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‘The Biggest Loser’: The game’s most shocking weigh-in ever

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You know how it always seems like the voice-over guy for ‘The Biggest Loser’ is always promising the most amazing this, or saying stuff like, ‘You won’t believe what happens next.’

Well, he wasn’t exaggerating tonight. This was indeed the game’s ‘most shocking weigh-in ever.’

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But before we get to that:

The contestants on this season of ‘The Biggest Loser’ are arguably the closest-knit crop ever, but it all started unraveling tonight. It started with Filipe, who was sent reeling when he learned that Mike and Ron conspired to get rid of him during last week’s elimination: ‘Whatever alliances there was in the house doesn’t exist anymore,’ Filipe said.

That storyline was overshadowed, however, when contestants sent home at the beginning of the season had the opportunity to earn their way back onto the ranch. The real surprise, though, was that Nicole handily won this mini-competition by losing a jaw-dropping 87 pounds on her own. (Compare that to the 100 pounds that Kristin and Tara lost in the same period -- only they had the advantage of being at the ranch.) What’s more, Nicole’s at-home weight loss is second only to Tara’s, who is currently a front-runner to win this thing.

If this season’s goal was to determine whether contestants could lose weight on their own, at home, Nicole’s weight loss answered with a resounding ‘yes, you can.’

As might be expected, Nicole’s arrival was an immediate threat to everyone else at the ranch. Perhaps the most frightened: Tara, who was sent into a manic tailspin and in a rare moment of weakness began wondering whether she was destined to go home and regain all the weight: ‘I just want to change, I want to truly, truly change ... do I have enough [time left at the ranch] to change now?’

Ali and Michelle, the back-to-back winners of the last two seasons, also made surprise reappearances to fill in for host Alison Sweeney, who gave birth to a baby girl but nonetheless still managed to make it back in time for the weigh-in and elimination.

Ron suffered a health scare: internal bleeding. Amazingly, he was allowed to return to the ranch and seemed to be doing well. It was not a surprise that Ron ended up gaining three pounds during the course of all this and fell below the yellow line.

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But who ended up alongside him was indeed a shock.

Nicole gained five pounds.

Nicole may have had bragging rights getting back into the house, but she appeared to take her time at the ranch seriously, working out at the gym at 11 one night and out for a jog the following morning at 7:30. (This is in addition to the grueling workouts meted out by Bob and Jillian.) So how in the world did she gain five pounds?

No one could explain it, least of all Nicole. The best she could do was blame it on stress, and the disruption of an at-home fitness regimen that was apparently working for her.

It was no surprise that Nicole was sent home at the elimination -- even with the weight gain, she was still too much of a threat to keep around. How many more times, though, can Ron fall below the yellow line and still stick around?

Too bad Nicole didn’t stick around longer to show us what she was capable of. What do you think caused her weight gain? Do you think this will fuel her ambition to continue working out and shoot for the at-home prize? (And how sad was it to see that David has only lost 46 pounds. Hopefully, this all will be a much-needed wake-up call for him.)

-- Rene Lynch

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