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Random thought: Does The Biggest Loser finale cause eating disorders?
by Joel Keller, posted May 13th 2009 1:07PM
Now that the show is over, I'll finally admit it: I've been a closet fan of this season of The Biggest Loser, at least since the early stages. I seem to take pleasure in the irony of watching it with my fiancee while we eat ice cream (low fat ice cream, but ice cream nevertheless). Anyway, the show is at once exploitative and inspiring, showing people losing cartloads of weight in order to give them back the fulfilling lives they lost as they packed on the fat. It also gives viewers a chance to decide which of the trainers -- Jillian or Bob -- is most manly.
(By the way, my money's on Jillian there. She's attractive, but she scares the living crap outta me.)
But what seems to happen between the last challenge and the live finale is that the finalists tend to go from healthily thin to scarily emaciated, all in the name of winning the grand prize. And, after taking a look at this year's winner, I have to ask: Is this healthy? And will it cause problems down the road?
As anyone who endured last night's three-hour finale (which made the three-hour Apprentice finale look fast-paced by comparison) can tell you, 48-year-old Michigander Helen Phillips took the prize; her 140-pound weight loss was a higher percentage of her starting weight than that of finalists Tara Costa and Mike Morelli.
But both Helen and Mike -- who lost more than 200 pounds, for heaven's sake -- looked like they crossed over that line from skinny to too-skinny. Helen looked especially tiny; when she left the ranch after the last weigh-in, she looked like she was at a healthy weight, and her face and body looked like it was in proportion. When she came out on stage during the finale -- 30 pounds lighter than when she left the ranch -- she looked like a skeleton; arms spindly, face drawn. She went from a pretty middle-aged mom to someone that, to put it bluntly, looked anorexic.
Last season's winner, Michelle Aguilar, also looked too skinny during the finale but in recent appearances on the show looked like she gained a little bit of it back and reached a healthy weight. So, if Helen decided to go skeletal because she knew it was the only way to beat the super-tough pair of Mike and Tara, then we should expect her to gain ten or fifteen pounds and look healthy when she inevitably appears next season.
But it's very easy to slip from being in competition with others to being in competition with yourself, which is what causes eating disorders like anorexia. Heck, you'd think the most competitive of the three finalists, Tara, would have come out looking like a skeleton herself; ironically, she was the healthiest looking of the three. Maybe she knew what her limits were.
(Oh, by the way, at-home winner Jerry also looked far too thin. But it was remarkable that he was able to do what he did after being one of the first contestants to be eliminated. He even beat fourth finalist and the show's capo, Ron Morelli.)
Let's hope that both Helen and Mike ease off now that the competition is over and that they each go up to a somewhat more realistic weight. I'd hate to hear about either of them having health problems down the road because of The Biggest Loser.
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