Shows for fatties

I admit I enjoy watching The Biggest Loser, although I have a major guilty complex as I do. Those people should not be losing that much weight that fast. They talk a good game on that show about building a healthy lifestyle, but it's simply not healthy to drop 11 pounds in a week, especially when they start dropping down under the 200 mark.

It's all about breaking records over there. Oh, you lost 100 pounds in three weeks! That's the most ever! Well of course they do. They do nothing but work out for 6 hours a day with professional trainers, and eat a monitored diet, plus they have all these contests they have to work for. When they get home it's not quite that huge a part of their lives.

Far better is Celebrity Fit Club, where minor celebrities live their regular daily lives but show up to fitness camp every week for their big workout with a drill sergeant. Nobody gets voted off, and their target weight loss is more like 2 or 3 pounds a week than anything in the double digits. They have a therapist on the show who helps them get over the emotional issues that made them fat in the first place, and if they don't lose as many pounds as they're supposed to everybody cheers and claps because they lost any weight at all. The winners used to be decided based on pounds lost, but they changed the format and now they are awarded fitness points based on their level of dedication to the program.

It has always bothered me that when one of the contestants loses 3 pounds they're all sad and feel like they let everybody down. They should be celebrating, but the perspective you get on the show is so far off nobody feels good unless they break some records.

It's just a shame that in a TV show that has a such a huge influence on fat people all over the country, they can't just enjoy their success. They should be more like Celebrity Fit Club.

And that's how I feel about weight loss shows.