temptation of a sugary dessert. It's one thing to do it at "camp" and another to do it at home. BIG difference.

OMG.

I just watched some of BL last night for the first time ever.

I was heartbroken and sickened, watching them puffing and sweating away and that he-man Jiliian making them jump over benches and falling on their butts and walking across them as they did wall squats. Those poor knees. I wanted to scream at them, "THERE IS ANOTHER WAY!!" You don't have to kill yourself (or deprive yourself) in the process of losing weight!

Then came the weigh in. Heartbreaking again. First of all, making those girls stand there in those God-awful sports bras (sorry, no one looks good in a sports bra unless you're thin and you've had implants!) and bike shorts. Hell, I'm fairly normally weighted and I won't walk around in one exposed! How humiliating. They could have chosen bike shorts and T-shirt or even a more form-fitting spandex shirt would have been more flattering and less humiliating. I agree with Cleo that it turned them into a freak-show. How sad.

And then there were people who felt "bad" b/c they had only lost 5 pounds! GIVE ME A BREAK!!! 5 pounds is awesome. Even one pound or 1/2 a pound is awesome AFAIC.

I just found the show to be awful in the worst way. I cannot find one good thing to say about it. I can't even say the weight loss is good, b/c it's overshadowed by the physical torture and the freak-show aspects. I certainly will never watch it again.

The one and only time I watched the show they put all the people in a room FULL OF SWEETS - cakes,cookies, everything you could imagine and their challenge was that if they ate some of it they could call home (but of course that would affect them in the weigh off). Well talk about humiliating!!!! Like overweight people just gorge themselves on that stuff all the time - and to make it look worse the contestants were walking around the goodies like lions around a fresh kill licking their lips/rubbing their tummies - looked pathetic!!!

Wow. I never liked the show from the small bits I saw of it but htat is just disgusting.

Great ep last night!!

The contestants had to spend a week at home and learn how to balance home life and the diet and exercise program. And whaddaya know, those who were dedicated and watched what they ate and worked out, lost more weight!

BTW I agree its brutal at the weigh in but its not the number of pounds lost thats important. Its the percentage. So depending on the contestant, 5 pounds could be a great number.

Personally I dont want to see em wear what they do at the weigh in, but I suspect they do it so you can see the changes in their bodies.

I'm watching the Australian version at the moment and Bob and Jillian are training a third black team of reject contestants in America (They did the same last year but it took place here in Australia and with a guy called The Commando, then the U.S version picked up on that in your previous series and had Jillian's Black Team). I feel they really need to screen the personalities of the people more carefully before they choose them, and just pick the ones who are doing it as a competition and not out of hope.

You know, I watched the first season religiously, but since then it's bored me. I do love seeing the befores and afters but I love looking at all befores and afters. I'm with Elle - the humiliation of their weigh-in outfits is awful. Mostly, though, it just bored me. I didn't find anything I could "take home" from it that would help me. YMMV

I actually see the attraction of the whole exercise/weight loss focus, given its an issue for so many today. But I don't get the attraction of that particular approach. The problem is that these things (exercise and weight loss) are not designed to fit into a mini-series reality show, that is some version between a hysterical talk show and a seedy game show. They are gradual, long term things when done in any way likely to be maintainable. Of course, that is a stupendously boring thing, and you can't possibly do a TV show about that. You can go to the farthest extreme though, and do a TV show about the extreme. That makes it about as realistic as a sitcom, but obviously people watch sitcoms too, so realism has never been a staple in American TV.

I think what many people react poorly too is that in some respects it feeds into and even emphasizes the worst stereotypes about obesity and obese people. Come on, people really WANT to call their family they are away from, fat people are always assumed to be eating donuts or something, these people have been basically starved for weeks if you count the food intake against the severe exercise, so they put them in a room filled with fattening high-sugar stuff, and then offer a *reward* if they'll eat it (get to call family), while of course it'll also cause water gain promptly which could be the kiss of death to what they're doing. If we did this to rats in the name of science it would be sad, but doing it to humans for fun is just kind of twisted.

You know how in difficult situations, people bond very closely. I always found it interesting that these reality shows deliberately kept people from that bonding by making them fear and compete negatively against one another as part of the process.

PJ

You know, I think that is precisely what bothered me most about it; it was watching them turn on each other and rip that week's chosen failure a new one. Made me sick. I guess its just personal-- I was the butt of many a 'you must be binging in secret, otherwise you would have lost weight like us' lecture while low-fat/low-cal dieting by people when I thought they were my support team. It just fed into my deep-seated (wrong) belief that I am somehow 'bad' intrinsically because I don't gain/lose weight at the same rate as most people. Ouch. So I guess the only thing more sensational than a freak show is a freak show where the freaks fight each other naked in a hogswallow full of thick mud, right?

It's sick, degrading and exploits desperate people for the sake of ratings and money.

Exactly why I hate it so much.

Read this articleabout what contestants really eat
http://livinlavidalocarb.blogspot.c...secret-low.html

Also here is a quote from Jimmy Moore on the whole subject

'As for the diet they promote on the show, it's all a ruse. Behind the scenes, at least one of the consultants (Dr. Michael Dansinger) is a low-carb advocate for the people who need to use it. Both Bob and Jillian also recognize the importance of carbohydrate-restriction for some especially insulin-resistant contestants.

Part of the issue with focusing on calories and portions is their sponsors. You gotta keep them happy and incorporate them into the show. There are ways to do that without getting so ga-ga goo-goo over low-fat, portion control, but they're also afraid of any backlash. But the dirty little secret is that EVERY SINGLE WINNER of "The Biggest Loser" did so by following a low-carb nutritional approach'.