By Buzz Byrne
We are down to the last seven contestants. Last week Neil threw down the gauntlet in the elimination room, staking his claim to being the best and the biggest threat left in the game. “Come and get me,” he basically told everyone. Julie took a bit of an exception to his bravado. I take exception to the complaining Julie still being in this game when the much more deserving Kae was sent home last week. But then I’m a sore sport, not a big loser.
The reward for this week’s challenge was a week’s vacation at Andre Agassi’s spa…in Idaho. I’m not sure a trip to Idaho is supposed to make the competitors play harder or race to throw the game. Do you really want to send the formerly obese to a place that celebrates the starchy spud?
The actual challenge was decided by America. The choices were between a race up seventy four flights of stairs, a never ending jump rope, hugging a pole over water and a never ending escalator. I was holding out for waterboarding or a seventy two hour uninterrupted viewing marathon of the O’REILLY FACTOR, but alas America chose hugging a pole. The down side is that if some other country calls us a bunch of “Pole Huggers” we have no response. We can’t even deny it. We voted for it.
Bill hugged the pole longest. For the sake of keeping my job, I’m going to stop talking about pole hugging.
To celebrate, the players all jumped in the pool for a quick swim. Nicole dove into the shallow end. Nicole punched out her two front teeth. I think Nicole has sweated off a few kilos of gray matter over the three months of the show. She had to have root canal and Trainer Bob was freaking out that she was going to miss a day of training.
Bryan was having issues with his diet. Being the last member of Team Red, he got all of Trainer Kim’s attention. He confessed to marinating his meat in soy sauce. This is a big deal. Oh, the sodium! His meat was going to have to go plain from here on out.
Then the whole crew went to meet with Dr, Huizenga who acted like the great Oz. He gave each of them a special prize of information to encourage them in the final push. Neil lost three and a half water tubs worth of body fat so far. Julie lost twelve inches off her waist. Isabeau, pre-diabetic at the start of the show now has the best insulin production. Bill is off his blood pressure medication. Bryan’s cholesterol dropped over a hundred points. Nicole lost the most amount of fat and Hollie has lost forty percent of the area of her hips.
Everyone pushed during the last chance workout but Bob was determined to break Neil. He didn’t let that happened. He was pursuing his goal of getting under three hundred pounds and had a shot this week. Trainer Jillian meanwhile is working over Bill who she calls, “Nuts.” That’s like me calling someone witty and handsome.
When it comes to the weigh in Hollie and Bryan found themselves under the yellow line and therefore up for elimination. Neil made it under three bills.
It was pretty clear Bryan was the one going home. As he came to grips with this, he also came to the unmistakable conclusion that he had a lot to be proud of in himself. What this moment showed was the ugliness that floats just below the surface of the feel-good makeover show. These people are used to living a life full of failure and self loathing. Bryan broke down at being proud of himself. The prospect of living life, of achieving and winning is truly frightening.
He did get voted out. Since his involvement with the show he went from 346 pounds to 228. Good job, Bryan. You got your life back. Now go live it.