'Biggest Loser' Finale

[Sxysprtswrtr]

Any of you watching this? Holy Schnikees ...

Just seems incredible that all of these people are losing 60-100 lbs - the NATURAL way. No stomach stapling. No gastric bypass. Damn.

Did see on a copy of Nat. Enquirer today (take it for what it's worth) that Marty "left his wife after losing so much weight."

 

[Norman Stansfield]

Any of you watching this? Holy Schnikees ...

Just seems incredible that all of these people are losing 60-100 lbs - the NATURAL way. No stomach stapling. No gastric bypass. Damn.

Did see on a copy of Nat. Enquirer today (take it for what it's worth) that Marty "left his wife after losing so much weight."

Amazing what nutritionists, trainers and the lure of fame and fortune can do for people. I'd venture to guess any/all of us could do the same with all that help.

 

[imjustagirl2]

Did see on a copy of Nat. Enquirer today (take it for what it's worth) that Marty "left his wife after losing so much weight."

Is he the teacher? I caught half of one episode last week...I think he was the one that lost like 100 pounds or something.

 

[KYSportsWriter]

We've got a local guy doing it and he's supposedly lost 170 pounds. I may be wrong on that, but that's what I've been hearing around the newsroom.

 

[Flash]

They did a where-are-they now on Marty on the show he was voted off ... he had a certain level of hotness all of a sudden.
I've somehow become addicted to this show. I think it's great. Eric was the really big guy who lost more than 100 pounds. Think he started out at 360 or something.

 

[spup1122]

OK.. seriously. That was the most anti-climatic "champion" announcement I have ever seen. The sound was so bad it sounded like there were about 40 people in the audience.

 

[Sxysprtswrtr]

OK.. seriously. That was the most anti-climatic "champion" announcement I have ever seen. The sound was so bad it sounded like there were about 40 people in the audience.

I don't think they should do that show "live" again -- lots of mistakes and miscues.

 

[dooley_womack1]

Any of you watching this? Holy Schnikees ...

That was the exclamation that was the second choice for Velma when they scripted out Scooby Doo. "Jinkees" won out, however.

 

[ballscribe]

I heard it in another movie. Can't quite come up with it right now.
For some reason, I see Chris Farley saying it. Maybe it was an SNL skit.

 

[Smallpotatoes]

Here's an interesting take on the show. It was written a year ago by a guy named Marty Gallagher, a powerlifter/trainer:

Why The Biggest Loser has ZERO applicability for real people living real lives
Monday December 5, 2005
Why The Biggest Loser has ZERO applicability for real people living real lives

