The Biggest Loser, 20 Years Later

There is a 3 episode documentary on apple tv about the aftermath of the hugely popular show The Biggest Loser which aired 20 years ago as of 2024. It ran for about 18 seasons (or episodes) and the documentary follows up on the winners of the weight loss cmpetition. In case you weren't a watcher, Obese people auditioned to be on the show in a kind of weightloss race involving low calorie diets (as low as 800 calories) and all day work-out routines (of up to 8-10 hours a day).

Millions of people watched both apprehensively and hopefully, I think. At the time, I was, myself, about 50 pounds overweight. It is a 50 pound companion I have had since I was 38 and got pregnant. Before that, I had always been about 125 to 130 pounds. During my pregnancy, I ate carefully but with an eye to nutrition and nourishment for my baby not with an eye to my figure. It was the beginning of the personal sacrifice that marks the role of motherhood. Within 6 months after the birth of my daughter, however, I had lost the 50 pounds because at the time, I lived in the city of Philadelphia, worked in New Jerssey, and I had no car, so I walked everywhere carrying the baby in a backpack and a diaper bag and a school bag hanging on my arms - a workout of its own kind.

Once I moved to New Jersey and got a car, however, the weight didn't stay off, those sneaky 50 pounds that had hovered watchfully and waited for a chance returned at an average of about 10 pouds a year.

I was working all the time. I had a full time teaching job, two after school jobs teaching English as a second language and tutoring homebound children, and a full Saturday job from 9-5 at the University of the Arts. Sundays, I did the laundry the grocery shopping, and once I bought my house, the cleaning and yardwork. Needless to say, I was eating fast food and not looking after myself, though I tried. When you are cooking for two and one of them is a skinny and obsessively picky eater, you are trapped in the cycle of trying to tempt your child to eat something/anything that they like (mac and cheese) at the same time you try to get something with nutrition into them (carrot coins and chicken cordon bleu wa her faorite.)

Befor that life changing event of mothernood, I had been very involved with fitness thanks to a team of phys ed teachers I had the good fortune to eeet in college at Glassboro State College in the early 1970's. They were young and modern and interested in fitness. They allowed us to research and design our own fitness programs, and get our grades by charting our progress with their guidance. At the time, I was interested (as was just about everyone else thanks to Jim Fixx) in jogging and running. My program was to start out walking around the three sided park of Knight's Park in Collingswood, and slowly add jogging from telephone pole to telephone pole with the goal of eventually jogging one whole side, then two, then finally, all three. I did it, it worked and I got an A and an understanding of how to get fit. At that time, I was married and my ex-husband a competitive and inconsiderate man by nature was into both running and bicycling. Although I could do a 15 mile ride with pleasure and without pain, he found ways to force it into 50 mile rides which killed me and took the joy out of the experience. He had been in the army and his introduction into fitness training was forced marches with backpacks at Fort Gordon, Georgia. That kind of punishment suited his nature anyhow. So he often turned our outdoor experiences into painful forced marches.

After college and before divorce. I also had taken a course in Modern Dance, taught by a gifted and fascinating professional dancer/goat farmer. She was the old hippy stock, back to mother earth, organic produce in a truck garden, chickens, and goats for milk, cheese, and sale. She had been a lifelong dancer in first ballet, and then modern dance. The birth of her sons followed by her husband's desertion changed the course of her life. They had started the farm together but he had left for New York and a career in design and a wealthy younger woman, unencumbered by pesky disabled children. She was on her own with a deaf son and a handicapped daughter. I loved her class and for the first time in my life, I began to love and honor my body and to understand it. I found grace.

During that time, I also had become a vegetarian thanks to the life changing book Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappe. It was the time of the greatest fitness of my life. I worked in a library and I got there by bicycle while I also went to college part-time and alternating full time.

Divorce, a move to Philadelphia, dating and we zoom forward to my later years (middle aged), I was about 50 pounds overweight, raising my daughter, working all the time, and not eating mindfully, also I was still taking college courses and earning my third post- graduate degree. And in whatever time was left, I drove my daughter to her classes, her shows, and her athletic events. Then, my daughter grew up and left home around 2002. I was free.

