Juxtaposition

Watching The Biggest Loser finale while sitting on the couch, eating Thai takeaway and drinking a nice glass of viognier.

On the subject of TBL, I was utterly astonished by how much weight people lost. And so quickly! Established wisdom suggests that you should aim to lose between half and one kilogram a week. Any more than that and you risk cannibalising your own muscle mass, or so say the experts. But quite clearly the contestants of TBL put on a significant amount of muscle and lost absolute masses of body fat. It would have been interesting to see them do body composition tests as well as simply weighing them. Or at least, it would have been interesting to me because I'm a bit of a nerd about such stuff.

Of course, the challenge will come after all the hype has died down and the 'contestants' (how I hate that word) are faced with challenges of every day life. Work, family, all that stuff -- it really eats into your workout time. It's pretty damn difficult to  spend  seven hours a day at the gym when you've got a job, a partner, children, friends, books to read, things to knit. A life, in other words.

What is possible is devoting 45 minutes a day to physical activity while maintaining good eating habits, but this won't cause you to lose 5 or 6 kilograms a week.

So when the contestants transition from the eight hours of hardcore physical exertion per day to a more realistic routine they'll need to adjust their caloric intake quite drastically to avoid gaining weight rapidly. I really will be fascinated to see if they can maintain their losses.

That said, I have a whole raft of ideological problems with the narrative of The Biggest Loser, to do with fat and the way it is portrayed in our society. The way we prize appearance over health is a big issue, and how thinness is automatically conflated with morality so that someone is seen as strong and good and better, just because they are thin. 

And while the transformation narrative of this sort of show is so strong, it's ridiculously shallow. These people haven't done some fabulous wonderful thing for the world, they've gone on a reality TV show and lost weight. I'm glad for them and their families that they're healthier, happier people now, but... they've gone on a reality TV show and lost weight.

Mistress Krista has a great mini-essay on fat at Stumptuous. It articulates a lot of things about fat, culture, and ways of thinking about fat which aren't destructive:

It's pretty clear that fat = bad in our culture. What I'm suggesting is that we re-think the inherent value we give to fat, and understand it instead as something which is important to have in the right quantities. Some people are tall, some people are short, some have brown eyes, some have blue eyes, some people have more body fat, and some people have less body fat. That's the way it is. Ideally body fat should have no more positive or negative associations than other indicators of health and fitness. Having more body fat should not be correlated with stupidity, laziness, slovenliness, etc. Rather, body fat should be viewed as merely another physical feature which varies individually. If you choose to reduce your body fat, don't view it as a moral issue. Think of it like a haircut or clipping your toenails: you're simply decreasing the amount of a physiological component, not embarking on a religious crusade. Knowing your body fat should be like knowing your shoe size. It's just a number. If you want to change that number, go ahead and do it. But you're not a better person if you're X% rather than Y%.

Obviously, even given my typical over-thinky reaction to TBL, I just couldn't help but watch anyway. And I didn't think it was all bad. I liked the fact that the show focused on exercise, but it would have been good to see a little more of the diet side of things; you only really saw what the contestants ate when it was part of a 'challenge' and it really emphasised the idea of privation, of forbidden foods and what not do, rather than ways of eating that are actually sustainable for more than a few boring weeks.

I also thought it was very positive that the show didn't promote any supplements or specific brand name products (except indirectly) and you didn't see the contestants slurping down their whatever brand protein shake after taking their whatever brand supplement whilst following whatever 'scientific' faddish diet.

Ah well. It's all over now and there's nothing on but Big Brother* and all those American shows about missing, dismembered and raped women. I think it's time for me to start reading more.

*Which I'm so not watching, even if all the cool kids are. I'd really rather gnaw off my own foot.

Comments

[Cristy]

I got totally suckered by TBL too, but I was a little sad that a female didn't win last night.

I decided to make a big effort to jump on the BB bandwagon, in order to replace my BL fix and because P has been away. I don't think that I am going to be able to stick it out though. Its not so much that I object to it or anything; I just get bored.

I agree with your analysis of the fat issue underlying TBL. While I appreciate the idea of saying 'with determination and hard work, you can turn around your health and, thus, your life', there was also an enormous focus on appearance and thin=good. That didn't sit very well with me. I thought that way far too obsessively in high school and it made life pretty unhappy for a while.

[Cristy]

Come to think of it (as an aside), I think that I first watched TBL after seeing a post that you wrote about it...

[Laura]

Dorian's brilliant sister has just finished her PhD, her thesis is on Makeover Culture and it's utterly convinced me that these stories of transformation are at the core of whatever this culture we live in is all about.

That said I found the grand finale too boring to watch for more than fifteen minutes or so!

The post you linked to is interesting and thoughtful, but ultimately I can't imagine how that kind of massive shift in thinking about fat (the substance) could ever be achieved. It's too potent.

[Kate]

Laura, yes and yes. The cult of the individual? The myth of personal autonomy? The idea that we make our lives and we alone are responsible for success/failure?

I don't hold out much hope that we can -- as a society -- refashion our view of fat. However for me as an individual (haha), it is possible to at least develop a truce with my fat cells rather than an obsession.

Yes, Cristy, but that's symptomatic of our culture more generally.

[Jennifer Cascadia]

I don't have an issue with fat. I see that Brutal Women blog has just recently covered this same concern about fat and transformation. It may be a younger woman's concern. I don't know. I think I learnt to disengage concerns with my appearance with the idea of success in the broader sense, many years ago. The enlightening moment was when I discovered that patriarchy wasn't going to give me any more of the pie just because I looked better. The point of patriarchal values is to keep women naval gazing, always trying to improve, just SO THAT they do not manage to get any of the power.