‘Biggest Loser’ needs a makeover

This has been building for a week. It would be safe to say that I over-care about “The Biggest Loser” right now. I’m only slightly embarrassed about it at this point, rather than mega-embarrassed, so I will go ahead and talk about it publically. (If a blog read by 26 people qualifies as publically.)

First off, the show is great. Think it was a fantastic idea. Love it like it was movie popcorn or hot clothes right out of the dryer. Probably what I like most about it is that everybody on the show loses weight. I’m not going to say that it’s easy to lose weight or that it isn’t more difficult for some people, but I think we get stuck when we focus on genetics and the idea that genetics are working against us. I’m big-boned. My metabolism is slow. My thyroid is on the fritz. Whatever it is. Bottom line: excuses are almost always easier than exercise.

But on “The Biggest Loser” everybody loses weight. People come on to the show with all different concerns and health issues, from all parts of the country, all ages and backgrounds and races, and yet they all lose weight. It’s not boot camp on there, but excuses don’t fly. It’s tough love. They eat healthier and exercise more, and ta-da!, shrinkage. They eat fewer calories. They burn more calories. They lose weight the way Charles Schwab would do it. It should give every overweight person hope. I don’t know if it does, but it should.

All that said, the ending of each season goes against everything the show stands for. People aren’t there just to lose weight – I know, I know, it’s the name of the show – they’re becoming healthier. They’re getting stronger. They’re building self-esteem. If the show was just about losing weight, they wouldn’t have anyone lifting weights or doing push-ups. They’d be jogging constantly in a suana. I like to think of the contestants as losing lots of stuff besides pounds; their negativity, their fears, their inhibitions, their cholesterol levels. That’s how the shows creators envisioned it. (Or I’m just making it up to supplement my overall point. But it certainly sounds like something the creators could have envisioned.)

 What I’m getting at, is that Helen is too skinny. Helen being Helen Phillips, the winner of the latest “Biggest Loser.” Season 7, I believe. This would be the pre-show Helen …

She came to the show with her daughter as a partner, weighing 257 pounds. During the show, Helen lost 110 pounds, all the way down to 147. Before the show’s last episode, there is a longer break where they go home, and have some time to lose additional weight on their own. And when Helen came back for the final episode, she looked like this …

She’d lost 30 more pounds in less than a month. Yes, for the subractionally impaired, that’s a final weight of 117 pounds. As my friend Jocelyn said, 117 pounds probably isn’t a sustainable weight for a 47 year old woman. And as I said when Helen burst through the paper sign for her introduction on the last episode: “Holy crap! What the heck happened to Helen!? She must have been kidnapped and starved and tortured with spray-on tan!” She looks 10-15 years older than when she started the show and I’m in no way trying to be mean-spirited. She just did.

I’m not faulting Helen for it. That’s how you win the $250,000, by losing the highest percentage of weight. And that’s the problem. A great concept is hijacked at the end when three people lop off every possible ounce, even ones they don’t need to lose. Tara and Mike, the other two finalists, both lost amazing amounts of weight, but Helen out-shrunk them. I don’t know how she did it, but the last 30 pounds are supposed to be the toughest, not something you just peel off in a few weeks. I know that for $250,000, I’d definitely so some bad things. Live on cooked spinach. Scarf diuretics. Become bulimic. Try heroine. Maybe meth. Whatever it took. (I’m kidding. I would never, never, never eat cooked spinach.)

The current rules of the show are encouraging that sort of behavior. I haven’t come up with a better plan, unfortunately, but there’s got to be something. Part of the problem is the more dramatic the weight loss, the more buzz it creates, the better ratings it produces. People don’t tune in to see Helen at a responsible weight, they want to gasp and talk about how jiggly her arms are. I get that.

The people of NBC should get together, brainstorm a little, try to come up with something better. The show is filled with challenges, so why not have a challenge on the final episode. Or have the winner decided by a three-part equation tabulated by percentage of weight loss, a test of strength or endurance (handicapped for age and gender) and a quiz show based on knowledge of the food pyramid. OK, you’re right. That would be lame. Scratch that last part. But you see my point. There has to be some sort of way to decide the winner besides having everyone go all Kate-Moss-on-”Survivor” for three straight weeks.

I realize we’ve picked on Helen a little bit here. Tara and Mike were much younger and if either of them had lost a few more pounds, I’m probably not still thinking about this a week later. Instead, it’s eating away at my soul on a daily basis. Thankfully, my soul is almost calorie-free.