Fat and obese people always seem to cause contradictory reactions on other people: on the one hand they are suffering (they may have serious health problems, they have difficulty in moving, exercising, etc.); on the other hand 'it's all their fault', 'they just have to stop eating so much'. I think it would be a good idea if people simply started reading more about weight and weight disorders; if people understand more about nutrition and human fisiology, they may change their minds and give up this simplistic dilemma.

. . . is marginally better than eating fast food to lose weight.

Whenever a show to lose weight comes on, turn it off and walk a couple of miles instead.

We eat too much food and not enough. We exercize until we pass out and we live sedentary lifestyle with no exercize at all. Obese people want to be accepted at their current size and want to lose weight. We have high rates of diseases that obesity seems to contribute to and high rates of eating disorders. We are a nation of fat people and yet our most famous citizens are skinny athletes and actors.

It's not surprizing that weight-loss television, criticism of weight-loss television, and criticism of that criticism are all full of self-contradictions.

On the one hand, The Biggest Loser contestants are supposed to inspire us, and on the other hand we are supposed to want to tear them down like they were the kids on Gossip Girl.

We should not feel the need to be a certain size in order to be happy but no one should "accept" being morbidly obese.

the big fat profits that are being made in the delicious vicious circle from croissan'wich to cross training.

Being a body (read fat) acceptance activist is sort of like being a cancer acceptance activist. Eat less and excercise more.

Yeah Kate Harding! You summarized the article in the NYT perfectly. It would be interesting to see all of the people on TV who have lost massive amounts of weight keep that weight off for 5 years. They won't - Zip Nada. Diets don't work. These dieters will gain all their weight back plus some. It happens all the time because 98% of people who lose weight (even with a big ole 'lifestyle' change) will gain it all back. We need to change our thinking about this topic.

ha ha...imagine being a big girl in a graduate public health program!!

That's where I am, y'all, and it's become quite an internal conflict for me to listen to my classmates talk about obesity as a public health menace, like they're totally separate from overweight people, like there's not one sitting in the class with them. it's so easy for the other students to come up with ways for fat people to change their behavior.

I'm a big girl (250). I'm okay with being fat (wear a bikini and bellydance and think I look good in my clothes (and out of them!)).

today we did an exercise where everyone wrote down 3 good things and 3 bad things they do for their health. my three bad things included eating too much junk food and not getting enough exercise. we read them aloud anonymously, and EVERYONE ELSE'S CARDS SAID THE SAME THING AS MINE.

but in their eyes I'm part of the public health problem because I'm obese. they aren't any healthier than I am, and they have the same crappy health behaviors as I do. They admitted it themselves.

Am I giving up my size/self acceptance if I buy into the goals of public health? Never before in my life have I heard so many repetitions of "You're bad because you're fat." self-esteem is on the decline.

It's an idiotic, contempible game show that (I personally believe) is almost certainly using unhealthy, dishonest methods to produce the "game show" atmosphere that brings in big ratings.

Everything about this show stinks, from the name "Biggest Loser", which is pretty unequivocal...being fat makes you a "loser" at life, even if you are also (say) a Nobel prize-winning physicist. All that matters is the outer size and shape of your body! What a wonderful message for our children (note that the show airs on commercial TV at a time when many kids are likely to be watching).

This TV show takes every possible opportunity to show the ugliness of large-size bodies, having the contestants weighed (on a wildy shifting scale -- WTF?) in either sports bras and shorts (women) or shirtless (men). WHY? Maximum humiliation! Could they be just as easily weighed in comfortable track suits or T-shirts? Of course! But that wouldn't be sufficently gross looking or embarrassing!

The weight losses of most contestants is entirely unrealistic, and something is going on behind the scenes -- I promise you, this has to come out someday. Nobody gains or loses as much as 17 pounds a week -- they are either waterloading (to gain) or using diuretics, fasting and purging to produce losses.

Last season, a woman finally won. One of the many ridiculous aspects of the show is that it pitches females against males, even though every doctor and researcher knows that women's bodies are fundamentally different than men -- different fat composition, hormones, less muscle mass, lighter bones etc. Women by necessity lose weight more slowly than men. But on "Biggest Loser", contestants compete by percentage of weight lost, a system that is entirely unfair to the females.

So -- how did they get a female contestant to win? I don't know, but I smell a rat. The young woman who won was about 135 pounds in the second to last episode -- already having lost 99 pounds in only sixteen weeks. Yet in the single last week of competition, she dropped another THIRTEEN POUNDS to win the title -- or an entire 10 percent of her body weight. Frankly, this is not possible to do in a healthy way without purging, diuretics, illegal diet drugs, or starving. Furthermore, I doubt it is possible to maintain this kind of weight loss permanetly.

A little noted article in "People" magazine last year followed up with a handful of the show's previous year's participants -- ALL had regained at least some of the weight, some a great deal. Most particpants refused to respond to the magazine's writers, presumably because they have regained ALL or more weight than when they started.

Note, too, that the show emphasizes extreme exercise as the ideal weight loss (and body sculpting) tool -- despite volumes of scientific research that shows exercise ALONE (though very healthy in many other respects) does not result in substantial weight loss...in part because it also increases appetite. EXTREME exercise, which is what the contestants do for the duration of the show, exercise which goes on at high intensity for 10-12 hours a day, cannot possible be either healthy OR maintained for a lifetime. (Even Olympic class athletes take time off, or retire young.) For the duration of the show, the contestants live in a spa-like dorm, with no job or family responsibilties -- how does that help "Average Joe" people with their own weight problems?

There is almost no discussion of what the "Biggest Loser" contestants actually DO eat. They are almost only shown exercising -- sweating or groaning in an unattractive way, as brutal, falsely cheerful "personal trainers" exort them to keep going...even in the face of what is clearly pain and exhaustion. (If medical authorities are monitoring this, we never see them.) Are they eating normal healthy diets? It seems unlikely, given their meteoric rates of weight loss in record times. Plus: if they are on a diet this amazingly effective, then why isn't it being published and promoted? Gee, they are losing weight faster than people who have had gastric bypass surgery...isn't the medical community even interested?

I think eventually this show will be exposed as the cruel and unrealistic "scam" that it is, not unlike the old 50s TV show "$64,000 Question". Only at least THAT show was about knowlege and being smart -- "America's Biggest Loser" is about hating on fat people, watching them being "punished", losing unrealistic amounts of weight and then being "praised" -- all while the viewers (and the show's hosts) gloat over their own superiority.

A simiarly constructed show, which lobbed contempt and degradation at a racial or religious minority, would never make it past the "silly pitch" stage. Can you imagine a show called "America's Cheapest Jew"? "America's Most Pitiful Welfare Mom"? Didn't think so.

The solution: please don't watch it....and it never hurts to write a show's sponsors (in this case, many purveyors of diet foods and products) that you will not buy their product until they stop advertising on this TV show.