I used to occasionally get asked if I had ever considered trying to be on “The Biggest Loser.” (I didn’t get asked that a lot, because it’s not the kind of thing you ask a person unless you are very comfortable with them.) I always said I hadn’t, and there were always two reasons I gave:
- “The people who win that show usually lose close to 50% of their weight, and I only need to lose about 35%, so I wouldn’t have a chance of winning.”
- “I know I can lose the weight on my own, so I don’t need to go there to do it.”
Both of those were true, but neither of them was totally honest. The fact is, I couldn’t care less about winning the $250,000, so “no chance of winning” shouldn’t have mattered to me. And I was sure I could lose weight without the show, but that was based on the fact that I lost weight for wrestling in high school 15 years earlier, combined with the logical realization that people lose weight without TBL all the time so it must be possible.
The real reasons I didn’t want to be on “The Biggest Loser” were:
- I don’t entirely agree with their approach to weight loss.
- I didn’t want all the baggage that goes along with it.
First, let me explain the baggage thing. I watch “The Biggest Loser,” and I enjoy it quite a bit. But it is a TV show, created first and foremost to make money as good entertainment. The idea of helping people lose weight is a means to an end, not the end itself. When we watch, we end up with people we like and people we dislike, and most of that is probably because of the way the show is produced. If my goal is to become healthy, why would I want to do it in an environment where my health isn’t the goal and where millions of people might end up rooting for me to fail (or, at least, to be less successful than someone else)? And maybe even more importantly, I didn’t want to “owe” my health to Bob or Jillian, to be one of those people saying, “I couldn’t have done this without you.” Where I am in my journey right now, having lost 103 pounds, I am grateful to Tim Ferriss who helped me find the plan and my wife and kids and friends who have been amazingly supportive, but I don’t owe my transformation to any of them. I did this. I am doing this. Just as I owned my unhealthiness, I am happy to own my healthiness.
So let’s talk about TBL’s approach to weight loss. As I’ve said before, the only way to maintain weight loss is to keep doing the things that helped you lose the weight in the first place. And on TBL, the way they lose weight is by exercising nonstop and cutting out all their vices, in an atmosphere completely separated from the environment that got them fat to start with. To me, that doesn’t seem like the best recipe for long-term success and healthy maintenance. And the fact is, the vast majority of the people who go on the show gain at least some weight back, and many of them gain too much back. (While you’re at that link, scroll down to Vicky Vilcan to see what I mean about the producers creating villains and underdogs.)
(I just wrote quite a bit about the fact that a lot of TBL contestants lose too much weight, but then I decided to make it a post of its own, so keep an eye out for that.)
My goal has never been weight loss, and it has especially never been temporary weight loss. My goal has been health, by way of fat loss. I think “The Biggest Loser” is great for entertainment value, and it can even be inspiring to watch, but it’s not the path I’ve wanted to go down to reach my ultimate goals.
In fact, it was last year when I seriously considered trying out for the show that I realized I needed to fix myself. So I did.
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