Sunday nights in front of the TV

My favorite Sunday evening TV show is Biggest Loser, I don’t know what season it is because I live in Samoa and I am just grateful that they show any season of the show at all.  I love it!  It encourages me as I am trying to achieve my goal of losing weight.  How could I not feel like I can lose weight when I see how people twice the size of me can learn to eat properly and exercise so hard that they are losing more weight than I can even dream of in one week! 

This week’s episode was more than about losing weight though.  The competition had split the teams into two rather than the five or so pairs.  The team who won the challenge got a prize of a video from home.   As soon as they won, Rebecca offered to give up her video for Dina on the opposing team who had been having a hard week.  Firstly that was really selfless of Rebecca.  But what I loved to see was the strength of Dina.  She had been fighting hard to win the challenge because she really wanted to see her family.  But Dina rejected the video because she knew that she did not work out hard enough for the prize.  She wanted to feel like she achieved the right to see her family, not just have it given to her.  I loved that she could see that she needed to earn her weight loss, not just have it given to her.

The second part that I admired was when coach Mo was sitting in his team’s room discussing who they would be eliminating.  Tracey had been a bit of a pain in the butt throughout the week splitting up teams who didn’t want to be separated.  So she was the first person to go on the chopping block.  Coach Mo was the team member who had the least amount of weight lost, so all he had to do was sit quietly and let Tracey dig herself in further with her fake tears and whining (yes I don’t really like her).  But he didn’t, he knew that playing the game that way would go against every inch of his being and it was not who he was as a person.  So he spoke up and said he was the one who had the least amount of weight that he was more or less the weakest link and that they should be sending him home.  While he did end up getting sent home, I admire Coach’s ability to stay true to himself as a person and know who he is.  I am having problems with this so I love that he was able to go on international television and show people that you can achieve your goals without risking your integrity.

So while I think that too much TV is not the best thing and that there are more productive things one could do with their time I am grateful that there are still quality shows that can help you learn and progress as a person while also being entertaining.