If you are like the large percentage, you have at least heard of, if not watched the show “The Biggest Loser.” Finally, a show that taught overweight Americans how to effectively lose weight and live a healthy lifestyle, or so we thought. Contestants are literally losing 100s of pounds per season, not to mention “The Biggest Loser” record of two men losing 41 pounds in one week! At last, a show that is concerned about our physical well-being. This type of show is setting a great example for our dominantly obese population, right? Wrong!! This show must be more concerned with ratings than it is with the mental and physical health of its participants. First off, the amount of weight these contestants are losing gives people unrealistic expectations.If weight was capable of coming off in a healthy way so easily, such a large percentage of our population wouldn’t be overweight in the first place. Most people wouldn’t be concerned with over-eating during holiday meals if they knew they could lose 41 pounds in a week!

Let’s take a moment and look at this from a different perspective. You have a contestant on the show that has been overweight for 15 years of their life. Fat cells have been physically sitting in their body for this lengthy period of time. Fat cells are filled with toxins. When someone morbidly obese, such as many of the contestants on the show lose weight at such a fast pace, these fat cells practically start melting away like warmed up butter. This releases all of these stored up toxins into your body at one time. If your body isn’t capable of disposing of these toxins at a quick enough pace, the danger to your health can be deadly. Yes, deadly!

Another major issue with this show is the amount of hours these contestants are expected to work out in a given day and how little they are supposed to eat. I don’t know about you, but I have bills to pay. I don’t see it as practical quitting my job for a few months to spend long hours every day exercising. Not to mention the extreme amount of damage I am probably doing to my heart, joints, and other crucially functioning parts of my body. It’s amazing to me that more injuries haven’t occurred on this show, or maybe just havent’ been reported. Is it going to take a heart attack before they realize they may be taking this a little too far? This is also a daily routine that most people wouldn’t be able to keep up with for a few months, let alone their whole life. In reality, most people realize that if you aren’t capable of making a life-long change, the weight will come back on because it almost always does. This is why most diets are doomed to fail. A perfect example would be the actual previous contestants of “The Biggest Loser.” Ever notice how they don’t too frequently invite their previous contestants back on the show as a success story? I wonder why? Maybe because a large percentage of them instantly start gaining the weight back! Does this mean they weren’t capable of keeping up the simple task of starving their body and working out for endless hours each day? Who would have thought? They have even had contestants on the show for a second season. What reason would there be for a contestant to come back for a second season? Maybe because they didn’t address the bigger issues the first time around. For some people, weight gain can come due to poor genes or even a health issue such as a thyroid problem. For others, it can come from an eating disorder. If you have an eating disorder, working out excessively and starving yourself will only give you temporary results, but it can easily lead to other dangerous disorders, such as anorexia and bulimia. Before people sign up for a show like this, they need to understand what caused them to gain this amount of weight in the first place and correct it. Without finding the underlying problem, these people will most likely be struggling with weight and health issues for the rest of their lives, while adding additional health issues to the list. And I used to think “The Jersey Shore” was setting a bad example for our Country.

-Tom