1. Wheres my Hollywood Mansion? Contestants of the Biggest Loser reality fitness show are moved into a Hollywood Mansion for three months. It is undoubtedly a hell-of-a-lot easier to maintain fitness focus when youre sequestered in a Mansion for 12-weeks. Plus the cash incentive is huge: the winner banks $250,000. Cash and isolation make it far easier to maintain a commitment to the transformation process. Participants are not bothered with any of lifes distractions: work, family, stress and dilemmas.
2. Beat the hell out of themWhoever dreamed up the training regimen for this torture-fest ought to be indicted as a war criminal. If US Army personnel subjected Guantanamo Bay terror prisoners to the forced labor insanity the Biggest Loser personal trainers do show participants they would be subject to court martial. One day the little female PT made 400-pound men (miserably out of shape) run not walk not jog while carrying her on his back. Can you imagine the heart stress for a man who could generate a 90% age-related heart rate maximum walking to the mailbox and back? On the distaff side the metro-sexual non-gender specific male personal trainer had his female fat babes run up the side of a mountain! To make matters worse, both PTs inflicted psychological torture by taunting there respective crews with clichd fitness platitudes. Oh the horror! Theyre damn lucky someone didnt keel over dead.
3. Then starve themAfter making the obese people work like political prisoners in a Soviet Gulag circa 1952, participants are fed next to nothing. 350-400 pound men were allotted 1500-calories per day. This works out to 3.75 calories per pound bodyweight. Again, the Red Cross and Amnesty International should be alerted. This savage combination of over work in the gym and under-feeding after the fact causes a metabolic condition known as catabolism. Any 1st year medical student would know that combining sustained and intense physical effort with starvation-level calories is physiologically disastrous and dangerous. When the human body senses starvation primordial hardwire circuitry triggers and the body will preserve body fat at all costs. Cortisol is dumped into the bloodstream as a result of physical stress and a lack of nutrients. The body cannibalizes muscle tissue to cover caloric shortfall; the body literally eats its own muscle tissue in order to spare body fat. What a revolting development.
4. I picked the ultimate winner on day 1: This was easy: the deck was stacked. The ultimate winner was an athletic protge; a guy whod wrestled for Iowa, Matt was a national level athlete who had a shot at making the Olympic team. Hed allowed himself to get badly out of shape. Any athlete of this caliber has so much muscle memory that when I saw his credentials I knew he would be the ultimate winner: it was a foregone conclusion. At his athletic peak, weighing under 200, he was light years past the qualifications of shows dink-ass personal trainers. It was clear how superior an athlete he was when on one episode the prison guard female PT worked the men to exhaustion then challenged them to a sprint: how delicious a moment when the exhausted 340-pound fat man whipped her soundly. She was shocked speechless. Wrestlers know all about deprivation and anyone who wrestled at that level has the athletic work ethic of a machine. Give a guy like that 20-freaking weeks to beat himself into shape, wave $250,000 grand in front of his face and watch the normal people get trampled in his path. If they were serious they should have chosen untrained people of various ages and not allowed out-of-shape athletic wonders to compete. Plus it didnt hurt his weight loss regimen that he simultaneously kicked the booze.
5. Twenty weeks is a long time: Twelve weeks were spent isolated at the Mansion and eight weeks were spent at home. Is their any greater training and dietary motivation being in the final three with a quarter of a million bucks on the line? Normal obese people living regular lives are not provided that type of motivation. Its a lot harder to maintain focus and drive when no one is watching, when no one cares (other than concerned friends and relatives) and there is zero financial incentive. With its dubious methodology its doubtful any aspect of the Biggest Loser approach has the slightest applicability to real people leading real lives.
6. Not to cast stones without offer alternatives: Purposefully Primitive Obesity solution provides real results for real people leading regular lives.

 

[2muchcoffeeman]

Any of you watching this?

I thought it had made a welcome disappearance from the TV schedule.

 

[micropolitan guy]

The "Biggest Loser" meets Superman.

 

[21]

I am watching this guy on the Today show--wow. Lost 214 pounds in 9 months....from 407 to 193. Awesome.

 

[Ace]

So if you were a chubby chaser, would you watch this show with an increasing sense of despair?

 

[proudpittsburgher]

I kinda like the show, my only problem with it, however, is the way it's carried out. I watched one episode where someone, a female, actually gained weight for a weigh-in so they would be viewed as less of a threat than the guy who lost the most, and he got voted out. HELLO, isn't the point of the show to lose friggen weight? They get too caught up in this alliance stuff. They should just eliminate the bottom one or two people very show based on weight-loss percentage.

 

[Flash]

I am watching this guy on the Today show--wow. Lost 214 pounds in 9 months....from 407 to 193. Awesome.

Yeah but a significant weight loss like that isn't always the best thing either. Optimally, you should be losing two to five pounds a week so as not to overtax and shock your system. Also, I believe people who lose massive amounts of weight in a constrained period of time are more likely to gain that weight back.

 

[leo1]

Here's an interesting take on the show. It was written a year ago by a guy named Marty Gallagher, a powerlifter/trainer:

Why The Biggest Loser has ZERO applicability for real people living real lives
Monday December 5, 2005
Why The Biggest Loser has ZERO applicability for real people living real lives

