Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Biggest Loser Season Finale

So, the twins won it.

That was pretty exciting.

You could tell Julie really, really wanted it, and she did pretty well. But the fact is, it's just hard for women to lose more weight than men. Men are inherently more capable of losing weight simply because their bodies carry more muscle and aren't as naturally inclined to store fat. When a woman does win the Biggest Loser, it will be a huge deal. And she will probably be coached by Jillian.

Jillian did great this season, with all four finalists being from her team, and both winners being from her team. According to the stats on NBC.com, her team also lost the most weight total, by over 100 pounds. Her team lost 822 pounds, while Bob's blue team lost 711 pounds and Kim's red team lost 666 pounds (No, I won't make a "mark of the beast" joke about Kim, though I'm tempted).

I was really expecting that either Brian or Neil to win it for the folks who went home--they both looked great.

But no, the twins sailed through.

Now we've got the new season coming up, with the couples in lots of different colors. Not sure how that season is going to play out. I originally thought they were doing "couples" as a way of evening out that guy/girl divide that's always been a big deal in the finale, but looking at the teams for this season, they've got guy/guy teams and girl/girl teams, so that gives those guy/guy teams a huge advantage.

We'll see how it comes out.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

While I know scientifically (the whole muscle mass v. fat mass thing) that men are more inclined to lose weight than women, I can also say that how women think and go about their lives makes losing weight harder than men as well.

Yes, I'm about to make a broad generalization here, but hear me out.

When a man sets his mind on something 100%, he will work on it tirelessly and relentlessly until it's done. More than that, it is easier for a man (especially one with children) to justify to himself that what he is working on will benefit the family more in the long run - and therefore not feel quite as bad or guilty about not spending time with the kids or the wife. When there's a hefty chunk of change waiting for him if he loses more weight than everyone else, it's even easier to say "sorry family, but I'm going to spend all my free time working on this... I'll see you when it's done."

The second Bill made it to the final 4, I knew that he would win - not only because he's a man, but he was a 300+ man who had a family member at home working on doing the EXACT SAME THING. Not only did he have the physiological advantage, but he had the right mentality and a built in support system to keep him on his toes.

From the small clips played about their lives at home, you could tell immediately that each of the girls ran into obstacles that kept them from keeping their eye solely on the prize. For Julie, it was managing a family. For Hollie... well, I don't know what the heck that girl was thinking by moving out of town, and away from any form of support system. Unfortunately for Isabeau, she was just a big girl. Being as large as she was AND a female, I don't know if it would have even been possible for her to lose over 51% of her body weight in 6 months. The fact that she lost as much as she did AND become a personal trainer is just amazing.

Anyway, sorry for writing a post in your comments! I just watched the finale and felt like chiming in.

Erik said...

Don't apologize. Those are good insights.

I do think that Julie gave it her all. The girl pushed hard. But I agree that her life probably got in the way more than Bill's did.

But I think one of the toughest problems most of us face is not having somebody there with us to work through it with. The times when I've done the best have been when I was doing it with my brother or with my wife. It creates an accountability.

In this case, the twins had not just a mutual goal, but a mutual understanding of where they'd come from and the type of workouts they were used to doing together.

For everybody else, whatever support system they had set up wasn't used to the level of excersize they were used to. The twins knew what types of workouts they'd been doing to lose a ton of weight, and that was the level they were pushing each other to.

Thanks for sharing.