Emotions ran high yesterday in the Biggest Loser house as the contestants faced their old selves and team building was top of the agenda.

Something Different

Instead of going to the Gym for their normal training session, all of the Biggest Loser contestants were told to get on the coach that was waiting for them outside. Dave said,

‘No one actually knew what was going on or where they were going so, we were all sitting there in wonderment!’

Sadie said,

‘People were speculating and most people thought it was an army type thing. You see trees and mud and you assume you’re going to be in the mud!’

They ended up at Sherwood Forest and as they pulled up in the coach, there was Richard and Angie! Angie welcomed them and asked if they were scared. They replied with a resounding ‘YES’!

Richard and Angie had arranged for them to do an assault course. Angie told them it was all about team work. Richard explained that they had two cannons to take round the assault course, one for the Blues and one for the Blacks. He told them that the winners would get bragging rights and the losers would have to get up at 5am the next morning to workout and then make breakfast for everyone!

They had to dismantle the cannons, take them round the assault course and then put them back together with all their bits at the end. The first team to kneel down and shout BANG were the winners.

Angie said later,

‘When I saw the assault course I have to say I was nervous. I really was! I thought there’s no way they’re going to cope with this. I had a go on a few things and thought it’s just not going to happen!’

Head to Head

It was the first time the teams had gone head to head on anything – crunch time!

Richard joined his team as there were only four of them but five in the Black team so they would have been at a disadvantage. One team started the assault course clockwise and the other started anti-clockwise. As they went round, if they got any of the exercises wrong they would incur a 10 second penalty. So, even if they finished first, if they had made lots of mistakes they would be added to their time at the end.

The Blue team were doing well and got to a part where they had to put all of the cannon pieces and one member of the team through a large tractor tyre. Michaela volunteered to go through the tyre even though she was worried she would be too heavy for them to lift! She had to keep still and trust that they wouldn’t drop her. They did a sterling job!

The Black team came across an obstacle called the Black Hole which was a pitch black bunker under the ground that they had to crawl through on their tummies. Maria is claustrophobic but, luckily only three people from each team had to go through so she managed to avoid that obstacle!

Sadie was the first person in her team to get any penalty points. Desperate to do the course quickly, she went too fast on the ‘mine field’ and put her foot to the ground. Oooops!

Neck and Neck

It was neck and neck as they came up to the halfway point – The Wall. Whichever team got there first had right of way and the other team had to stand down and wait for them to finish. The Black team got there first – just.

The Blue team managed to get over The Wall one by one, with their teammates helping them and giving them bunk ups. Richard couldn’t resist showing off as he ran towards The Wall and just flung himself over it with seemingly no effort!

Dave got a little over-enthusiastic at one point and managed to gain some penalty points for it. Eager to get across, he stepped onto the beam before Kevin had got off. So that was a 10 second penalty for the Black team.

Richard was really impressed with Michaela. He didn’t think she would cope well with getting dirty as the Farm Challenge proved that her and mud didn’t get on. But, she did - she got ‘down and dirty’ with the rest of her team to complete the assault course.

The Black team got to the finish line first but still had to get their cannon back into one piece. Just as the Blue team were coming to the end, they heard the BANG of the Black team’s cannon and knew they had won. But, there were still penalties to add to the finish times. The Blacks did the course in 23 minutes and 40 seconds, the Blues did it in 25 minutes and 55 seconds. The Black team had 18 penalties which is 180 seconds making their final time 26 minutes and 40 seconds. The Blue team had 14 penalties which is 140 seconds, making their time 28 minutes and 15 seconds. The Black team had won!

Michaela said,

‘The Black team were very smug that they had won but it’s Challenge day tomorrow so, maybe, we can get our own back!’

Smells Like Team Spirit!

The idea behind the assault course for Angie and Richard was to help bond the new teams together as well as giving them a fun workout. Angie said about her Black team,

‘They worked amazingly as a team. Fantastic! I think they are going to do brilliantly and it was a really, really good idea to bring them here because I saw very clearly, and they saw very clearly, that they’re a very strong team. They can rely on each other. They communicated beautifully and they were very driven to win,’

Richard said about his Blue team,

‘Even though my team lost today, I’m still proud of them because they showed great team spirit, great team bonding and I think it’s going to bode well for the future!’

Unusual Training Session

Training for the afternoon for both teams was to fill up a trailer with all the fallen branches and broken wood, all over the floor in the grounds of the house. Richard and Angie didn’t tell their teams why they were doing it, just that it was their training session for the afternoon. Sadie said,

‘As we were collecting the wood, I got a really good feeling about my team because I thought, well we are all helping each other out here. Some people, like Dave and Kevin, don’t necessarily spend that much time together but, here they are helping each other out!’

Both Richard and Angie used the session to have one to one chats with their teams to see how they were feeling about being split from their original team members. Angie asked Kevin how he was feeling being separated from Mark. He told her he was loving it and she was really surprised! Kevin said that although they were friends, he wanted to stand on his own two feet and prove that it wasn’t Mark carrying him, that he could do it on his own.

Angie thinks that Dave is really happy to have Kevin in his team because it gives him someone to push him. He said,

‘I’m quite pleased with the team we’ve got,’

He did go on to tell Angie that some of the team were scared of her – namely Maria and Carol. Angie said there was no need to be scared as long as people gave 100%. She wouldn’t tolerate anything less than that. She had a chat with Maria and said later,

‘She’s created this kind of monster in her head but, the fact is, if she does what I ask her to do there won’t be any problems,’

Richard’s team, equally puzzled with the task they were given had a different field to clear. Katey said,

‘When Richard asks you to do something, you don’t ask questions, you just do it!’

