Thursday, December 3, 2009

The Biggest Loser

I'm hooked on The Biggest Loser. I watch it every week, religiously, and look forward to seeing the contestants shrink before my very eyes. I secretly hate it when they start letting them wear full shirts during the weigh-ins because I feel like I don't get as good a picture of how their bodies are changing. That's probably really gross, but I don't care. Maybe it's because I like to know that there are people out there, besides me, with the same "trouble zones." Sue me.

This past week I watched the Where Are They Now episode and was happy to see that a lot of the former contestants have kept the majority of the weight off. I was also pleased to see that a few of them, namely the finalists from their respective seasons, have put a few pounds back on. I feel like when they get to be a finalist, they kill themselves to lose as much weight as possible because they have to be sure that their percentage beats the other finalists. It's almost anti-climactic to me to see them because they look unhealthy and emaciated at the finale because of the dramatic change in their looks from the final taped show to the finale.

Some of the female contestants that they checked back in with are in or approaching their child-bearing years. I felt a little badly for them because they did so well and then got pregnant and gained weight again. Then they had to get their "baby weight" back off. One of them had two small children who were barely walking and clearly had not gotten the weight back off again. Her husband had gained some weight back, too, so at least he wasn't showing her up or anything. (He was a former contestant on her season.)

I'm not saying it's pointless to go on the show during this frame of time, I just think that if I were one of them, it would be really difficult. Here you have lost a significant amount of weight, maybe even to allow yourself the opportunity to have a healthy pregnancy, and then you put it back on for this good cause. Then you have to work twice as hard to get it back off again, maybe to only get pregnant again! I can imagine that it's hard enough to shed weight you gain during pregnancy. The added pressure of making sure that you don't slip back into that unhealthy state might send me right to Dunkin Donuts without ever looking back.

I guess I should just be thankful that I'm not plagued with weight issues. Sure, I don't always love what I see in the mirror and I really hate to work out, but at least I'm healthy and am not on the road to diabetes, heart disease, and other chronic, potentially fatal problems. Although, I suppose I easily could be. After all the season I've watched, I've learned that the weight tends to sneaks up on them.

I'm hoping that, through doing Jillian's at-home workouts, I stay as afraid of her as I need to be to keep me from getting to a point to need to see her in person every day. Though that would certainly be a well-deserved punishment for getting into that situation. I think she probably monitors Bob's weight and threatens to torture him like a contestant if he gains more than five pounds.