The Biggest Loser

[scarlet]

Feb 5, 2014 16:45:12 GMT -4 chonies said:

Yay for bloggers!

From Fit & Feminist

She played the game and she played it hard, and in doing so, she laid bare the show’s messed-up, disordered premises for all the world to see. link.

Exactly. I haven't watched the show in at least a couple years because the whole "your day revolves around exercising for 8 hours" really started to annoy and disturb me. There's no way a person can sustain that level of activity. I think I finally threw in the towel when they did the home visits of the finalists and the trainer (don't remember if it was Bob or Jillian) was disappointed in the contestant for "only" managing an hour of exercise a day.

Who knows if Rachel has a full-blown ED or if she just took the game too far. If it's the latter, I wouldn't be surprised if she gained some of it back immediately. If it's the former, I hope she becomes aware of it and gets help before it goes any further.

[Shanmac]

Jillian and Bob looked totally horrified when she stepped on stage, and I noticed that they didn't even show Dolvett's reaction. He was her trainer -- I wonder what he thinks. He's got to be wondering where the hell he went wrong. I mean, she was fit and strong and athletic when she left the ranch. She'd just won the damn triathlon. She was glowing.

And I get it. She seems SUPER competitive and she was a competitive swimmer. She was the smallest of the three and I'm sure she realized that to win, she'd have to lose a lot. She barely had any left to lose when she left the ranch. But God damn, girl — where's all that awesome muscle you had?

Ugh. I am wondering if going forward, TBL will implement a rule that you get disqualified if you go to extremes like that. However, who sets that arbitrary line? Do you do it by BMI, which is not really an accurate picture of health?

Yeah, it's not surprising that this happened, but it's depressing. Everyone else looked so fit and awesome -- Tumi looked especially amazing. The vibe on the set seemed to go from super excited when all the other contestants were weighing in — everybody looked fab — to "holy shit, this is awkward" when Rachel walked out. Jillian didn't even bother to try to hide her "WTF?" face. Even Tanya, the contestant who was sitting behind Bob and Jillian, just absolutely froze when she saw Rachel.

I feel bad for the girl. I know contestants invite scrutiny of their bodies, but winning is supposed to be this triumphant thing -- "hey, look how awesome I feel." She ... doesn't look like she feels awesome. Maybe she does and I'm way off base and she's fine. But she looks sickly.

I've lost a large amount of weight twice and both times I've gotten down pretty low -- lower than my goal weight -- after making big changes. But after a few months it kind of stabilized and I was back at a normal weight. I hope that's the case for her.

I hope this was a case of her being super competitive and wanting that money really bad and not a full-blown eating disorder. Although I agree that the reason she gained weight and her uber-competitiveness could be red flags.

Bob put out a non-statement on FB today basically saying he's not her trainer and doesn't feel comfortable commenting. It urged people to contact the producers with concerns. Is that code for, "This show is getting fucked up, this is fucked up, and we need to make the producers change it"?

[Mierin]

Bob and Jillian put up identical non-statements on FB ("I'm not her trainer, talk to the producers with concerns.")

[GirlyGhoul]

Feb 5, 2014 22:42:02 GMT -4 Mierin said:

Bob and Jillian put up identical non-statements on FB ("I'm not her trainer, talk to the producers with concerns.")

Ouch. Way to throw Dolvett under the bus Bob and Jillian! But the thing is, when the contestants go to singles, all the trainers work with everyone in the final weeks. But more than that, whatever happened in this girl's head happened when she was off the ranch.

I think it was a combination of her inborn competitiveness, having her esteem wrapped up both in winning and also getting thin, and the fact that by the rules of the show- the ONLY chance she had at winning would basically be to do what she did which was get under weight... That or constantly send donuts to her competitors in the hopes that they wouldn't beat her on the scale (She may have trapped Bobby that way- but I don't think David would have gone for it)

