Sacrificing at the Alter of Self

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So this show the "Biggest Loser" was on TV last night. I wasn't watching, but just happend to walk in near the end of this episode. The volume was low, almost inaudible. I saw this man standing there crying. He was in front of a life-sized image of himself that was on a small pedistool. The image showed him before he lost over 100 lbs. Between flashes of this crying man and the cardboard image of his old self, the camera kept flashing back to the exercise coach. The coach was cheering him on, praising him for his hard work, his dedication, his discipline and so on.

With the volume low and these various TV images being scrolled across the screen, the scene looked eirily religous. It looked as if this (formally overweigh) man was standing at an alter of the self. The new self, the better, leaner, fitter and body-focused man that exudes the values of liberal self-creation, stood before the old self, the shameful self that the coach had helped him exercise (in the physical and spiritual sense) out of existence.

What once would have been an image of a transcendent God had now been replaced by an image of an Old Self. The shaman was now a coach. And the weeping, new Self had sacrificed fat (rather than animals) in the name of becoming anew through a series of physical and dietery regimes imposed on the self.