The Biggest Loser

Ahhhhh reality television. The latest craze in prime time couch potatoism. I'm actually not a HUGE fan of reality TV. I never got into Survivor, or The Bachelor, or The Apprentice. I never liked the ruthless competition and the elimination and well, I found it all kind of boring and pointless. I found a couple of shows interesting that I do watch though. I watch my daytime reality show Starting Over. I really find it interesting to really peer into these womens lives and to see how they truly learn to change their lives for the better. And so many times I find myself thinking about things they talk about and I find out something about myself. I've gotten hooked. :)

Until recently, that had been the extent of my reality TV watching. Until I came across The Biggest Loser. A group of overweight, morbidly obese people coming together, forming teams and competeing to see who can lose the most weight. And on the way they work with trainers who teach them about exercise and its benefits and how to exercise healthily. And they also learn about making healthy eating choices, resisting temptation, and perservering when the going gets tough and all you want is a piece of chocolate cake. They learn healthy ways of dealing with that, and healthy ways not to deprive themselves of the chocolate every so often without going overboard. And it doesn't hurt that there's a large sum of $$$ for the winner. But in a sense they all come out as winners. Yeah there's an element of competition and strategy to the game with eliminating players and so forth, but the changes I saw almost all the cast members go through was completely amazing. They truly learned how to lose weight and keep it off and live healthy, active lives. A good few of the cast lost 47-49% of their body weight! The transformation was absolutely amazing to watch. Really truly phenomenal and inspiring. And once again, I enjoyed the show for the things I learned about myself when I watched it. Plus it was a fun and enjoyable kind of show. :)

ANYWAYS, why am I BLOGging about all this reality stuff. It could be just a topic to BLOG about. And I've had the topic stored in the back of my mind to BLOG about when I was at a loss for BLOGging material. This entry though has another purpose.

The hospital is having a "Biggest Loser" competition. It's a 12 week competition. You have to pay $17 to participate and the $$$ all goes into a pot. The team who loses the greatest percentage of body weight wins half the pot and the one person who loses the greatest percentage of body weight gets the other half. A pretty cool incentive I think! As far as I knew there were 2 teams that formed, and a third sort of formed today. I'm getting to that. The telemetry floor staff signed up as the team called the Tele-Tubbies. VERY cute. I loved the name. One of the medicine floors signed up as a team, the Med-Eaters. Cute, but not as cute as tele-tubbies. Some of the therapy staff WAS going to sign up with the telemetry team. But then word got out in the department and people got excited and now we're trying to form our own team last minute... The "No Flab Rehab" team. GREAT name! :) The few who signed up with the telemetry floor switched over to our team except for one. So it's the rehab staff against her. She apparantly had already weighed in and paid up etc. and didn't want to change because of that and also because "There are some big people down there! And it'll be easier to lose a greater percentage to win when you have bigger people!" So we traitored her and covered her desk with candy and brownies. :)

We may not be able to fully participate because we're signing up so last minute, but we decided that even if we can't participate in the hospital wide program we'll do it for ourselves. There aren't a lot of overweight people in our department, we're a pretty active bunch. But there are a few of us who could stand to lose a few pounds, and we figure whether we win or not it's great incentive to lose weight and be healthier. Like the cleverly thought of title, its a good thing to be a loser. :) And fun too. :)

My personal goal is to drop ~30-40 pounds of fat and gain ~10-15 pounts of muscle, so a net loss of ~ 30-35 pounds. I have nine months to lose 30 pounds! One I don't want to be at the weight I am anymore, two I want to be more active, and three I want my wedding gown (whenever it is that I actually find it) to look GOOD! And I've been sluggish in my activity motivation so I figure this'll be a good way to jumpstart myself so I can start earlier rather than later and not stress myself out over it.

And so, if you haven't ever watched The Biggest Loser, look for it next season. It's a fun show. And don't forget to watch me too! I'll keep y'all updated because I'm gonna hopefully be a BIG loser myself!!!