December 02, 2005
Inspiration: "The Biggest Loser"
If you want to see what persistance, hard work, and grinding past the weeks where you don't make any progress, look no further than the NBC reality TV series The Biggest Loser. The picture on the left shows what this season's winner, Matt, was able to accomplish in 6 months (total weight loss 157lbs and body fat reduced from 40% to less than 3%)!
Was it easy? Of course not. Where there times when he (and the others) considered chucking the whole thing and going back to their old ways? Of course.
Lest you think Matt's success was "results not typical", out of the 14 contestants this season, only two did not lose a significant amount of weight. One of them was Nick, who had a bad attitude throughout the time spent on "The Ranch" (the desert mansion where the contestants spent 12 weeks) as well as afterwards when he referred to his time there as "the worst experience of my life". In his post-show interview he spoke about "eating healthy and walking being the correct way to lose weight." The fact that he didn't show up for the finale spoke volumes.
The other contestant that didn't lose much was Kathyrn, who suffered an injury while on the show and I believe would have done much better if she had not been voted off and stayed on longer. She seemed to suffer from unfamiliarity with working out in general and needed more time there for it to become a habit for her.
Everyone else made a phenomenal change in their health and physical appearance, and the majority of them looked so different from their weight loss that they were almost unrecognizable compared to their "before" images.
Although The Biggest Loser does suffer from some cheesy-ness in the production of the show (with "beat you over the head" attempts at portraying drama) overall it's well worth watching and I hope the it does not deteriorate in quality as they start to do specialized versions of the show (families, couples, etc.).
If you're struggling with weight loss and workout motivation, The Biggest Loser is well worth watching.
