The thread was close right after I posted so I wanted to reiterate:
I think it would be so unfair for Daris to win the vote, though I have empathy for him but he is too prone to make excuses for the night eating behavior and I think he needs to address that more fully and to unfairly win this contest at this point just puts him in the same place with all the other former winners who seem to be regaining and making a lot of excuses about it (except Ali, who does not seem to have gained much except some muscle). JMO.
Last edited by Amarantha2; 05-19-2010 at 11:11 PM.
I voted for Daris - I give him credit for what he achieved in that marathon vs. Koli who IMO broke or at least fudged the rules by not going home the way everyone else did. I gotta say that see Koli as the most likely to put back on everything he's lost - I mean, it was only a few episodes ago where he said that he wasn't even calorie counting. Sure, if you start off over 400 lbs and do crazy amounts of exercise, you can drop weight by being even moderately careful about food. But now that you are just over 200 lbs and going back to the real world where you have all the temptations plus you've got to earn a living and deal with day to day life and don't have time to exercise for hours and hours a day, you are back to the 80% food/20% exercise equation and I don't see that he's internalized the knowledge or tools to handle that.
I thought the past contestants looked ok - Mike M seemed fine to me, I think he's not quite as low as he was at the finale but that was a fake weight IMO (same thing with Helen). And I didn't think Sione had gained back all that much - he's kind of a bulky guy in general and I think he could drop a few lbs back down, but if he's comfortably maintaining, then good for him. I didn't watch when the other 2 were on though so no real basis for comparison.
I definitely want either Michael or Ashley to win. I was shocked by how different they both looked after the time at home, and I was also amazed at how well they did in the marathon, esp. Michael at ~300 lbs. I mean, think about them compared with Ron. Sure, he's a lot older with lots more physical ailments, but really, a man who was 526 lbs just a few months ago to be able to even just walk 26 miles? Let alone do some jogging intervals in there?? Color me impressed!
I agree with PeanutsMom on Koli....I don't think he's picked up anything regarding how to maintain after the show. He's not counting calories - he's counting on 8 hours of exercise a day to lose. That's not feasible in a real-life scenario, and I think real life is what made him run to a trainer rather than staying at home. I hope for his sake I'm wrong, but I don't see him mentally or physically capable of keeping the weight off after the show - unless he starts doing MMA training full time.
I think it would be so unfair for Daris to win the vote, though I have empathy for him but he is too prone to make excuses for the night eating behavior and I think he needs to address that more fully and to unfairly win this contest at this point just puts him in the same place with all the other former winners who seem to be regaining and making a lot of excuses about it (except Ali, who does not seem to have gained much except some muscle). JMO.
Well, fair or not fair, it's a VOTE. There is no fairness in votes. People will vote for who they like better. Not everybody is looking at it the same way we do.
Besides, let me tell you what I have witnessed many times - I am on a greyhound mailing list and often people enter a picture of their dog into a contest, and then they ask publicly on the mailing list that everybody votes for their pooch. Sometimes you look at the pictures and the number of votes the individual "contestants" have and it's clear people are pulling all sorts of string to their dog to win. You can see pictures with more or less even % of votes and then there would be one where numbers are sky high, I mean ridiculously high. It's like posting on Facebook "please vote for my dog" etc. (and it's not that greyhound people are crazy, other breed people do the same thing - cat owners probably too).
There will be people who will vote till their hands fall off. It has nothing to do with fairness.
OK...you want my "its a reality show so I have no clue but here is my marathon training" reason why Daris binged? Cause i've been there
They never expected anyone to actually train like a marathoner for a marathon. So he went home trying to stick to his 1500 calorie per day diet. Which you can not do if you are training to run a 4 hr marathon at nearly 200 lbs. His body rebelled. And he ate. Because he was freaking starving. But because the eating was unplanned that cycled him back into feeling BADLY about what he ate and eating more. Until you acknowledge that you NEED more food to do what he wants to do, you can not do it without guilt. What he needed was someone to sit him down and say "on these days your calorie needs are higher and you need to accomodate that to stop the binging"
I'm really glad you posted this because I was scratching my head at your other post. I didn't understand. This makes ALOT of sense and I get it now. His words "It's hard to lose weight when training for a marathon" made NO sense to me, and I bet not to anyone else either. I think you need to have trained for a marathon to understand it. And like Ali said, they have all now joined an "elite" group of people. Not many of us have done it!!
His words "It's hard to lose weight when training for a marathon" made NO sense to me, and I bet not to anyone else either.
Yes, it makes sense to me now as well. However, wouldn't you think that Bob and Jillian should have known better? Bob threw a look at Jillian and said something that running is what people do to LOSE weight.
Yes, it makes sense to me now as well. However, wouldn't you think that Bob and Jillian should have known better? Bob threw a look at Jillian and said something that running is what people do to LOSE weight.
I thought that too, but I also thought they handled Melissa really poorly. NO, I'm not at all a Melissa fan, but I do not think she was playing the game with her crazy gains. I've been there myself and for no apparent reason. Maybe one week she was, but not every time and certainly not the last time that got her sent home.
I trained for a half marathon and I could just tell I NEEDED more carbs for fuel.
