Reality television has taken programming by storm the past few years. With the introduction of the first few reality shows ' featuring real people in everyday situations, interest has grown tremendously. And reality television is not just featured in America, but all around the world. For some reason, people love seeing how strangers interact with each other when forced to live in the same house, search for a special prize, receive a recording contract, win money or compete against each other in unknown situations. As the popularity for reality television has grown, so have the different situations of those shows. Several reality series have taken on the focus of weight loss or challenging people to get healthier. The most popular of the reality shows focusing on weight loss by far is The Biggest Loser. The Biggest Loser brings people from all over the country and challenges them to take control of their health and weight loss by placing them into teams and assigning each team a personal trainer. The Biggest Loser shows viewers the difficulties of losing weight, which has become a widespread problem in our society.
The contestants are placed into teams at the beginning of the show, and have an initial weigh in. Then throughout the week, there are challenges between the teams and the winning team usually gets some sort of prize. On The Biggest Loser, everything begins and ends with the weekly weigh-ins. The team that loses the weigh in has to choose someone to eliminate that week. There is usually some immunity even for the eliminating team. The person that has the highest total percentage of weight loss for the team that loses the weigh-in, would not be eligible for elimination. The great part about this show is that the contestants are isolated from the rest of the world. Their meals are custom and they spend an incredible amount of time working out. Several people lose over 100 lbs. while staying at The Biggest Loser Ranch.
Another neat thing is that at the end of the show where someone is eliminated, there is a small snippet showing them 'now' and allowing viewers to see how much weight they continued to lose after leaving the ranch. Because these shows are filmed in advance, there is always a chunk of time between what's taken place previously and what the contestants are doing in real time. The greatest part about the biggest loser is not only that one contestant wins $250,000 for losing the highest percentage of weight, but also that each contestant has had a chance to change their life. Since the contestants are isolated, they lose large amounts of weight in a very short time. The eliminated contestants have a chance to come back during the finale and do their final weigh-in as well. The Biggest Loser among those that were eliminated wins a prize of $100,000. That equates to quite a payoff for losing excess weight and getting healthy.