Suze Orman picks The Biggest Loser

The other night I had The Biggest Loser on the television and guess who showed up, Suze Orman.  At first I thought it would be great to see her working out and busting her ass like the other contestants but don’t get excited, that didn’t happen.  Before I tell you why she was on let me tell you what I like about the show.

Mental Change

I like The Biggest Loser not for the physical changes that happen on the show but for the mental changes.  I enjoy watching Jillian tear people down and rebuild them.  She helps them break down barriers.  If you watch her on the show she spends a lot of time helping people figure out why they are fat and what they need to do about.  She then drills into them why they want to change.  Last night was a great episode about the people on the show talking about how they might start out doing it for their family or their kids.  That was the motivation that got them to take the first step to change.  The most successful people on the show all talk about the realization that they had to do it for themselves to have long term success.  Great lesson!

Now back to Suze Orman…

I didn’t know this but Suze apparently picked last year’s winner of The Biggest Loser (I don’t know his name).  She studied the financials of each contestant and from that picked the winner last season.  She said one of the biggest drivers of her choice last year was that he had the highest FICO score of all the contestants.  Interesting.  He (again, I don’t know his name) came on the show last night and talked about how he had $45,000 in credit card debt before the show but from what he learned losing weight and tracking calories, he was able to bring these lessons over to his financial life as well.

Essentially Suze came on the show for a few minutes to make the connection between loosing weight and getting out of debt.  She definitely made it seem as though most, if not all, of the contestants struggle with their financials as much as their weight.  It makes sense if you think about it, I bet it costs more to be overweight.  You spend more in food and sooner or later, other ancillaries such as medical expenses.

The funny thing was Suze called out one of the contestants on the gray team and asked if he tracked his calories and he said, truthfully, no.  She then went on to say how up until that answer, he was her pick to win but because of the answer she ended up picking Sunshine (yes, I do think that’s her real name and she’s on the yellow team, kind of ironic).

Stress

Later on in the show, long after Suze left, they also did a great tie in with stress.  Bob, the other trainer on the show, was talking to a contestant about how much debt and obesity can add stress to people’s lives.  People get engulfed in eating and spending.  These two areas can, and unless you do something, will consume your life.  America’s biggest problem might be stress.  The two biggest roots of stress are probably, money and obesity.  The Biggest Loser teaches us that you need to get to the root of the problems in order to fix them.  The second steps is figuring out what is going to motivate you to change.

Truth be told, I’m not a huge Suze Orman fan.  I do, however, have respect for the ways in which she helps her target audience.  I think we have different target audiences so we have different financial views and that’s why I tend to disagree with some of her views.  Once in a while Suze Orman is right.

If you couldn’t tell I’m not a huge watcher of the The Biggest Loser either.  I couldn’t tell you who got voted off or how much weight people lost but I turn it on when I’m doing paperwork or computer work.  Then once in a while you can catch a great lesson.

Tagged as: Biggest Loser, debt, Suze Orman, weight loss