I watched about five minutes of The Biggest Loser during its entire run. I forgot when it was but I noticed that awful person Jillian Micheals with her flaring nostrils and bitchy attitude was berating an obese woman doing a dangerous exercise even for fit people.
Normally, I never did care for reality TV or unscripted TV or whatever they called it. Mainly it’s all bullshit and now we’re stuck with some asshole as president because he got famous off the format. Even going back to the 1990s when The Real World and Road Rules was on MTV, I refused to watch it mainly because I knew I couldn’t stand any of the people. And the success of Survivor only led to the explosion of the format in the 21st Century.
The Biggest Loser had a great concept but weight loss takes time, a lot of time. The contestants on the show were mostly morbidly obese. There was no way they would lose a lot of weight during the 30-week competition, unless they destroyed their bodies in the process. Any doctor or nutritionist will tell you losing more than three pounds a week is dangerous.
When I was in high school, people on the wrestling team would go through outrageous measures to keep their weight. They wouldn’t eat anything for three or four days and would only drink enough water to get around. The wrestling room was hot and they were practicing in sweatpants and sweatshirts. Some of that weight they were losing was their body water.
Danny Cahill, who won the eighth season of the show, lives about 30 miles away from me in Broken Arrow, Okla. When he was on the show, we ran stories about him in our newspaper. Yes, his weight loss was a nice story. But there’s no way someone who started out weighing 430 pounds could drop down to a slim 191 pounds in 30 week unless he was destroying his body and also taking caffeine energy supplements.
Cahill, who is now in his mid-50s, is back to that huge weight he was when he started back in 2009. He is one of the many people who are interviewees on Fit for TV: The Reality of The Biggest Loser. Cahill admits on the Netflix docuseries he was taking Stacker 2 energy boosters on the advice of Michaels, who refused to be interviewed. It would’ve made some great publicity especially considering her recent comments on CNN that museums shouldn’t focus too negatively on slavery and it wasn’t white imperialism.
Even without her, the archived footage tells you all you need to know. Also, Bob Harper gives enough during his interview to account for all we need to know. Harper and Michaels are too awful people. Harper also seems like the type of attention whorehound to believe there is no bad publicity. Upon hearing that Harper himself nearly had a fatal heart attack in the documentary, I found myself laughing. To be honest, it would’ve have served him right. What he and Michaels subjected the contestants to is a black eye to all the personal trainers out there who actually give a damn about their clients.
Cahill says he was only eating 800 calories a day but exercising so much he was burning at least 5,000 calories. Human beings can’t exercise for 10 hours a day. Now, many dieticians and nutritionist say that you have to eat food to exercise. The Biggest Loser premiered during a time in which young people, mainly teenage girls, were starving themselves to fit in size 0 clothing. So, the entertainment value was to berate and publicly shame obese people.
Yes, I agree Americans have a problem with obesity. Yes, I’m obese myself. But it’s all comes down to eating certain foods and not overeating other foods. I’ve even heard some say eating a big piece of cake or enjoying a milkshake here and there is good for you. There’s way too much high fructose corn syrup and antibiotics in foods nowadays. There’s even sugar in sliced bread. I’ve had friends go overseas or down to central American vacations spots and eat a lot and still lose weight. There’s no telling how much corn and chickens are fed before they’re processed for meat.
Fit for TV does a little bit of finger-pointing. Harper and show co-creator Dave Broome seem to act like the contestants knew what they were getting into. Cahill said he had 36 hours from the time he was notified to the time everything started filming. Contestants were handed paperwork to file to basically waive any liability. Tracy Yukich, also from season 8, says she wanted to check with a lawyer but was told there were 10 other contestants waiting to take her spot.
Yukich also famously had a near-fatal health episode when the contestants were told to run a mile on their first obstacle. She was airlifted as her body shut down and nearly died. If she had, I’m sure the show would’ve ended in 2009. And I’d argue the producers ended up making her a bad person so she would be voted off. I’m mean, let’s be honest, most of these shows are tooled to favor certain people over the others. She endured death threats online, for God’s sake.
I mean, you don’t have to be a veteran of TV producing to see that sisters Olivia Ward and Hannah Curlee would make great entertainment. The contestants are shamed, being shown stepping on scales with no shirts on for men or halter tops for women so we can see their midriffs, they’d still like a nice “wholesome” story of two sisters losing weight. But things change. By the end of the 15th season, the question was if contestants were pushing it too far. Rachel Frederickson was the season’s winner and she started out at 260 pounds before ending at 105 pounds, losing 155 pounds or almost 60 percent.
Even Harper and Michaels looked stunned, but you have to wonder what did people expect? We’re criticizing women for being “fat” then criticize them for being too skinny. For the most part, ever since I was a kid, it seemed that if you eat “too much,” you’re gluttony. Still in this country, we mock people for being obese and having to use motorized carts in stores. But do we know their history. Maybe they worked a job and got hurt badly. Unable to walk without a cane or walker, they’re not going to be able to run the Boston Marathon. So, they’re going to put on some weight.
Aubrey Gordon, writer and podcaster of Maintenance Phase, is interviewed at length. She as others points out that obese/overweight people are still allowed to be the targets of mockery and criticism. And Harper and Michaels made a fortune off of it. Just think if they were acting the way they did to someone who had cerebral palsy and couldn’t run on a treadmill for a certain amount of time. But berating obese people makes for good TV.
Fit for TV does avoid talking of bigger issues such as the high price of food as well as the different ingredients in foods in America than other countries. Dr. Rob Huizenga is interviewed as he was observing the contestants on the show. However, I feel Huizenga let a lot slide because some people like the attention. His book You’re Ok, It’s Just a Bruise was used as the basis for Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday and the Matthew Modine character was based on him so you let some things slide and deny the rest.
Some of the finger pointing turns into nothing more than a pissing contest. Anyone can see contestants like Joelle Gwynn was being treated terribly for entertainment as she was supposed to be the angry black woman stereotype. Thankfully, the reality TV show was taken off the air in 2016. NBC never officially canceled it. Ironically, when it came back on the USA Network during the winter of 2020, it aired its final season amid the onset of the Covid-19 Pandemic outbreak.
Maybe people realized there were a lot more things important than losing weight. Now, I don’t think anyone would ever get a show like this on the air. But we don’t need it. The Internet has so many people doing this. You can’t go into a fitness center anymore without someone wanting to take videos of themselves exercising and people sharing what they ate on social media.
Even better, people know are “canceled” for shaming overweight/obese people at the gyms. Yet, Harper and Michaels laughed all the way to the bank. And so did NBC and the producers.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 