Last night I turned on the TV (in direct opposition to my new Tivo MO) I happened to watch The Biggest Loser.  I’ve never seen it before, but naturally understood the premise.  What a great show!  I mean really, really great.  Aside from the message that it sends, I found it extremely encouraging to watch these teams of people struggle through the exercise and challenges all because they want to stop the cycle they’ve been stuck in.  Good for them, but let me share a couple of things that really struck me about last night’s show:

This episode was only week 2 of this season which is good because I’m only in week 1 of my own attempt to become a big loser.  At one point they had something I think they called “The Hall of Truth” where contestants had been recorded before the start of the show and asked about their eating habits.  The show then took those habits and quantified the results.  For example, if Susie drank 3 cans of soda everyday, this would translate roughly 100 pounds of sugar per year.  It was pretty sobering stuff.  At one point, a husband and wife team that was in there listening to themselves and seeing these numbers flash up on the screens just started to cry.  The husband turned to his wife towards the end and said, “We are killing ourselves.  This has got to stop.”

The second thing that absolutely made me cry was when one contestant who won a challenge got to make a call home and completely lost it at hearing his baby boy’s voice over the phone.  His own voice-over from the video diary said that, as much as he missed his family, he knew that he was taking 4 months away from them now so that he could potentially have 15 more years to spend with them.  Wow.  Talk about a tearjerker.

Again, what a great show.  If you go to the website, they have before and after pictures of previous contestants.  Pretty amazing stuff, and very encouraging.  I may just watch it again next week.