Hah - the cooking scene was what annoyed me most. I consider it a filler. I am not against a recipe makeover, but they spent way too much time saying how many calories in restaurant meals - doesn't everybody know that restaurant portions are way too big and contain enough calories to sustain a person for an entire day (or sometimes even two days, in some cases) - and the actual recipe sort of vanished into thin air. All I know that the chef mentioned chicken breast and some organic tomatoes (in a can) and presto, there was a finished chicken cacciatore ready to eat.

Edited to add:
I would prefer if they tracked the percentage of FAT lossed, because only that would reflect a meaningful loss.

Unfortunately, not. My husband watched with me last night. He normally avoids BL but was in the room doing something else. He was shocked by the calorie content and questioned the accuracy.I have been telling him the calories in some of his favorite dishes but, I guess, he really did not believe me.

Don't you hate when they don't believe you?

I always make my boyfriend guess how many calories something has. Though, he knows when I make him guess that it's usually a lot more than it seems, so he over guesses or hits it on the nose, which ruins my game I can hold up a teeny tiny bag of candy or something and tell him that its 700 calories... and he just says "Oh", shrugs, and moves on, where as I, on the other hand, have had my mind blown by this discovery. At least he believes me.. But I wish he'd appreciate the tremendously high or unbelievable low numbers with me!

Intellectually, I think the show is a mess. I think the gym scenes (and there are ALOT of them) send the wrong message, what with all the screaming and vomiting and swearing and working out until you pass out. Ridiculous. I think the trainers are pathetic to resort to those methods.

I understand the entertainment value, though.

It's been said before, but TBL is, first and foremost, a television show for making the network money. The network gets money by ads that have their price determined by the show's ratings. So of course, NBC is going to go for getting as many people to watch the show as they can, which is done with drama, shock tactics, and massive amounts of weight loss in a relatively short span of time. Though the show has changed many lives for the better, that's not its main goal. The main goal is to get the network money.

On an moral level, the show is a mixed bag. It inspires, it saves lives, but it also normalizes fast weight loss so people who don't devote their time to the gym feel like failures when they can't shed pounds at their unattainable rate.

TBL should be look at as a show: no more, no less, meant for entertaining the masses so they'll sit through commercial breaks. If it inspires you, that's just a bonus, and if it discourages you, you might want to reconsider watching.

I kind of feel for the female red contestant. Last night they said she blew the weigh in and were really angry with her for not admitting it. I don't know. I can work out like a crazy person too and not get anywhere. Keeping it simple seems to work better for me. Maybe she's like me. She needs help, not berating. Maybe they've finally found a person who may actual struggle despite her best efforts.