by David Smith

Created on: November 29, 2009

NBC's "The Biggest Loser" has been a mainstay television show in my house ever since we first discovered it in season three. That year, Matt won the show and took home the prize of $250,000.00 while Pete took "second place", so to speak, winning the at home challenge by losing the most weight among the eliminated players. He took home a check of $100,000.00. However, now that I have given you a glimpse of the show, what is it really about?

The biggest loser is a program that takes morbidly obese people and teaches them how to eat a healthy diet and survive grueling workouts to achieve a healthy body and ultimately maintain it. We have seen people come to the "Ranch", where the show if filmed, weighing over 400 pounds and come back at the finale weighing less than 200 pounds. The greatest transformation occurred in season five when Eric, a New Yorker weighing 407 pounds lost 214 pounds, weighing a svelte 193 to win the game. However, he is yet to be a success story as he was just interviewed in a "then and now" episode and has gained back 175 pounds.

The people responsible for the show's success, without doubt, are the contestants. However, the personal trainers employed by the show, Jillian Michaels and Bob Harper, are also favorites of the viewers of the show. The interaction that these two have with the contestants can be everything from yelling and fussing at them in the gym to comforting and holding them as they finally break through the facades and determine what the real problem is that is causing their destructive behavior.

The root of the show is to get contestants to lose weight. They do this through teaching them proper diet and exercise practices, challenges that include them being more physical than they have ever been, and weigh ins each and every week. When the contestants weigh in, the two people with the lowest percentage of weight loss (because using actual pounds lost would give the extremely large people a decided advantage) go to the elimination chamber where the other contestants vote one of them off. The dynamics of these eliminations can be easily changed, however, by one of the players winning "immunity" for the week in one of the challenges. This means that the player that won that challenge can actually gain weight and not be up for elimination. The voting process to get rid of people on the show can often be heart wrenching, but sometimes it is very easy as the player being eliminated is not well liked in the house. Most of these "easy" eliminations are when the season first starts and there have not been many friendships or alliances in the house.

After nine seasons, The Biggest Loser shows no signs of slowing down, much less stopping. As the show goes on, though, the contestants just keep getting bigger and bigger. We have had one contestant show up weighing 469 pounds, officially the biggest contestant on the biggest loser, which goes without saying that she is the biggest woman. This would be Shay from season nine. The best part of the show, for me, is when a player is eliminated, they offer a chance to see what the eliminated player looks like now. Sometimes we get a view of a very thin person, but we have also seen characters that are struggling. It just lets the public know that the people they have come to either love or hate are going to be alright.

With all of this happening on every episode, I will continue to watch the show as long as it is on the air.

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