Recent comments on "Biggest Loser"

For whatever reason, this season I have started watching "The Biggest Loser" and find myself totally hooked and inspired by what they accomplish and their ability to work out for 6+ hours a day.  On last week's episode, two comments were made by two of the players that rubbed me the wrong way and wondered if you caught it and had a similar reaction.

Ron, the father, shared that he had a RNY 13 years ago.  He said he "tried to take the easy way out but it didn't work."  If only I was there offcamera to ask "Was your sugeon any good and did he/she give you any follow-up care?" "Did you lose any weight and what was your meal plan?" and "what lifestyle changes did you make to try to make the surgery a success?"  Something like that.  I just find it unreal (again by certain members of the media/television) that he was allowed to label WLS as an "easy way out" without having to admit whether or not he/she did anything to make it work.  I want to be a Pollyana and ask "how could he have had the surgery and then gained weight to take him well over the 400 pound mark?"  I wish I knew the surgeon to inquire what he offered Ron because clearly there couldn't have been any pre-op preparation or aftercare for it to just "not work" for him.  Something doesn't add up.

Then, to a lesser degree, later on in the show, Kristin, the daughter of a mother-daughter team, lost another great amount of weight  and while on the scale said how good it felt to lose this much weight "without gimmacks like pills or surgery." 

Does it bother you when WLS is defined as a "gimmack" and/or an "easy way out?"  Does anyone know more about Ron's story? 

Thanks for listening. I'll get off my soapbox now... =)

Kimberlee

Heh, people were *****ing about this on every WLS board I go on last week.

I don'****ch TBL because I hate the show. I think they purposely design the challenges to make the contestants look ridiculous, much of the nutritional advice given out on the show is questionable, their workout regime is also questionable, and the whole premise of the show is that anyone can lose weight if they just work hard enough, because people are fat because they are ignorant and lazy.

Which gets to Ron's and Kristin's comments. I am not the least bit surprised the show aired them because they support their premise -- people are MO because they are lazy and won't eat right and exercise. Another contestant on the show made the comment in an interview when she was voted off that she went on the show to avoid gastric bypass.

That's the attitude of the show, in a nutshell ... doing it anyway but our way is a cop-out.

I was surprised that Ron made the comment that he did though. OTOH, he clearly hasn't worked his surgery so maybe he did think it would be a magic pill when he got it. However, he was in the 500s when he got the surgery and is in the 400s now so I do think he's lost weight with his RnY. Just not enough to not think of it as a failure.

I know that some people have never had much luck dieting and so surgery, for them, is easier. I don't think this is "taking the easy way out", myself. It's doing something effective instead of doing something ineffective. But I can see how they would see it that way and how that wouldn't be a bad thing for them.

For me, I am working harder than I ever have with any diet. I have always lost weight on diets and found them relatively easy if I could get into the zone. Dieting is not my problem. Maintenance is my problem.

So the fact that I'm losing weight isn't enough for me to think WLS is easier than a diet because I could have done that without WLS.

So I don't think this is the easy way out at all. But I do think it's a way out and I'm grateful to have found it.