It's simple, to run as much as he did, he needed to eat more than 1500 cals. And yes, he messed up by eating maybe crappy foods and late at night, but it's clear he was training pretty hard to be able to run the marathon in freaking 9 min miles!
I was discouraged to see that Mike gained a tiny bit and also that Sione gained, looks like he gained a gut. I met him in AZ and he was big but buff and tight, no belly whatsoever. And you could tell by the way Mike and Sione were pulling at their shirts they were trying to not let the wind hitting them show their gains (imo).
Koli seems out of shape, not a lot of muscle or tone. And he runs with bad form. He's also knock kneed so that's probably a big issue for him with running.
But they all did so great! Even just walking 26 miles is awful!
I want Daris to win. He just did so amazing and he seems so sweet.
BTW does anyone think Michael is gay? Is he? Rude of me to assume..
Yes, it makes sense to me now as well. However, wouldn't you think that Bob and Jillian should have known better? Bob threw a look at Jillian and said something that running is what people do to LOSE weight.
In my experience personal trainers who do not specialize in endurance training do not understand the phenomenon at all. They SHOULD know better but they dont. And the phenomenon is more pronounced in people who were recently heavy. Skinny runnerly types have adapted.
The notion that 4 hours of high intensity exercise spread out in 4 sessions completely affects the body in a different way than 4 hours of moderate intensity exercise in one session and in ways almost reverse of what you would expect is a difficult one for many trainers who specialize in weight loss to grasp. (Just as it is equally hard for many running coaches to comprehend training for significant weight loss)
I'm doing a conditioning segment in my training right now. Training more like a biggest loser contestant and less like a marathoner. It's good for weight loss. I can eat less and burn the same # of calories a day. I can actually burn more. But if you threw me out there to run a marathon this weekend it would suck.
It is very hard for people to grasp that if I ran 7 miles in the morning at a 9 minute pace and 7 miles at lunch and 7 miles in the evening (21 total miles) I would be less hungry and less tired than if I ran 16 mile in one stretch at a 10 minute pace.
It is also hard to grasp that running 16 miles in one stretch will make me a better marathoner than running 21 miles in 3 runs. People have tried to divide the runs and it doesnt work. 2+2 = 2.5, maybe 3 at most.
I read another forum specifically about TV shows, and there is a lot of speculation that Michael is gay, but there is another school of thought that he is sort of asexual because he was so obese that he did not think of himself as a sexual person. I think that may be possible - a lot of the contestants talked quite a bit about how they'd never had a relationship and I don't recall seeing him saying anything. That could be because he considers his status private (whatever it is) or it could be that he felt so removed from even the concept of being in a relationship that it wasn't on his radar.
In any case, I liked him a lot right from the start, and I think he looks great now and will look even better when he's down a bit more in weight, so I wish him happiness with whoever his desired partner might be.
Total speculation below (highlight with your cursor to read) Some people think he and Ashley could be an item. Too cute if it were the case!
Seriously? I would guess his overall flamboyance is a contributing factor to the speculation, but I see his personality as more typical of the Chicago/Italian big loud family.
I too was really disappointed at all the previous contestants last night that had obviously put on weight Ali looked good, Mike looked pretty good too, but Sione and Matt were definitely much heavier. More than disappointment is the depressing feeling that what they say is really true, and once I get to goal I won't be able to maintain it and will eventually re-gain it all. I have to believe I won't let that happen or I will go crazy over it.
Now, I was really happy to see Koli fall below the line. I don't care for the 'tude he has recently adopted or felt comfortable showing and I think it has now bit him in the backside. I also thought it was a bad idea to not really go home. The real challenge there was what happens to you when you are back home, not what happens when you are hiding in Las Vegas. I think that shows when you consider he did not finish that far ahead of Mike and Ashley who walked part of the marathon.
I feel bad for Daris because I am scared myself of having a binge eating moment. As long as he can learn from what happened I think he will be on the right track for the finale. I saw a picture of him recently running a race and he looked much thinner than this weeks show so I think he has got his rear back in gear.
Yes, it makes sense to me now as well. However, wouldn't you think that Bob and Jillian should have known better? Bob threw a look at Jillian and said something that running is what people do to LOSE weight.
I, too, was very frustrated with Bob and Jillian. While BL is a weight loss competition, Daris is getting close to his healthy weight. And anyone with a bit of endurance training knowledge will tell you it is virtually impossible to lose weight while training for a marathon. People frequently gain weight during training as a result of increased muscle mass and consuming calories in the form energy gels and sports drinks. I, too, feel Daris' issues could have been better addressed had someone sat down with him and helped him devise an eating plan to match his activity levels. Regardless, I still love Daris and admire his work ethic...so I find myself fully on Team Daris. I'm in the camp who finds Koli's game play mentality too extreme, and I hope for his sake he doesn't end up gaining the weight back.
I didn't understand. This makes ALOT of sense and I get it now. His words "It's hard to lose weight when training for a marathon" made NO sense to me, and I bet not to anyone else either. I think you need to have trained for a marathon to understand it. And like Ali said, they have all now joined an "elite" group of people. Not many of us have done it!!
