Well, there’s an hour of my life I won’t get back. And I had to watch it in real time, as I was tivo’ing My Name Is Earl. Bravo’s Great Things About Being … Fat (part of a series that also includes great things about being 30, queer, and blond; yikes) just wasn’t great at all.

Here are the top 10 “great” things about being fat:

1. It’s not over until you say so
2. Oprah
3. Santa Claus
4. You are hilarious
5. It makes you a better actor
6. Hot chicks dig you
7. missed this one
8. You’re historically hot
9. No one screws with you in prison
10. The tuba

There are another ten, but they are just as lame, if not more so.

Speaking of stupid shows, there’s also The Biggest Loser. I must admit that this one’s on the regular rotation, because at least it’s about real people struggling (and not about fat comedians commenting about fat people on TV…see Bravo above).

I still am having trouble with how much weight they are losing. I cannot find anything that suggests that the program is time-compressed (like Celebrity Fit Club was). So it sounds like those 10 and 17 lb weight losses are happening in 7 days. I suppose that’s technically possible since they are stuck at the ranch, and perhaps they are just working their brains out.

But a 17lb weight loss means roughly 60K of net calories burned (let’s say for the sake of argument that what they eat takes care of their normal metabolic needs). That means they need to be doing about 8,500 calories worth of exercise a day.

Since a 150lb person burns 100 calories walking a mile, the tubby guys there (most of whom are still in the 300+ range) would probably burn 250 calories per mile. So they’d need to do 34 miles of walking in their day to burn 8,500 calories.

Of course, they are probably working out at a higher intensity. But still. I just don’t get this math.

And am I the only one who thinks this show is bordering on being irresponsible? By hiding how these people are achieving such extreme weight loss, they run the risk of setting folks up for disappointment when they don’t come anywhere near that. And when you add in the fact that nearly every week someone is injured or on their way to the hospital because of how they’ve been pushed in various exercise challenges, it really sounds like NBC is eager to appeal to all our lizard brains.

Too bad I’m caving to the temptation.