Tv fitness/health program

Transform

Need your help here folks,

I think there is a real lack of decent shows on tv that focus on health, nutrition, fitness, wellbeing and wanted to know from the readers what they would like to see on the box?

I ask this question because i am sick of the whole - enter massively overweight person, gosh your diet is terrible, eat less move more and he/she drops some weight and tells the world that they are a new person.

what would you regularly watch to help keep you hooked to maintaining a health diet and regular exercise?

I feel there is excellent info here and would love to get this to a bigger level.

ali.c

I dont watch tv (no channels lol), but i would like to see a program which states that getting and staying in decent shape is not easy, its hard work. Fair enough if your obese small changes will make a difference but for the standard person it needs to go a bit further.
There is so much garbage in the media about fitness and weightloss, i would like a program that calls out the mags and companies that promote such crap and provides decent eduaction on nutrition and fitness.

And id watch it if i had a tv!!

t-ha

Nice topic Transform, & I think the same.

I think one format that would be interesting to see would be to have a bunch of people, maybe 10 or more, all with different health and fitness goals, and to follow them around for a period (say 10 weeks or however long a tv season is) and see how they progress. The presenter, who could also be, oh I don't know - someone who works as a personal trainer, could come in periodically and introduce dietary or exercise ideas for each of them based on what they're trying to achieve? At the end the presenter could recap on some of the take-home points covered regarding each case that might be of interest to the viewers?

For example you could have one athlete training for a marathon, one classic skinny guy trying to bulk, an overweight man & an overweight woman trying to battle the bulge, an older person with medical obsticles to exercising, a rugby player, an overweight child with a diabetes risk, someone recovering from an ED, a natural bodybuilder in contest prep while simultaneously trying to come to terms with his homosexuality (Hey you know it's good TV! ) etc. and just switch back and forth between a couple of them in each show and document their progress or lack of over the previous 2 weeks.

That way the viewers would become attached to the individual journeys of the different characters as they progress, rather than being introduced to a new slob every programme. Also, the idea of showing people who are actually already fit & healthy and showing them in training would be a fairly novel aspect.

Pherekydes

Wouldn't it be good to hear the Minister for Health and Children talking about the dangers of obesity?

7 P.M. on Monday on RTE 1. 30 minutes. Herself in lycra on some piece of gym exercise equipment, being made to work hard by Transform.

Now that would be a ratings' winner...







P.S. Note the absence of smilies.

Sleepy

Only cos there's no puking smiley Slow coach :P

I think t-ha's format would keep me interested for a while but what I'd really like to see is more along the lines of something ali.c mentioned: calling out the magazine industry for the nonsense they sell labeled as dietary advice. The best bit about this is that you're probably ideally positioned to do this Transform.

Bring on some of your celebrity clients, possibly the one who won a recent style award and let the girls of this country who are afraid of anything other than pink dumbbells see what weight-lifting does to a woman's body as opposed to their misguided notions of being turned into hairy butch behemoths.

An interesting format (though one that has morality implications) might be to have one person go the 'magazine' route to 'weight loss' while having a second do things properly. The person doing things the wrong way would really need to have a good support system for after the show though.

Leon11

I would love to see a Jamie Oliver style TV show a la "School Dinners" whereby someone picks out 2-3 community/public schools where there is little focus on exercise and how it can be "transformed" as such.

Also I would love if a fitness website could be spun off this board "not for profit" of course, where it is promoted nationally as the place to meet others to train with, have fitness diaries of athletes, BB's, PL's, eating plans etc.

Angle in healthy eating, dietary advice, sample eating plans for say 1600 cals, 1800 cals, 2000 cals up in increments of 200 cals.

Money taken in (through web advertising, think gyms advertising special offers on site, details of sporting events) could be used to supply say disadvantaged areas ie sports teams etc with new equipment, educate say team managers on basic nutrition etc.

A bit off topic though

hunnymonster

I would like to see a more sceintific approach. The classic programme gets abnormally obese people eating better and exercising but never really explains why. Not sure you can make science interesting to the masses but it's what I would watch. That and half naked, well built men "deomonstrating"

Scuba_Scoper

A more extreme version of "How Long Will You Live". I would watch that.
But seeing people in pain and anguish would have to be an integral part of the show to keep the masses tuned in. Science would have to take a back seat. A good auld vom after a workout sort of thing.

BigBrother style monitoring and training regimes frim hell.

Think the Nanny on 'roids.

Sleepy

I'd sign up for that!

Kinetic^

There's something like this being shown on Sky Travel afaik.........when I see the ad again I'll let ye know.

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

Reyman

Excellent idea Transform! And you're the man for it, because you know what you're at and you have plenty of enthusiasm

My only reservation is that TV audiences seem to be very fickle i.e. they don't read and certainly don't pay attention to anything that's difficult. It could be hard to keep their attention with a serious programme.

That could be why there's so much junk on with fat people losing 10 stone at the flick of a switch.

mack1

agree with a lot of the above - hunnymonster, ali.c etc.

I like the idea of offering real advice based on science - showing that education and hard work is what will get results - not short-cuts and fad diets.

As people have mentioned, a lot of "health/fitness" shows have hugely obese people who lose a tonne after cutting down the 17 mars bars for breakfast etc - but that is little help for people (like the ones on here) that do put effort into there diet and fitness.

So, a show that covers:
- Education for both diet and exercise
- debunks some magazine myths (eg. a frozen low fat meal for dinner and 30 hrs on the cardio machine everyday to get you skinny for summer etc etc)
- that shows that this is not a quick fix, fad based thing, it takes work and dedication to get results, nothing in life that's worth having comes easy sorta thing!

thats my 2c anyway!