Nine to cut the Excess

It’s of no grand surprise that Nine/WIN are looking to chop the ordinary ‘Excess Baggage’, the new celebrity weight-loss show up against Ten/Southern Cross’s Biggest Loser.

Although the show was flogged mercilessly during the summer, it sank dismally after one week.  Most media pundits are stunned by just how poorly the show rated towards the end of the week.  All I can offer is this. 

Weight loss is a common goal shared by all of us.  We want to be fitter, healthier and feel better about ourselves.  I find The Biggest Loser can sometimes show this fight better than others, but we are all aware if we had dieticians, personal trainers, psychologists and motivators around us 24/7 (and the chance not to work for three months) we’d probably be shedding the kilos too.  Excess Baggage on the other hand seems to say ‘look, these celebrities put on weight too’ and try to avoid being condescending while saying it. Their attempts seem to fail in that department.

Surely we’re past the ‘Geez they’re fat’ mocking of the celebrity world, and I think Excess Baggage may have forgotten that.  I genuinely liked seeing people like Magda Subanski and Hayley Lewis prove to the world they can lose the weight and keep it off, but they weren’t paraded like circus animals to do it.  Weight loss is not a race or a challenge, it’s a goal to make ourselves healthier.  And with a growing obesity crisis afflicting Australia, the more positive we see in this, the better.