Wednesday November 18, 2009
On your marks
By S. INDRAMALAR
Catch Asia’s biggest losers in action.
AFTER months of promotions, The Biggest Loser Asia – the Asian edition of the phenomenally successful reality TV series is set to air on Nov 24 on the Hallmark channel.
In the United States, the show (which is into it’s eighth season now) has spawned top-selling DVDs, fitness equipment, health supplements, diet plans and books and even – can you believe it – a resort! Don’t believe me? Check out biggestloserresort.com. There is also a Biggest Loser Club which offers support and help for those who want to shed weight and don’t know where to start or what to do.
The series is aired in 90 countries worldwide (there are about 190 countries in the world – that’s almost half) and is franchised in 25 countries.
There is no doubt about it, the series is huge. And finally, after five years (the show first aired in 2004 in the United States) we now have the Asian version, for our increasingly overweight population.
Ready to lose: The Biggest Loser Asia trainers Kristy Curtis and Dave Nuku are hoping to change the lives of the contestants. Globally, World Health Organisation estimates that more than 1 million adults are overweight and at least 300 million of them are clinically obese. In the United States – dubbed the fat capital of the world – an annual report on obesity released by the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation revealed that about 2/3 of American adults are obese or overweight.
In Asia, the figures aren’t so high but they’re worrying all the same. In Malaysia, a study conducted by the National Health and Morbidity Survey III in 2006 revealed rather shocking results: that 43.3% of Malaysians are either overweight or obese and about one in six Malaysian adults above 30 years old have diabetes (an estimated 1.4 million in total).
Something needs to be done and though it’s “just a TV show”, it is perhaps fortuitous that The Biggest Loser Asia (TBLA) has come our way.
The format of TBLA closely follows the original series – participants are in isolation, they stay in a remote location with no contact with family or friends; they are divided into two teams (red and blue) and have to work out six hours a day and adhere to healthy meal plans and take part in challenges that may determine if they stay a week longer or not. At the end of each weekly episode, participants have to go for a weigh-in and the two participants with the lowest percentage of weight loss will be up for elimination, and be voted out by their peers. The last one standing – that is, the one who has lost the most weight – walks away with US$100,000 (RM350,000) and a car sponsored by Renault.
After a series of gruelling auditions (about 5,000 people from all over Asia auditioned for TBLA), the series kicks off with 30 contestants from Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Hong Kong, India, Thailand and the Philippines.
For the moment, the identities of the participants are a closely guarded secret. The identity of the two trainers who were cast to whip the contestants in shape, or rather, help them get healthy, is no secret as the teaser ads on TV feature the two – Dave Nuku and Kristy Curtis – introducing themselves and the show to viewers all over Asia.
At a media launch of TBLA recently, members of the press got the chance to grill the two about their experiences at camp so far (though the series only airs next Tuesday, training has been going on for about a month) and their views on weight loss and intense training programmes such as TBLA.
Whether naturally or a requirement of the producers, the two seem to fit nicely into the mould of tough-as-nails trainer Jillian Michaels (Kristy believes in tough love) and the significantly calmer Bob Harper (Dave’s disposition seems almost identical) of the US show.
“Yeah, Dave is definitely the ‘good cop’. I call his team the ‘tree huggers’ because whenever anyone from his team is having a bad day, he talks to them and takes them out to hug a tree! He’s all loving and gives them high fives all the time,” shared Kristy, the Group Fitness Manager for Fitness First in Australia where she teaches a multitude of classes all over Sydney. She added: “My team is definitely more aggressive. I am quite hard on them ... there’s more yelling, more screaming. If someone whinges, I make them get back on the treadmill!”
Despite their different approaches to training their overweight wards, both trainers take their jobs on TBLA very seriously.
“We encourage them to train right. When we started, we had to gauge their fitness levels to see what they could do and what they couldn’t. Some of them couldn’t even do one push-up in the beginning because of their physical make-up. We determine their training based on their fitness and endurance levels,” explains Dave, the regional fitness manager at Fitness First. Though a New Zealander, Dave has been based in Malaysia for several years.
The Biggest Loser is about dramatic weight loss and being responsible for enabling the contestants to achieve their weight loss goals is a daunting challenge. But, the progress of the contestants thus far has been very encouraging, shared Dave.
“At first there was a lot of pressure. Not just on me but also on them. But then, we began to see the kilos just shedding. I think that was very important because a lot of them don’t believe they can lose that much of weight but when they see it come off, they are inspired. I am inspired too and I think the The Biggest Loser Asia is going to be just as compelling as any other version,” he said.
Apart from the dramatic weight loss so far, the trainers also guarantee a lot of drama – not just for the competitors but for the trainers too.
“Everyday I wake up and I look at Dave and ask him, wonder what’s going to happen today? It is tough because we have to deal with different personalities. It’s like being in a pressure cooker ... all the ups and downs, they’re all missing their families and their relationships, their all working six hours a day, six days a week ... there’s always some drama. I tell Dave, there are three teams: the blue team, the red team and the trainer’s team,” said Kristy.
Days at The Biggest Loser Asia Camp – the location is secret but it’s somewhere in Malaysia – usually begin at 6am. The trainers wake up at 5am and the contestants have to be ready at 6am.
Shared Dave: “They have to train for six hours a day but it’s not six hours at a stretch. They get breaks and ...”
“They get breaks? You give your team breaks?” asked Kristy.
Though they’re competitive – “He’s Kiwi and I am Australian ... it stems from there,” remarked Kristy – the two confide in each other about the challenges they face day to day.
“I wouldn’t be doing my role justice if I didn’t want my team to win at the end of it all. I do. But we do support each other, confide in each other and bounce ideas off each other. We miss our families too and we talk to each other about our kids,” said Dave adding that they both do it because they hope to change lives.
Catch the premier of The Biggest Loser Asia on the Hallmark Channel (Astro channel 702) on Nov 24 at 9pm.
RSS
