No white flour. No white sugar. No butter. Those are the three really basic rules of eating at the Biggest Loser ranch, where contestants must prepare their own meals. “There’s no chef whipping up spa cuisine,” said Ed Brantley to the New York Times, in a story featuring the Biggest Loser diet.
Biggest Loser's Ed and Vicky (center) try healthy recipes prepared by fellow contestants.
If you watch the show regularly, you know that what the contestants eat isn’t as much a part of the storyline as is the drama unfolding on the ranch. This story really shows what it’s like for the contestants to immediately go from eating anything they want at home, primarily greasy and sweet foods, to extreme workouts and a healthy, clean diet. “The food that you’re used to, you can’t have, and the food you can have, you do not want,” Vicky Vilcan of Biggest Loser 6 told the Times.
The story also points out that an underlying cause of obesity in America is our habit of dining out. It’s in that setting that we cannot control the fat or calories in our food, where preparing meals at home gives us complete control. Since 1965, women have gone from spending 13 hours per week cooking meals to the meager 30 minutes per day now, and in that time the number of overweight women has more than doubled, to 65 percent. Biggest Loser cookbooks author Devin Alexander pointed out that “Twenty minutes in the kitchen will save you three hours on the StairMaster.”
We had a chance to visit with Bob Harper, the Biggest Loser blue team trainer, today just moments after his afternoon workout. It’s proof that he’s practicing what he preaches to the contestants of the show, now in its sixth season. “I love my job,” says Bob, who is as vocally passionate about the role he plays in helping these people regain their health as you see on the show. He says his mantra is “get healthy, get healthy, get healthy.”
Prior to his role on Biggest Loser, Bob was a celebrity trainer, where he explained he’d help already-fit people “turn their six packs into eight packs and get from a size four to a size two.” Biggest Loser very much changed the way he trains because he’s working with “everyday people,” and it is his responsibility to show them how to not only lose weight, but to do so in a healthy, well-rounded way.
This season, one of the people Bob is transforming is Vicky Vilcan. We brought her up specifically because she’s the only player we’ve ever seen cause such a ripple amongst Biggest Loser fans, who are a pretty devout group. Bob himself has called her “Shakespearean” and a “puppet-master,” but he explains that who you see on the show is exactly who the producers want you to see. “Vicky is the biggest fan of this show and loves reality TV, she played the game tough,” he remarks.
Last night, Biggest Loser said goodbye to its little Southern belle. Husband Phil is likely to miss that sweet drawl more than any other player, and as such, they’re going to have to deal with him now. Amy Parham’s parting words were that her teammates made a mistake by assuming her husband would be weaker with her out of the house, it would only make him stronger.
Phil and Amy are college sweethearts, they met at their freshman orientation and she says after the second date she was in love. Their devotion for one another was quite clear on the show, and the love pours over into their three boys. Upon arriving home, Amy says her kids have embraced the new lifestyle. Her middle son is 11 years old, and the only one she says has had trouble with his weight, even saying kids at school have made fun of him. Since she has returned home he’s lost 10 pounds, two pant sizes and even goes to the gym with Amy and Phil.
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