I’m watching both of these shows in their entirety and I don’t know why they’ve historically gotten so much backlash. One reviewer called TBL “a dumpster fire of a TV show” and others seem to think M6L is downright abusive. However, I can’t find anything particularly bad in either.
Although it’s true that in TBL the contestants are losing an egregious amount of weight each week, it’s likely (actually almost certain) that most of this is water weight and it would have been more dangerous to instead not lose the weight. The intense exercise scenes seem pretty typical for anybody who’s serious about athletics. Finally, the famous “damaged metabolism” study that shut down TBL turned out to be debunked due to “damaged metabolism” being a boring, normal adaptation under high physical activity.
And although there are tons of bare naked shower scenes in M6L, everyone knew that going in and they agreed anyway. Some also complain how the stars don’t receive enough support for things like therapy and other cost centers. I would say that would actually have been a great thing to add, but it would be impractical at scale and have a high chance of bankrupting the production with how much healthcare costs, resulting in a net loss of benefit for those who need the surgery.
So, what’s your viewpoint here?
The correlation between weight and health is a lot murkier than media in general, and these shows in particular, represent. It’s much more reliable to measure blood and vitals, such as cholesterol and blood pressure, to establish wellbeing and risk.
Rapid changes in weight tho, in either direction, are well established for having permanent harmful effects. It also tends to make it more difficult to maintain weight loss, and more likely someone actually increases in weight over time.
These shows make it seem like losing weight at any cost is desirable, and don’t put focus on the actually accurate metrics of wellbeing, while ignoring the negative long term impacts of rapid weight loss. It’s a very warped view of health that focuses on an aesthetic feature.
I strongly recommend giving this podcast a try if you want more analysis: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biggest-loser/id1535408667?i=1000505824482
Spot on comment. “But, but, but obesity” Yeah correlation is not causation, when will people get off of the better than thou train.
Being healthy is more than just how much people weight and it baffles me that so many comments here are tone deaf about how it is not as easy as CICO and criticize people who live in larger bodies.