First, I started walking at night, but I fell and broke my arm. Then I fell down the attic stairs and seriously injured my back. I realized I was not only fat but dangerously out of shape, I had to do something, so I joined a local gym that had a program where if you got 5 people from your work to join, you got a discounted rate Five teachers joined, but soon, I was the only one going. Every day, directly after school (I gave up the tutoring job) I put on my gym clothes and went straight to the gym (Royal Fitness in Barrington). I rode the bike for an hour and did a variety of strength building machines. People at the gym were helpful and supportive which helped me overcome my intimidation in the face of machines I had never used before and an experience beyond my comfort zone.

On the way home from the gym, I stopped at Audubon Lake and did an hour walk. On average, I did 2 hours at the gym and an hour walking and in one year, 52 weeks, I lost 50 pounds. I looked and felt marvelous, like a new person. The neon sign that kept blinking in my mind was "YOU CAN GET IT BACK" but the gym had stirred something else in me, a renewed interest in romance. Several years of unsuccessful and deeply disappointing dating followed during which I slowly gained the weight back. Then I watched The Biggest Loser! Like the contestnts I was sad and hoping for some kind of progress, some kind of FIX. Over the 20 years of the program, I, too, joined the gym again, walked again, cleaned up my diet again, and again and again. And each time, I lost 20 pounds or 30 pounds, and within the next couple years I gained it back again and I got old.

Unexpected Disabilities began to pile up in my late 60's and early 70's. First, I got degenerative spine disease which I discovered while taking a kayak off a car rack. It took a year for recovery from the damaged disc that impinged on the nerves in my spinal cord and caused the pain. That ended my outdoor life. I couldn't turn my head, or drive, and moving my shoulders was always dangerous. It got better eventually though, but the orthopedic doctor told me it would spread down my spine and it was not going away; it was dessicted disc disease. Then my eyesight failed - things got blurrier and I couldn't read anymore or read street signs while driving; the cornea specialists told me it was degenerative and genetic and it was Fuch's Disease - a break down of the pumps that dlean and protect the cornea. Then I tore the meniscus in one knee, and at the gym, I developed a stabbing pain in my hip while on the treadmill. the Orthopedic doctor said I had arthritis is both knees and both hips and the treadmill was bad for both. No more treadmill walking.

Still, I could always walk outside. And I have. I kept mainly to a simple diet with enough casual diversions into bad habits (ice cream, milk shakes, potato chips, cheesecake) to keep me 50 pounds overweight. But I stayed vegetarian. It wasn't enugh. Eventually I added two new afflictions to my resume' - a case of diverticulosis so severe I ended up in the hospital (Virtua in Voorhees) - (my daughter came home to help me establish a new routine of soups), and then a couple of years later a cardiac event which sent me to the hospital (Lady of Lourdes) and ended my volunteering at Red Bank Battlefield. My sister came to my aid this time and once again, I endeavored to help myself stay alive by going to the gym and walking the dog. That's where I am today. The diverticulosis was caused by my high blood pressure medications drying out of my intestines. The cardiac even twas caused by calcified soft tissue around my coronary artery.

The trajectory of The Biggest Losers has been somewhat similar. They were fatter and lost more but they, too, gained it back and are still engaged in the great struggle. Only one kept it off and he said he is an obese man in a fit body and every day he is hungry and every day is a struggle. Iterestingly, at age 51, one of the trainers, Bob Harper suffered a massive coronary heart attack. He was fit, but his cholesterol was high and he had a meat based diet; when he recovered, he became a vegan.

Perhaps that is the fact and the theme of this EVERY DAY IS A STRUGGLE. Whether your struggle is with nutrition or exercise, depression, family life, life purpose, home maintenance and independence in living while aging, cognitive decline, loneliness, we are all engaged in a struggle every day, and perhaps in my case, a great big gratitutde is that I have the will and the fortitude to engage in the struggle and that fortitutde may be the thing that buys another year of healthy life.

By the way, we (my dog and me) are just back from our walk around Martin's Lake, about 1500 steps, 1/2 a mile, and very good for meditation because it is peaceful, beautiful and usually pretty empty. I am listening to Dr. Dean Ornish's book UNDO IT! on audio book each night and trying to implement the lifestyle advice from his research. Also, I am doing the workbook each day. Just this week, my brother was in the hospital for his hear - congestive heart failure (which killed our father) and atrial fibrillation. He is now determined to clean up his lifestyle - no more drinking or smoking.

Good Luck on your Great Struggle whatever it may be!

wrightj45@yahoo.com