The Biggest Loser has come under fire from the usual ill-informed media pundits arguing that the contestants are “too large” and the training “too intense” for them to handle.

Quite how people who are barely competent at their own profession – journalism – can consider themselves to be experts in a wholly seperate field is a mystery.

For more on what sparked this latest media blitz you’ll have to read the rest of this article – it does contain a fairly big spoiler for the show, so you have been warned!

From The Herald Sun comes this:

THE Biggest Loser has copped a barrage of criticism since it was revealed two weeks ago that a contestant was forced to quit after a health scare.

Jules Condon, 34, and a mother of three, who weighed 126.5kg at the start of the show, had been taken to hospital twice since filming began on the Channel 10 weight-loss show.”Through ongoing discussions between Jules, the producers and the medical team, the over-cautious decision was made for Jules to exit the program,” a Ten spokeswoman said at the time.

Now, there’s no question in my mind, or I suspect anyone else’s, that the training regimes at the Big House are pretty intense. Bob and Jillian work their respective teams very hard, both because it is a competition and because it’s an effective way to lose weight and gain fitness.

And we’re not talking about two pretty things they pulled in off the street here – Bob and Jillian are both professionals who have been doing this for a good many years before they ever signed on for The Biggest Loser. The show even has medical professionals available should anyone get pushed a little too far, or for the inevitable misadventures that do occur from time to time.

And Jules, at a mere 126kg, is hardly the largest girl they’ve had on the show, and a very long way off being the largest person, period. So even with the presumption of it being dangerous for particularly large people to participate in The Biggest Loser, it’s not reasonable to assume that someone who is “only” 126kg would present such a problem.

Furthermore, this ought to be kept in perspective: many or most of these people are morbidly obese when they join the show. That means they are already at an incredibly high risk when it comes to a staggering number of afflictions. If The Biggest Loser did not offer to intervene and try to get them to a healthier state, they’re just as likely to find themselves in very serious medical trouble anyway.

Now, obviously, Jules is a good example for the people behind the scenes of how things can go wrong, even when every effort is being made. But to suggest that they could have predicted such a problem ahead of time and that such problems are somehow reason to stop the entire program? It’s preposterous. These people need help.

Perhaps the clearest evidence of how desperate some of them are is that Jules wasn’t just taken to hospital, she was taken there twice. That means that after the first scare, she agreed to return and continue training.

Unless you’re suggesting deliberate negligence, maybe you ought to lay off them. The media doesn’t exactly have a great track record when it comes to dieting and weightloss, given the massive number of “fad diets” that don’t work, yet get recycled endlessly by assorted organisations.

At least The Biggest Loser encourages people to lose weight and get fit in a healthy fashion. It’s inevitable that there’ll be the occasional bump in the road.