Hrm, joining in this verrrry old thread late before starting a new one.
I'm a reality TV junkie. Lately I've been watching Biggest Loser and, I don't know. I like the show. I think it's interesting, putting something like it on TV. I know that people are medically supervised and stuff, in their extreme weight loss. And though I sort of wonder how they'll adapt to 'the real world' outside of reality TV, from what I've seen of a few of last year's contestants, they're adapting fine. I mean, certainly no worse than any others who have dieted.
But I'm also a little dismayed to see the huge losses, week after week, and wondering what it's doing for the expectations of uneducated dieters out there. I mean, I've only caught a couple of episodes, and from a few weeks ago, but one thing that struck me was one of the women being disappointed she lost 'only' 5 pounds. Her team lost the weigh-in, so I see why she's upset. And they're working really hard. The guys were racking up huge numbers, week after week.
But man! If I lost 'only 5 pounds' I'd be ecstatic! Especially if I was a month into dieting, and had been losing consistently like that before. I'm ecstatic when I lose 2 pounds in the same week, heck. Like has been mentioned previously in the thread, I'm just concerned about the expectations it set up in the viewing public. I can see someone start dieting for a week, losing 5 pounds the first week, then just a pound the second and third after the water weight comes off, and figuring they're just bad at dieting and giving up. Even me, who knows that 'sure and steady wins the race' when dieting in the real world, gets a twinge of jealousy when I see the huge numbers they're racking up.
I wonder what effect it's having on people. I bet more positive than negative, but I bet there's some negative perceptions building up in a minority out there. Not to mention the 'fit' people who wonder why we're all fat slobs, when those folks on TV can go out and lose 50 pounds in a month.
