I've previous mentioned my affinity for reality television. The show inspired my husband and me in our weight loss experiment. When I first heard that NBC was doing a reality show involving overweight people, I was offended, and not just because I myself was overweight. Reality shows really just exploit some of the more unsavory aspects of our culture, and I could just see this show humiliating these overweight people while fit Americans laughed and were glad they weren't fat. I didn't watch the first season for that very reason. But the second season somehow sucked us in, and we ended up watching the whole thing (I think we missed the first episode). We were blown away at the success these people had losing weight. Now, of course, they had a situation that most of us don't have: they were put in an environment where they weren't responsible for their families or for work; all they had to do was work out, learn about nutrition, work out some more, compete in challenges, and work out again before getting weighed each week. Most of these people lived completely sedentary lives, so just the addition of a little exercise made a difference. When you consider they were exercising for hours each day and changing their diets completely, it's no wonder they were losing up to 20 lbs in a week. If I could lose 20 lbs in a week, I'd have been done with this before Christmas LAST year. Anyway, we were so blown away last year at how much weight these people lost that we decided we'd give the whole weight loss thing a try.
Well, we did pretty well, for a while. My husband lost about 35 lbs; I lost about 40 lbs. And everything seemed great. And then March rolled around, and we both stalled out. Neither of us has really lost any appreciable weight since then. We've just struggled to stay right where we were. But then we watched the finale of this season's Biggest Loser this past Wednesday, and we weren't just impressed...we were STUNNED.
This season was interesting. They brought in people from each of the 50 states and had them work out while the trainers evaluated them. The trainers picked 14 contestants to stay on the ranch. The rest of the contestants were sent home to work out on their own. About 2/3 of the way through the season, they brought back to the ranch the male and female contestants from home who had been the most successful. And there were three competitions: the home contestant who lost the highest percentage of his or her body weight won $50K; the contestant who got voted off the ranch (a la Survivor) who was then the most successful at home won $100K; and the one of the final four contestants from the ranch who ultimately lost the highest percentage of weight won $250K.
The at-home winner was Poppi, who went from a size 22 to a size 2:
The sent-home winner was Brian, who was completely unrecognizable after his transformation:
And the ultimate winner was Erik, who started the game at an agonizing 407 lbs, and finished weighing in at 193 lbs!
Can you $^#&%@* believe that? He lost...ME! I started out at 218 lbs Halloween 2005. He lost my entire body off of his! How amazing is that?
If he can do that, I certainly can lose 30 more measly lbs. If you'll excuse me, I need to go to the gym.
1 comment:
"He lost my entire body off of his!" What was your body doing on his, and does your husband know about this? Shame shame on you.
On the weight loss, it is a pain in the you know what. I am trying myself to get back in the groove of things. I thought about trying the 24 Hour Fitness Biggest Loser program. The price isn't too bad (of course when you've been unemployed for a long period of time anything is too large of a cost), but trying to find time to consistently get to the gym isn't easy. Jodi only teaches a couple of nights each week, and the other nights she wants us to spend time together (oh no! spend time with my girlfriend?!?) doing whatever. As such, there's 2 or 3 times of the week that I can possibly get to the gym. At least with work it is somewhat easier to control the diet. Don't have unfettered access to the pantry or fridge, which is a good thing. Keep it up! See ya soon.
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