[Jules]

Did anyone else see the special on last night on An unnamed Broacasting Company's channel? The were testing some ivy league psychology professor's theories out on volunteers.

One test involved 6 overweight people (5 women, 1 man). They all signed an agreement promising to certain terms as follows. At the start of this, they were each given skimpy bikinnis and a photographer took pictures of them posing in their bikinnis. Then, they had 2 months to lose 15 lbs. If they lose atleast 15 lbs, they get the pictures returned to them. If they fail to lose that weight, their pictures will be shown to America on National TV.

All the people stepped it up and worked really hard, some losing nearly 25 lbs. All but 1 person lost the weight. That lady only lost 13 lbs, but she decided she was proud of her body and said she didn't care if her pictures were shown. (Nevertheless, she was still pretty happy that despite the threat, they didn't actually show her bikinni pictures.) The professor was proudly saying that it was successfully motivating people. While it worked short term- I wonder how many went back to how they were before. It seemed to me that fear was not a great motivating factor to live with and I didn't think he (a smug little man) really proved his point well enough.

I also realized that people on the biggest loser already voluntarily show their stomachs on TV during weigh-ins. It annoyed me that the annoucer said "Move over biggest loser, we've got an even better motivator". Any thoughts on this?