011 – Slimpossible Season 3

I was pleased to catch the unveiling of the final seventeen contestants of Season 3 of Citizen TV’s Slimpossible. Not surprisingly, the ladies were weighty! Sadly, a few were quite young – one was even 18! There was a 120kg mother of two and another mother of six who said she had been told that unless she lost weight, she would not live more than two years more. She weighed 142kg.

At some point, I wanted to know approximately how much weight was being borne by whatever the ladies were siting on. I had been writing down their weights as they stepped on the weighing scale on the studio. So I calculated their average weight, and it came to 108kg. Let’s contemplate that for a few moments. 108kg. Per person. And this was an average, meaning that for the one who weighed 90.5 kilos, others had to carry her share of the 17 or so kilos between her and the average. At the point I finished my initial calculation, there were 14 ladies who had weighed in. Two more came in, weighing 105 and 111 kilos respectively, so the average weight stayed neatly the same.

Then came Naomi. You could see that she was too wide for her height. I actually thought, these are the people who change survey results. The figures were going to be altered. Mathematical figures, that is. Well, hopefully the bodies of the contestants as well, but not right away. Naomi said she had been trying to lose weight because of various problems. She was asked, like the ladies before her, to step on the weighing scale. The figures on the screen counted. 96, 99, 103, 107… It finally stopped at a whopping 158 kilos. Let us put that in some perspective. The sixteen ladies before, averaged 108kilos. Sixteen ladies, remember. Naomi came in, and, mathematically speaking, it is like she gave 3 kilos to each of the sixteen ladies  before her, telling them “Here, 108 kilos is not enough, take 3 more,” and then remained with 3 kilos for herself. She single-handedly changed the average weight of the group of seventeen to 111kilos. Good thing she was here to lose weight. I expect to see more of her around. Well, less and less of her. Ok, both more and less of her.