She probably has some predispostion towards an ED, bless her. But there's also a big problem with the rules of BL that I've been wishing they would change ever since the show began. They go solely by percentage of scale weight lost- nothing else. Scale weight does not take into consideration things like muscle mass, bone structure or PMS bloat. You step on the scale and the number you get is the number you get. For example, this season, I knew there was absolutely no way Bob's favorite little Olympian Holly had a snowball's chance at even getting to makeover week. The girl could have dropped mad fat, but beneath it was a ton of muscle (She could lift like 250 lbs or more) She was visably losing weight and toning up, but when she stepped on the scale, it was going to measure her muscle and there's no way she could lose that unless she gave up her career and starved herself ala Rachel. Now, if they were factoring in muscle mass and counting fat loss over scale weight- she may have stood a chance. But with the current rules that wasn't going to happen. She was probably ok with that since I think her main focus was getting back into the Olympics (though who's going to sneeze at $250,000) but she was never going to be the Biggest Loser as long as she was lifting weights and keeping her muscle.

Rachel had some mad muscle tone going on at the end of her ranch time and that's what makes this even sadder. She was REALLY healthy and could have spent her time off the ranch just maintaining what she had achieved rather than trying to compete with two guys who still had lots of weight to lose. But they dangled that $250,000 in front of her solely on the basis that she lose more scale weight than those guys and the only way she could do that was to lose the muscle and get skeletal.

It's like a perfect storm scenario that was always a disaster waiting to happen. If this show is going to continue, I hope the producers will set up some different rules. Changing the way they measure the contestants weight loss by scale weight alone would be a starter. But if that's too complicated, they could award prizes for who gets to their goal/ ideal weight first, or who maintains it the longest. Better yet, forget the prize/ competition element and have it just be folks learning healthy habits and getting their beatings from Jillian and the gang and maybe some monetary incentive for sticking in there and not giving up. Maybe they could still award someone the Biggest Loser based on who got the most fit, or had the best attitude throughout.

In all honestly, it may be the best thing for the show to just pack it in and call it a day. But at the very least, as others have mentioned, they should have a rule where going underweight disqualifies you automatically. Or you just get a huge wad of cash for hitting your goal and maintaining it to the finale and leave it at that.

[margojata]

I feel sorry for her- ALL the attention is about how she doesn't look good and got too thin. I bet she thought she was knocking it out of the park and everyone would be amazed. And enablers don't help. I saw that ridiculous Al Roker interviewing her and carrying on about how fantastic she looked.

Bob and Jillian are a couple of assholes, if you ask me. What do they think they're creating with their style of training? I'm really surprised this and worse hasn't happened before. I know a bunch of them gain lots of weight back - what does that say about the show? I was never able to watch more than a few shows here and there because of the humiliation factor. Plus the berating of people for not doing THE most unhealthy shit ever. It always kills me to see Bob and Jillian do grimacing angry faces at people who don't lose 10 pounds a week. And yeah, healthy muscle is not rewarded, but apparently dehydration is.

[chonies]

This is just an aesthetic choice for me, but she looks much better without the tan. I can't tell if it's spray tan or tanning bed tan, though. It makes her look dry and husklike, and I think she would look much better even at her present form if she had her natural complexion.

[Ella]

Dolvett has responded:

"Last night's Biggest Loser Finale has sparked a huge reaction and I do not want the day to end without addressing it," Quince wrote in a Facebook message posted Wednesday night.

"Biggest Loser is a journey which has its ups and downs. Please try not to look at one slice of Rachel's journey and come to broad conclusions. Rachel's health is and always has been my main concern and her journey to good health has not yet ended!"

______________________-

I would love to be a size 8...size 0, nope.

[chonies]

Here's another article, which takes a long view. Postage stamp version: women can never get it right, now matter what they do.

[Deleted]

An intense competition involving weight loss irrespective of one's health is sick. Period. The premise of TBL was messed up to begin with, but it could have been tweaked in different ways, as GhirlyGhoul pointed out, to improve things. Once the money rolled in, though, it seems that things got worse. As professionals who are educated in nutrition and fitness, Bob and Jillian should have bowed out a long time ago. In the back of their minds they knew this show was all kinds of fucked up. You could see it on their faces when Rachel came out. They weren't dumbfounded, they immediately knew -- "oh shit, IT happened." 

[birdface]

Of course they know. There have been too many (and at the same time not enough) stories from past contestants where they outright said "our trainers told us to dehydrate". That's why their "shock" and then cop-out statements really piss me off. They truly are assholes, as margojata said.