1. Wheres my Hollywood Mansion? Contestants of the Biggest Loser reality fitness show are moved into a Hollywood Mansion for three months. It is undoubtedly a hell-of-a-lot easier to maintain fitness focus when youre sequestered in a Mansion for 12-weeks. Plus the cash incentive is huge: the winner banks $250,000. Cash and isolation make it far easier to maintain a commitment to the transformation process. Participants are not bothered with any of lifes distractions: work, family, stress and dilemmas.
2. Beat the hell out of themWhoever dreamed up the training regimen for this torture-fest ought to be indicted as a war criminal. If US Army personnel subjected Guantanamo Bay terror prisoners to the forced labor insanity the Biggest Loser personal trainers do show participants they would be subject to court martial. One day the little female PT made 400-pound men (miserably out of shape) run not walk not jog while carrying her on his back. Can you imagine the heart stress for a man who could generate a 90% age-related heart rate maximum walking to the mailbox and back? On the distaff side the metro-sexual non-gender specific male personal trainer had his female fat babes run up the side of a mountain! To make matters worse, both PTs inflicted psychological torture by taunting there respective crews with clichd fitness platitudes. Oh the horror! Theyre damn lucky someone didnt keel over dead.
3. Then starve themAfter making the obese people work like political prisoners in a Soviet Gulag circa 1952, participants are fed next to nothing. 350-400 pound men were allotted 1500-calories per day. This works out to 3.75 calories per pound bodyweight. Again, the Red Cross and Amnesty International should be alerted. This savage combination of over work in the gym and under-feeding after the fact causes a metabolic condition known as catabolism. Any 1st year medical student would know that combining sustained and intense physical effort with starvation-level calories is physiologically disastrous and dangerous. When the human body senses starvation primordial hardwire circuitry triggers and the body will preserve body fat at all costs. Cortisol is dumped into the bloodstream as a result of physical stress and a lack of nutrients. The body cannibalizes muscle tissue to cover caloric shortfall; the body literally eats its own muscle tissue in order to spare body fat. What a revolting development.
4. I picked the ultimate winner on day 1: This was easy: the deck was stacked. The ultimate winner was an athletic protge; a guy whod wrestled for Iowa, Matt was a national level athlete who had a shot at making the Olympic team. Hed allowed himself to get badly out of shape. Any athlete of this caliber has so much muscle memory that when I saw his credentials I knew he would be the ultimate winner: it was a foregone conclusion. At his athletic peak, weighing under 200, he was light years past the qualifications of shows dink-ass personal trainers. It was clear how superior an athlete he was when on one episode the prison guard female PT worked the men to exhaustion then challenged them to a sprint: how delicious a moment when the exhausted 340-pound fat man whipped her soundly. She was shocked speechless. Wrestlers know all about deprivation and anyone who wrestled at that level has the athletic work ethic of a machine. Give a guy like that 20-freaking weeks to beat himself into shape, wave $250,000 grand in front of his face and watch the normal people get trampled in his path. If they were serious they should have chosen untrained people of various ages and not allowed out-of-shape athletic wonders to compete. Plus it didnt hurt his weight loss regimen that he simultaneously kicked the booze.
5. Twenty weeks is a long time: Twelve weeks were spent isolated at the Mansion and eight weeks were spent at home. Is their any greater training and dietary motivation being in the final three with a quarter of a million bucks on the line? Normal obese people living regular lives are not provided that type of motivation. Its a lot harder to maintain focus and drive when no one is watching, when no one cares (other than concerned friends and relatives) and there is zero financial incentive. With its dubious methodology its doubtful any aspect of the Biggest Loser approach has the slightest applicability to real people leading real lives.
6. Not to cast stones without offer alternatives: Purposefully Primitive Obesity solution provides real results for real people leading regular lives.

WHA?????? reality shows don't have a bearing on the lives of us ordinary joe schlabotniks? next you'll tell me that if me and 10 other SportsJournalists.commers got stranded on a deserted island we wouldn't do as well as the survivor contestants! say it ain't so.

 

[HeinekenMan]

I am watching this guy on the Today show--wow. Lost 214 pounds in 9 months....from 407 to 193. Awesome.

Yeah but a significant weight loss like that isn't always the best thing either. Optimally, you should be losing two to five pounds a week so as not to overtax and shock your system. Also, I believe people who lose massive amounts of weight in a constrained period of time are more likely to gain that weight back.

Have you seen the winner? Eric? He's not going to gain the weight back. The guy has guns like you wouldn't believe. I mean, this dude lost more than 200 pounds. Think about that for a minute. As for how quickly he lost weight, it's not as dramatic as you might think. He only lost about five pounds per week over that period. And much of it was that early weight, which usually melts off fairly easily.

And they don't starve them. One trainer actually told a guy that he was concerned that he wasn't eating enough. If people aren't eating, it's their personal choice, though it might be based upon a desire to win. I'm sure the show knows that ratings matter.