I’m offering humble apologies for the lateness of this article. Is lateness a word? If not, I, for the sake of this moment, am choosing the most appropriate word for the structure of my apology. I offer the definition of “lateness” as the act if apologizing for being late. Let’s get back to my apology. In addition to biting off more than I can chew, I also want to add that I put the capital “A” in “Type-A.” So if I weren’t writing this, I would be writing something else, like the book that I’ve managed to ignore since I started doing these editorials.
Noooooooooo! You deserve better. You've been patient enough to deal with my conspiracy-theory rant suggesting that The Biggest Loser producers are dining daily with the Survivor producers from last season.
Here’s one quick diversion. Who would I be without a diversion? My kids know not to mess with me when I'm hungry but my boyfriend, not so much. I reference this is because on The Biggest Loser they locked the Blue Team in a room filled with garbage food for four hours. The pizza, hamburgers, and foods that traditionally are served hot wouldn’t faze me at all. I love french fries for instance, but they have to be a certain temperature. If they’ve cooled then it’s “No Bueno.” The sweet stuff, cookies, donuts, and cakes…eh, are not what I crave, hot or cold. However, potato chips are my weakness. I would have never survived in a room with one bag of potato chips, let alone a dozen bags. Wine and cheese would have been a challenge for me too, but my biggest weakness would be potato chips. Whether it is 10 AM, 5 AM, or whatever time, it doesn’t matter; my biggest temptation has always been, potato chips. Let’s not even talk about dip!
Continuing with the flash-back, a few weeks ago, the White Team was down to two people. They are small but mighty. As we go into the first competition, everyone, including the full Blue, the full Red and the mighty White Team of two, is introduced to a room that is intentionally designed to mimic a childlike environment. It is a room that is traditional looking like rooms of many children today. There are: TV, bean bags, video games, and if that isn't bad enough, lots of food including pizza, hamburgers, friend chicken, candy, chips, and cookies. You get the picture. The team that loses the challenge will spend 4.5 hours a day in that room. Why 4.5 hours you ask? It’s because that's how long the average child spends in front of TV daily.
Let that sink in for a moment.
It’s certainly, very scary and causes great concern. All of the Challenge Quiz questions pertain to childhood obesity, and an even more frightening thing, if the rest isn’t really scary enough, is that the answers that sound the most exaggerated are the correct ones. I thought about transcribing the questions and posting them, but it’s depressing.
The Blue Team loses the challenge, but the food isn't an issue because my favorite beauty, Alex, was smart and sabotaged the food with orange juice. I’m admittedly addicted to potato chips, but orange juice soaked chips would have swayed me from eating them because potato chips need to be crisp, not sweet and mushy.
So, ironically enough, the biggest challenge, even more so than the food in the room, was that they could not work-out. They had to remain basically dormant. That would have driven me bananas! All that time with no activity of any kind, unless it was watching TV. Heck, I can’t watch TV without having three or four diversions, which is why I write editorials on TV programs. Hurrah! At first I thought I was superior to them, because I considered that I could have figured out the way to work out in this room by doing subtle butt-crunches or something, even lifting the orange juice over my head a few times. However, it appears that they’ve been mandated to not even attempt to work out.
It’s also important to mention that when the quiz started, the first contestant that I noticed who changed visually from the start was Lisa. In fact, my notes say that I noticed a “huge” visual change. Bravo Lisa! Certainly everyone has changed already in some regard, but I was actually shocked when I saw the dramatic change with Lisa.
Work-outs for the Red and White team continue as normal. Fran spends some of her working-out with Jillian and the White Team. They address Fran’s previous weight loss and weight maintenance success. I still think this successful history will become very relevant later. Jillian probes to get to the “stop” point, the point where the success stops or goes in reverse.
In the meantime, Cate admits to Dolvet that even though she meets with a personal trainer weekly she compensates by eating whatever she wishes afterwards. These workout days are lovingly referred to as “Fat Tuesday.”
It’s time for our second challenge and the prize is awesome! The winners get a years worth of groceries. To even the odds, the White Team is split between the Red and Blue team; so Danni goes to one team and Pam goes to the other. Pam hasn’t been released from all of her medical restrictions so she can't play, but she did wind up on the winning team. She gets the groceries as well. Jackson isn't cleared to participate either. The task is the “pinkest, most dramatic challenge I’ve ever seen.” Well that’s a little exaggeration. I guess I’ve been watching too much of Sean. I love him. He’s the “most sincere bachelor yet.” No, really! The challenge has the Red and Blue Teams crawling through bubble gum. Bleck! Wasn’t it during Big Brother a few years ago where they had to crawl through honey and someone couldn’t move an inch?
The difference between American Big Brother and The Biggest Loser is that when a prize is won, the winners can celebrate; unlike Big Brother, where if they win they downplay their prize so they don't offend anyone. I never quite understood that strategy but OK, if they say so. This huge difference becomes important later; so wait for it!
The Blue Team is finally out of Purgatory. Bob plans their last chance work-out in the room. I love this idea! He takes a deck of cards and assigns an exercise to each suit. Next he begins to draw the cards from the deck, one by one. Each number on the cards drawn symbolizes how many of that exercise they will do. It sounds kind of fun. I think that is a great idea. I may try it at home.
On the scales, Pam does the happy dance because she's lost 9 lbs. You'd never see that on any other reality program, especially since her victory meant someone was going home. I am thrilled that this is a program where people can celebrate their wins.
The weigh-in’s send Cate home. I’m glad it’s not Lisa, but I’m disappointed to see her go.
