TV Review: ‘Shedding For the Wedding’ Turns Weight Loss Into Torture

CHICAGO – As mash-ups take off in the music world, it was only a matter of time before reality TV joined the party, taking two concepts that worked on their own and smashing them together in a fit of childlike glee. What do you get when you cross “The Biggest Loser” and “Bridezillas”? Welcome to “Shedding For the Wedding,” an abysmal new CW show that purports to offer human interest stories of overcoming weight problems but really just abuses them and calls it entertainment.

TV Rating: 1.0/5.0

As if planning for a wedding wasn’t stressful enough, “Shedding For the Wedding” gathers nine overweight couples and challenges them to lose the pounds before they walk down the aisle. The team with the most weight loss will be granted their dream wedding. Every week, the two teams with the least percentage of weight lost will fight to the death…just kidding…will fight in a competition called, of course, “Till Death Do Us Part,” with the winning team surviving to sweat other day. To encourage those sent home to keep losing weight, the team with the most weight loss all season, even after leaving the show, wins their dream honeymoon.

Shedding For the Wedding
Photo credit: The CW

“Shedding For the Wedding,” despite having a nauseatingly bad title, didn’t have to be a train wreck. Most of us have tried to lose weight before photographers snapped hundreds of pictures of us on our wedding day. We all want to look our best in our tuxedo or dress. That’s a common feeling that the producers of the show could have tapped into in order to allow the viewers to identify with the contestants. If they had found the humanity within these people outside of their sweet-as-pie introduction videos then we might have rooted them on. There was also a chance to teach the thousands in the same position how to trim their own weight before they say “I do.”

Shedding For the Wedding Photo credit: The CW

Instead of finding the humanity, the producers of “Shedding For the Wedding” were far-more-interested in abusing it out of their contestants. In just the first episode, these poor souls have to try on their wedding dress and tuxedos. Of course, they don’t fit at all. The gimmick could have been used to encourage the contestants to get to a point where they do fit but it’s just the start of a trend that feels abusive more than encouraging. It’s not long before a competition starts in which the couples are forced to keep their heart rate elevated for as long as possible. At certain points, the threshold is raised, going to nearly 400 beats per minute combined, and if you fall below it, you’re gone. Some couples keep their heart rates incredibly high for over an hour.

What is possibly learned here? As anyone who knows anything about weight loss will tell you, a lower heart rate burns fat. These people were just exhausting their already-overtaxed systems. And who finds it entertaining to watch people push themselves to the point that they start to gag. Is it really that hard to believe that we are getting closer and closer to the day a contestant dies on a show like this one? Ignoring the safety, I just don’t see the entertainment value in torture. There’s no exercise awareness in watching fat people dance until they nearly pass out. None.

And the show also wastes an opportunity for nutritional education. Like the trainers who are sketched as torturers more than educators, we meet a dietitian who then offers not one real piece of information for viewers to take away. That would distract from the abuse, which actually includes a cake-tasting in the second episode.

Like this season of “America’s Next Top Model,” “Shedding For the Wedding” feels sadistic, like it’s torturing its contestants and calling it entertainment. I’d love to see a show that teaches how to live a healthier life before your wedding day and beyond, but this is definitely not it.

By BRIAN TALLERICO Content Director HollywoodChicago.com brian@hollywoodchicago.com