They were dragging the trailer round the field and filling it with the wood. Richard was sat in the trailer, letting them drag him along too and shouting, ‘Mush! Mush!’

He asked Katey if she was missing her mum. She said no. She was surprised that she wasn’t because she normally relies on her so much. Michaela admitted to Richard that when they announced the idea of the new teams, that her and Maria were seriously thinking of going home. But now, they both want to stay til the end so they got their heads together and decided to bear with it.

Jamie is happy in the Blue team because it means that Richard is still his trainer. He’s also pleased that Mark is in the team because he feels it gives him someone to chase making him push himself harder. Richard spoke to Mark and said that although he used to call him and Kevin his ‘heavy hitters’, Kevin was now the enemy, knowing how competitive Mark is. He got the reply from Mark that he was looking for when Mark said,

‘I can whip Kevin!’

Katey said later that they were all very intrigued to find out why they had been collecting the wood and piling it up in one place. All was to be revealed!

Unusual Challenge – Part Deux!

Angie and Richard called both of the teams together for a meeting in the kitchen. They were told they had five minutes to go to their rooms and find an object or a piece of clothing that reminded them of the old them. Then they took them to the fields were they had piled up the wood – obvious now isn’t it?

Kevin said,

‘I kind of knew what was coming. It was time to get rid of the old me! Obviously, the jigsaw was complete. The fire was very symbolic. It was another part of our learning curve,’

Richard told his team,

‘Congratulations! You’ve made it through to halfway through the Biggest Loser!’

Angie told her team,

‘That’s a real big landmark for you guys and I asked you to bring an item with you that would basically best represent the old you, the person you were before you came in here. And what I’d like you to do really is just take this opportunity to get rid of that on this fire and have a think about that old person. Basically who that person was and the fact that, who you are now and who you want to be and how you’re going to make sure that you don’t go back to that person,’

The idea was that they would put their objects and photographs on the fire to get rid of the old and bring in the new.

Burning

Kevin brought an old photograph of himself. He said,

‘I hate this photograph. I am bigger in this photograph. It makes me cringe every time I see it and I’m also burning the person that I was,’

Carol had a pair of ‘granny knickers’. She said she always has to wear them in the Summer because her thighs rub so much. She had also brought a size 26, dark blue blouse and said that was how she had lived her life for the last 20 years – in dark colours and big clothes for old-fashioned people. She got very emotional and said that she was never going to live her life like that again.

Dave brought a pair of track-suit bottoms because he lives his life in them. He said they hide his ‘ever-expanding stomach’. He didn’t wear normal trousers because his belly hung over the top of them all the time. Even Dave got emotional about his old self. Angie said,

‘I don’t really get that from Dave that often. He just takes care of business. So it was really nice to see that there is emotion in there driving him,’

Maria had a pair of trousers that she was wearing the day before she came into the house. She was embarrassed by how big they looked and said that when she put them on today they just fell to the floor.

Sadie brought a belt and she said it was the only belt she owned because she could never get one big enough to fit her. She said that it reminded her of being frustrated by being with her friends and not being able to do the same things they did – things girls her age normally take for granted. She said the last time she was the right weight for her height she was five!

Angie said that when Sadie held up the belt, she really felt for her. The belt was huge and that’s tough for a 21 year old. She said that it was heartbreaking to see someone have to buy a belt that big.

Kevin said later,

‘You kind of tend to forget when you’re in training sessions, what other people’s stories are. It gave us a little bit of an insight into each other and what we needed to do,’

Bonfire

Richard’s team were doing the same thing in another field. Mark brought a pair of combat trousers. He said that he wears this kind of thing all the time because they camouflage the way he looks. He said the new him was going to be proud of the way he looks and that he wouldn’t be wearing that kind of thing anymore.

Jamie had a picture of himself with his girlfriend. He said that she looked beautiful as always but that he didn’t look the best picture of health. He was smoking at the time and was very overweight. He said that, sometimes, when he is out with her he feels that people are looking at them and wondering why someone like her is with someone like him. He got very emotional when he was talking about it. He said that his girlfriend wanted to get married and have a family but that he had said he wouldn’t do that until he had lost the weight. Now that he is losing the weight, the main thing on his mind is to ask her to marry him and that this was the beginning of a new him.

Michaela said,

‘I’m sick of hiding behind baggy clothes and this is the tracksuit I entered into this house with. It’s a totally different person who wore this tracksuit to what I am now. Overweight all my life, always been unhappy. So this proves to me if I can get rid of this I can start with a new beginning and buy clothes that fit me a lot better,’

She said later,

‘If I was a lot slimmer I would prance about naked. Wouldn’t worry about it, go on a nudist beach and aim to be on page 3!’

Katey, barely able to get her words out through the sobs said that the jeans she had brought represented someone who had no confidence who, even on her birthday didn’t go out and celebrate. She said she never left her room and abused her body with food. She was never able to buy the fashionable clothes that she wanted and even sewed the legs of her jeans so she could make them into skinny jeans. She said,
‘I never thought I’d be happy with who I am and my body but I feel like I’ve got it under control. So I want to get rid of these jeans so that I can carry on building up my confidence and never, ever be that person I was before,’

Richard said later,

‘It was sad to hear Katey admitting to the group that she barely had a life, at times not even leaving her bedroom. That’s the heart wrenching thing, when she has so much potential!’

Mark felt that hearing the stories of his teammates had brought them closer together as a team. He said that they all had so much in common – the same problems, the same demons and the same goals.

Whoever decided to do the assault course and the bonfires knew what they were doing when it comes to team building eh? But, the Blue team have to get up early tomorrow and cook breakfast for everyone. Will they cope with the early start? And it’s Challenge day in the Biggest Loser house. Can the Blue team redeem themselves and win this Challenge?