Faint, Puke, Die, or Keep Walking

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 The Biggest Loser (United States ...Faint, Puke, Die, or Keep Walking.

The wise words of TV personality Jilliam Michaels trainer on Biggest Loser. But are those words really that wise? And did this TV show leave its contestants and most of America in a worse place? In short, yes. 

Over the 18 seasons of Biggest Loser we watched 14 contestants on average go from their starting weights of sometimes up to 400 pounds drop as much as they could as fast as they could, all well-being publicly shamed on national television. With the idea that they would fight tooth and nail to get to their dream bodies and they would do it only with diet and exercise and emerge a healthy and happy person once it was all done. Well also keeping in mind that you would be kicked off the show if you did not lose enough. All with challenges designed to make you crack and trainers pushing you to know you were never going to be good enough. 

A 2016 study published in the journal Obesity followed contestants after being on the show to find out what it was really doing to their bodies. Some of the finds where both shocking and expected plummeted leptin levels, leaving them constantly hungry. Slowed thyroid function leading to slowed metabolism. And many were left never being able to regain regular level.  This means that in the long run most of these patricians they gained back all or most of the wight they lost on the show. 

This leaves the medical community with more questions about what happens when you lose weight as quickly as they did and what needs to be in place for them to be able to keep the weight off. But the overall obsession with weight loss in America is only growing and we can see it more and more with the shows pumped out by the networks, My 600 pound life, 1,000 pound sisters, etc. The shows don’t stop and they won’t stop because well America has a wight problem, they also have a weight loss obsession and that start of that fire was brought on by the idea that a show like The Biggest Loser brought in millions of dollars for the doctor, the trainers, and the network.  

-AMC 


Sources: 

https://www.health.harvard.edu/diet-and-weight-loss/lessons-from-the-biggest-loser

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