The Biggest Loser Gone Bad

Reality TV shows. It's been a very long time since I watched one. I remember way back in the day watching the very first season of The Real World. I actually kept up with that show for a couple of seasons. But then it occurred to me: How real is this? A bunch of young adults being put into a house/apartment to live FREE, don't really need to have a job, and just sit around and argue with each other all day (although, I'm guessing a lot of what is filmed is just plain boring and all we get to see is the fights, romance, etc.). Is that what really happens in "the Real World?" Once I answered no to that question, I pretty much stopped watching further seasons of that show and have never really watched another reality TV show since then.

Earlier this week in this post, I talked about how it was amazing that some of these contestants that were on the show The Biggest Loser had lost so much weight in such a short period of time.

Well, there's some contestants it didn't work out so well. In this article, it talks about how the contestant that won season one had originally weighed 330 pounds before going on the show, got his weight down to 208, and is now currently back up to 300 pounds.

In fact if you flip through all of the seasons that are listed in the link to the people that they show, most have put back on weight. Some within 10 pounds of what they weighed after the show, some, well, more than that.

Which again pretty much shows that the "realitness" (I just made that word up) of reality shows is not very real. Very simply television is there for entertainment. 99.999999% of us are never going to be put into a situation where we'll be locked up in a house, with a trainer badgering us from sunrise to sunset about our workouts and eating for 3-4 months.

The aftermath of where the contestants went with after the show was over is going back into the REAL "real world" where they have jobs, family, obligations, etc. and they are not able to focus 100% of their time on food and exercise.

But, what the show has done is inspired a lot of people to go out and lose weight WITHIN their normal environment such as stories like this.

In a way, this reality show has inspired more true reality than could ever be scripted on a set.

Thanks to Chris Standish for the link.

www.leanbodyfitness.com
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