Sapulpa police officer David Jones is a contestant on season 14 of The Biggest Loser. Each week, he will send us his thoughts after Monday's episode.
David is still on the show. His starting weight was 307 pounds.
Images from the show can be seen in our photo gallery at http://bit.ly/tbl14
January 15, 2012
Last week on the Biggest Loser we saw Nathan go home, but also saw him start out his new life in a big way, by becoming engaged!
But that put the White Team down to two players, and Jillian’s team has a big task ahead.
The start of the week saw the cast in a new place on the Ranch; a room outfitted with television, video games, not so comfortable bean bag chairs, and……snacks. All kinds, and it seemed as though everyone was able to locate their favorite temptation in that room.
We were, as Jillian put it, “surrounded by the enemy.”
The site was the location of our first pop challenge. It was a quiz, and the topic was childhood obesity. The penalty for the losing team on this challenge was to have to stay in this room for 4 ½ hours each day for the rest of the week, surrounded by all these temptations, and with nothing to do, and NO working out while in that room.
We were all unprepared for the challenge, as we were just as ignorant of the information as many Americans are about the epidemic of childhood obesity. One of the questions that surprised me was “Of the parents of obese children, what percentage think their children are normal weight or underweight?” The answer was 75%. We didn’t get close with the answer, and the truth still boggles my mind. The Red Team came up with the answer and scored enough points to stay safe from the penalty……rats.
The last question was now down to the White Team against the Blue, and each of my team members were all over the place on a possible answer. In the end the White Team came closest to the right answer, and the Blue Team was sentenced to obesity hell. Oh crap, Bob is going to hate this.
Back in the room, the clock started on that first day of the week. While no one was seriously tempted to eat anything in there (though Jeff did say that on the last day he was going to lick a cookie on the way out), Alex made sure some of that stuff was beyond temptation by pouring orange juice over everything.
While the Blue Team wasted all those workout hours sitting around doing nothing, the other teams got to work. We saw the White Team back with Jillian. While Danni was getting into gear and was beginning to understand what Jillian wanted from her, Pam continued to struggle. Jillian was on Pam pretty hard, but the system worked, and Pam has started to get into the groove. Francelina decided to spend some time with the White team, and she and Jillian got into the guts of Francelina’s trials, and we saw a breakthrough, as Francelina confronted some of her feelings about her father.
Meanwhile, the Red Team started their workout with Dolvett, and he was pretty happy with most of his team, but Cate seems to be weighed down by things inside. While she has the physicality to accomplish the things Dolvett requires, she is still battling her emotions. Dolvett spent a lot of time with her, to break down some of the walls she has put up.
That’s one of the big lessons learned here; we’re not addicted to food. There are a number of different reasons why each of turned to food, and became obese, and part of this journey is to find those root causes, and confront them. Cate started doing that with Dolvett during this workout, and it was good to see.
While all that was going on Dr. Joanna paid a visit to each of the child members of the team. While at each of their homes, their families got some eye-opening news about their kids, and how they manage their time, eating habits, and their overall health. The next step was to clear their homes of all the junk food that they had become accustomed to eating, with Biingo’s dad claiming ownership of the types of food brought into the home.
Later in the week was the reward challenge. It was much worse to watch in person than the viewer might imagine. During testing for the challenge, the gum that made up the pits was tested during the daytime, a sunny California afternoon with temps near 80 degrees. By the time we got to the carnival area, the temperatures were in the 40’s and the gum had solidified somewhat, and for the first time since my injury, I didn’t feel bad about missing out on a challenge! Everyone struggled, but the funny part was Jackson’s trip through one time where the gum was slinging, and he looked like an angry pink goo monster. It was an ungodly mess, though the cast laughs about it now. The winner was the Red Team, and the reward was a year’s worth of groceries for each player.
The last chance workout (and believe me those are the roughest of each week), started the day before weigh-in day, and the Red Team got after it, riding on back- to-back wins the last two weeks. They looked strong during their workout.
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