The Biggest Loser: Accepting Responsibility for Overeating and Poor Nutrition

This week’s episode of The Biggest Loser sent all of the contestants home for two weeks to see family and to test their willpower to abstain from eating junk food.

It was heartening to watch young Austin celebrate his 21st birthday with his friends at the bowling alley. For such a young guy, he’s realized what takes so many of us a lot longer.

His friends haven’t changed. The places they hang out and the food that’s served there is the same, too. But he’s different. And not just physically from losing 107 pounds so far – a credit to his hours working in the gym with personal trainers and eating healthy meals.

Still, his buddies offered him a heavy slab of birthday cheese cake.

“I can’t do it,” he said, refusing the dessert. “I really can’t.”

There’s hope for another contestant, too. Arthur is perhaps the unhealthiest contestant to ever be on the show. He started the season weighing 507 pounds.

During Tuesday night’s episode, his father apologized for causing any emotional distress when he divorced Arthur’s mom. The dad also acknowledged a drug and alcohol problem that ruined his marriage and kept him emotionally detached from Arthur.

Arthur was 15 at the time of the divorce.

“That is when I started putting on weight,” he said. At his heaviest, Arthur weighed 646 pounds.

But it’s not his dad’s fault, he said.

“I take full responsibility for all this,” he said, rubbing his belly.

And that is why Arthur may meet his weight-loss goals. Instead of using his painful childhood or the loss of his insurance business as an excuse for overeating and poor nutrition, Arthur admits he is ultimately responsible for his food choices.

It’s this level of accountability that helps people succeed with weight loss. Excuses allow us to keep engaging in poor eating habits because we never admit we’re doing something wrong – by choice.

Alice Warchol is a fitness instructor and freelance health writer.