Well, you’d think I’d wait until Wednesday, when I’ll likely vent some more about NBC’s The Biggest Loser, but I can’t help myself. Last week, I complained that having the men versus the women was inherently unfair.

Thus I was interested to pick up the November Oprah magazine and find an article on this very subject (alas, not online). While the article quoted a number of experts who spouted some of the same stuff I mentioned, I was a bit disappointed that they had another expert get away with saying that using percentage weight loss — instead of pounds lost — somehow made this more fair.

So, I whipped out an Excel spreadsheet, and referred to a site that allows you to compute metabolic rate. I plugged in the numbers (slightly rounded) for four of the competitors to see what the calculator predicts for a weekly percentage weight loss. I compared both their lowest resting metabolism score (which is lower than sendentary) and their very active score.

Here are the results:

Now, you might be tempted to look at this and say that gee, there’s not really much difference between 1.35% and 1.56% (the average of “Pete” and “Jeff”). But if you do the math, 1.56 is actually 15% higher.

I’m sorry, but that’s a hell of an advantage. Especially as it probably underestimates the extra perk these guys get from the exercising they are doing…and that there are two more men than there are women (thus multiplying the effect). And of course, I used their (more or less) current weights; the advantage would have been bigger had I used their starting weights.

Of course, there are caveats. I based their weight loss on a diet of 1,200 cals/day for the women, and 1,600/day for the men. It’s possible that the men are eating more and this advantage isn’t really there. But I think it’s also possible the men aren’t eating that much more than the women and/or that their additional muscle mass tilts any exercise more than their diet hurts them.

Also, the site I used to compute the BMR uses a well-known equation (Harris-Benedict) to compute BMR. There is some question about how valid it is for obese people, but I thought it legit to use here, since 1) both groups are technically obese, and 2) I found an NIH citation claiming that in “patients with obesity class II and III the equation of Harris-Benedict predicted the average BMR with acceptable precision for clinical use.”

So, obviously this is just a back-of-the-envelope calculation. Doing it right would require knowing their initial body fat percentages (so you can calculate muscle mass) and knowing how much actual exercise they are doing along with how much they are eating. Of course, it would also require that you actually care about it being fair. NBC might well be enjoying some of the buzz — after all, don’t they say there is no negative publicity?