1. Wheres my Hollywood Mansion? Contestants of the Biggest Loser reality fitness show are moved into a Hollywood Mansion for three months. It is undoubtedly a heck of a lot easier to maintain fitness focus when youre sequestered in a Mansion for 12-weeks. Plus the cash incentive is huge: the winner banks $250,000. Cash and isolation make it far easier to maintain a commitment to the transformation process. Participants are not bothered with any of lifes distractions: work, family, stress and dilemmas.

2. Beat the hell out of them -- Whoever dreamed up the training regimen for this torture-fest ought to be indicted as a war criminal. If US Army personnel subjected Guantanamo Bay terror prisoners to the forced labor insanity the Biggest Loser personal trainers do show participants they would be subject to court martial. One day the little female personal trainer made 400-pound men (miserably out of shape) run not walk not jog while carrying her on his back. Can you imagine the heart stress for a man who could generate a 90% age-related heart rate maximum walking to the mailbox and back? On the distaff side the metrosexual non-gender specific male personal trainer had his female fat babes run up the side of a mountain! To make matters worse, both PTs inflicted psychological torture by taunting there respective crews with clichd fitness platitudes. Oh the horror! Theyre damn lucky someone didnt keel over dead.

3. Then starve them -- After making the obese people work like political prisoners in a Soviet Gulag circa 1952, participants are fed next to nothing. 350-400 pound men were allotted 1500 calories per day. This works out to 3.75 calories per pound bodyweight. Again, the Red Cross and Amnesty International should be alerted. This savage combination of over-work in the gym and under-feeding after the fact causes a metabolic condition known as catabolism. Any 1st year medical student would know that combining sustained and intense physical effort with starvation-level calories is physiologically disastrous and dangerous. When the human body senses starvation primordial hardwire circuitry triggers and the body will preserve body fat at all costs. Cortisol is dumped into the bloodstream as a result of physical stress and a lack of nutrients. The body cannibalizes muscle tissue to cover caloric shortfall; the body literally eats its own muscle tissue in order to spare body fat. What a revolting development.

4. The winner was easily spotted from day 1 -- The deck was stacked. The ultimate winner was an athletic protegee; a guy whod wrestled for Iowa, Matt, was a national level athlete who had a shot at making the Olympic team. Hed allowed himself to get badly out of shape. Any athlete of this caliber has so much "muscle memory" that when I saw his credentials I knew he would be the ultimate winner: it was a foregone conclusion. At his athletic peak, weighing under 200, he was light years past the qualifications of show's "personal trainers." It was clear how superior an athlete he was when on one episode the prison guard female PT worked the men to exhaustion then challenged them to a sprint: how delicious a moment when the exhausted 340-pound fat man whipped her soundly. She was shocked speechless. Wrestlers know all about deprivation and anyone who wrestled at that level has the athletic work ethic of a machine. Give a guy like that 20 weeks to beat himself into shape, wave $250,000 in front of his face and watch the "normal" people get trampled in his path. If they were serious they should have chosen untrained people of various ages and not allowed out-of-shape athletic wonders to compete. Plus it didnt hurt his weight loss regimen that he simultaneously kicked the booze.

5. Twenty weeks is a long time -- Twelve weeks were spent isolated at the Mansion and eight weeks were spent at home. Is there any greater training and dietary motivation being in the final three with a quarter of a million bucks on the line? Normal obese people living regular lives are not provided that type of motivation. It's a lot harder to maintain focus and drive when no one is watching, when no one cares (other than concerned friends and relatives) and there is zero financial incentive. With its dubious methodology its doubtful any aspect of the Biggest Loser approach has the slightest applicability to real people leading real lives.

6. Not to cast stones without offer alternatives -- Purposefully Primitive Obesity solutions provides real results for real people leading regular lives.

Marty Gallagher

WHO IS MARTY GALLAGHER?

Writer & Author Published articles

* Washington Post.com: 232 weekly and bi-weekly columns

* Muscle & Fitness, Flex: 54 feature and training articles

* Powerlifting USA : 34 articles on training & personalities

* Muscle Media: 14 articles including the 2003 training edition

* Parrillo Performance Press: 84 feature articles and interviews, co-editor

* Milo Magazine: 10 articles on training and athlete profiles

* Strength Review: 26 articles on all aspects of athletic training

Joe Weider called Gallagher's book, Coan: The Man, The Myth, The Method ?the best book on Powerlifting ever written.? Athlete

DCAAU Senior Men's weightlifting champion, National Junior Olympic weightlifting champion, national junior Olympic weightlifting record holder, seven-time national master powerlifting champion, five-time world master powerlifting champion, runner-up and third place winner IPF world masters championships.

Coach

* Black's Gym ? coach (along with Bob Fortenbaugh) for five time national powerlifting team champions, twice runner-up national powerlifting team champions

* United States of America ? co-coach, 1991 world powerlifting team champions

Marty Gallagher lives in a small powerlifting village in south central Pensylvania at the foot of the Catoctin Mountains.

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