5 February 2014

I sat here last night watching The Biggest Loser finale with my computer perched on my lap and my phone pretty much in my hand for most of it. I co-watched it with a friend who was watching it on a DVR across the country, and as we are wont to do, we commented. About everything.

 Yeah. We're classy like that. No, I did not also want to lick Dolvette's abs, but she was pretty sure her husband would not only be fine with it, he probably wanted to, too.

The at-home contestants looked great. The woman who won that part of the whole thing dropped 175 pounds, losing somewhere around 52% of her body weight. She looked great, but she didn't look like she'd overdone it.

But then the 3 finalists came out, and it was jaw dropping.

Seriously...the jaw dropping wasn't necessarily good. They'd all obviously busted their asses to lose more weight once they were off the show and at home, trying to juggle real life with aiming for that $250,000.

Rachel, the woman who went on to win, dropped almost 60% of her body weight. She lost 155 pounds and ended at 105.

And yeah, the look between Bob & Jillian said a lot: she went too far, she lost too much, and that loss was a train headed right for them.

But...I didn't think it was much of a problem. This is a woman who was losing weight to win a show, and she knew exactly how to do that. She knew how much weight the winners of this show typically lose, and she undoubtedly knew how far she was willing to go.

She was a competition-class swimmer before she gained weight, and it hasn't been that long since she gained it, just a few years. You know those 3 Month Progress advertisements a lot of weight loss systems used to run? The chubby guy who morphs in just 3 months into a muscle-bound stud?

They take someone who's fit, cut, and willing to chub out, don't let him work out for 5-6 months, shove 10,000 calories a day down his throat, and then take the Day 1 picture. Those few months are not enough to lose the metabolism and muscle memory, so they hit the gym and get back on their regular food plan, eating clean, and yeah, in 3 months they're cut again.

I don't think it's all too different here, other than the time between being an athlete and trying to lost the weight. It was harder at first because it had been a few years...but an athlete's body is pretty good at retaining the memory of being lean and being fit, and once the metabolism really gets back into gear, it works quiet well.

She had to work her ass off, for sure, but somewhere in her body was the memory of being that fit and that lean. She probably worked past where she would normally be for the sake of winning, and now that she's won, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if she gained back as much as ten pounds for the sake of her health.

I don't think how she looked automatically means she's gone from one extreme of having body image issues to the other.

I think it only means she really wanted to win.

No surprise there.

The Internets like to freak. A lot. And they already are. I saw a post on FB; Bob Harper is already trying to push back from it.

But my take? She was only 3-4% higher in weight loss than the guys she was competing against. Would I do the same thing?

Hell yes, if I could. You dangle that much money in front of me and if I can do it, I will.

Go ahead.

Test me.

COME ON!

I bet if someone offered me $250,000 I would find a way to lost 60% of my body weight. I really would like to find out...