Tag Archives: single leg dead lift

Dallas Buyers Club and The Biggest Loser

Today’s 44 really worked my hamstrings!!!  I did a single leg dead lift (starting with the right leg) followed by a right kick.  About the time my right leg was jelly, I switched to the left for a second set of 44!!

Yikes – I should have sucked in my stomach during this move – oops!!  I used 15 pound dumbbells for this move and I know that I will feel this in my hamstrings and butt later!! 

Still trying to juggle Michelle Bridges with other workouts.  I’m pulling out parts of some of the daily MB workouts to do in addition to other workouts and that is working well for me.  Today I did TaeBo – Extremely Ripped.  This is 60 minutes of fast pace TaeBo with weights for the 2nd half!!!  I started with 8 pound weights but because of the fast pace had to drop down to 5s!!

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The other day Chris and I watched this movie.  It wasn’t at all what either one of us were expecting!!!  I truly thought the premise of the movie was gambling – WRONG!!!

The basic premise is that Matthew McConaughey’s character has AIDS.  He is given 30 days to live – goes to Mexico finds a DR that is using medicine that hasn’t been FDA approved yet and 3 months later has improved.  He sneaks the drugs in and instead of selling the drugs/vitamins he sells monthly “memberships” to the Dallas Buyers Club with access to unlimited meds.

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Beyond the movie itself, I think what really got me was the drastic weight loss that McConaughey underwent for this role.  Depending on what source you read he lost approximately 38 pounds and went from being fit to a skeleton.

He is about 5’11” -6′ (again depending on the source) and went from 170ish pounds down closer to 130 for this movie.

Screen Shot 2014-02-19 at 6.47.49 AMActually, several of the actors in this movie underwent drastic weight loss to play their roles.

Here is my problem – actors do this kind of extreme weight loss (or weight gain) for roles fairly often and aren’t criticized by the media.  In fact, often they are praised and rewarded by nominations for awards.

However, for 2 weeks now, Rachel from the Biggest Loser Screen Shot 2014-02-19 at 7.05.35 AMhas been blasted by the media for her weight loss.  Whether she lost too much or not isn’t up to me to judge – I think that she played a game (because that is what The Biggest Loser really is all about) to win and she did just that.

I don’t think she looks any worse than McConaughey and he lost the weight much quicker than she did!!

I guess my whole point is that the extreme weight loss happens in lots of areas and while I don’t think it is ever healthy, I don’t understand why in one case the person is overly criticized and in the other case they are praised.

Have you seen The Dallas Buyers Club?  
Do you think that it is more acceptable  when actors go through extreme weight changes (very quickly) to play a role than when other people do the same thing?

Happy Wednesday!!

Kim