Why The Biggest Loser is the Biggest Stinker
You"d probably have to be from another planet not to know what The Biggest Loser is all about. A bunch of seriously obese men and women are launched into extreme food deprivation, and exercise regimes so harsh that, in the words of Ed Martin on MediaVillage.com "Half of these people looked like they were going to have heart attacks, the other half like they were on the verge of strokes".
But with overweight and obesity rates rising, and death rates caused by being fat and/or inactive going through the roof, isn"t this show at least doing something about it?
The problem is that while the show claims it"s about healthy weight loss, what it actually demonstrates is the most dangerous method with the highest failure rate, damaging not only the participants, but anyone who is led to believe this is what weight loss is about.
The faster loser is the fastest fat regainer
In a world where human fatties have governments and health scientists apoplectic with worry, and rightfully so, it"s not surprising that there"s been a massive amount of research on the effectiveness of various approaches to weight loss.
All around the world, in every civilised country where research has been undertaken, it has been thoroughly demonstrated that dieting and exercise programs not only don"t work, but they make people fatter!
Over 95% of people who go on a diet put the weight back (and more) within 3 years, and over 98% of people who lose weight through an exercise program put the weight back on (and more) within 1 year!
Matt Hoover, winner of The Biggest Loser in 2005, has had a growing girth ever since. By 2006 he had really bulked up, and now in 2007 there he is complete with big double chin. To Matt's enormous credit, even he says that people should definitely not try to lose weight the way that he did on The Biggest Loser.
Of course not, because it doesn't work! In addition, it"s simply not possible to lose weight that fast and not jeopardise your metabolic rate and your general health.
Rapid weight loss is not fat loss
Any health scientist will tell you that it"s impossible to lose or gain much more than 1 kilo of fat in a week. And yet contestants on The Biggest Loser regularly report massive weekly losses (25 lbs) and Matt even had a weekly gain of 12 lbs!
So what"s going on?
The participants absolutely didn"t lose or gain much fat when they reported those big figures. What they lost or gained was most likely fluid, and when fluid is lost that fast, the metabolic rate also drops, and that"s just one of several serious health effects of rapid weight loss.
If it"s a low-carbohydrate diet the effects are even worse. Carbohydrates help retain water, so naturally when you drop them you lose fluid, further lowering metabolic rate.
Carbohydrates are also absolutely essential for retention of muscle mass, and if you lose muscle mass (which is highly likely if you"ve suddenly cut your calories) your metabolic rate will plunge even lower.
No wonder people put back weight so fast, and end up fatter than ever, and often sick and exhausted from fatigue.
The Biggest Loser punishes people for doing healthy things
One of the most certain ways to actually turn people off exercise is to force them to have such a negative, stomach-turning, painful example of it that every time they think of being active, they actually feel sick.
Yet another way to turn people off exercise is to berate or criticise them as they struggle, and even make them feel guilty or pathetic for not doing better. The Biggest Loser ensures that every time their graduates think about exercise in the future, they"ll have strong negative feelings that eventually will sabotage any efforts to be more active.
As well as turning people off exercise, The Biggest Loser uses techniques that actually get people really addicted to unhealthy, fatty, sugary food. Food deprivation is notorious for creating food cravings.
The Biggest Loser goes even further than mere deprivation, taunting contestants with their favourite foods and turning the addiction scale to the max!
The Biggest Loser is not reality
Millions of people tune into The Biggest Lose every week, and you only have to visit one of the many web forums that have sprung up to see the tragedy of masses of people actually believing that this is a valid approach to losing weight.
They rarely understand that the "Losers" are under 24-hour-a-day watch, by a whole team of people. That the "Losers" don"t have any kind of day-day-life, aren"t at a job, aren"t being part of a family and in fact aren"t even a part of a normal community.
They"re not learning any life habits at all that are transferable to the real, outside world.
Viewers rarely have the knowledge that some of the "Losers" are regularly purging and vomiting in an effort to win the big bucks, or at least not "let down" their team. Nevertheless it"s so sad to read the hatred that is flung at contestants who are seen as inadequate merely for doing something as harmless as eating a Mars Bar.
It"s a beautiful but awful repetition of that infamous study of "blue eyes/brown eyes" where people were taught to brutalise others who didn"t fit into an arbitrary classification.
The Biggest Loser does not meet basic guidelines for healthy diets
Despite the show"s lip service to healthy practice, even the show"s own medical consultants admit the program puts people at risk, turfing out Jules Condon and Sam Birrell because of danger to their health (heart problems and deep vein thrombosis).
Sadly, these two were so brainwashed that they actually wanted to continue!
Nutritionist Kathleen Zelman points out that what the Blue Team eats has inadequate levels of complex carbohydrates, and that its low-carb regime will cause muscle loss, particularly when paired with a heavy activity level.
She also says the Red Team eats too few calories to sustain the workouts and fails National Academy of Science Guidelines on carbs, proteins and fats.
Dr Michael Dansinger, a medical consultant on the 2nd series, himself points out that the dangerously-low calorie intake can"t be replicated safely at home.
Scientific studies suggest that weight gain due to dieting is around 6 billion pounds per annum
That"s an awful lot of fat! But it"s true. The average dieter actually gains around 5 pounds of fat a year, and it"s estimated there are 1.5 billion dieters in the world at any time.
The Biggest Loser is very much to blame for a growing portion of that.
Diets are making us sick and ruining lives
Studies consistently show that dieting has severe health and other impact on our lives:
Diets cause people to gain weight through lowered metabolic rate
Diets almost always result in reduced nutrition because they restrict food variety
Dieting impacts on mood because of the interplay of psychological deprivation on hormone production, frequently causing depression or anxiety
Dieting also lowers or wipes out your libido
Dieting suppresses your immune system
Your lowered metabolic rate makes it harder to exercise and in fact you may develop fatigue syndromes
Food deprivation causes food cravings, so that every diet you go on adds to the severity of your problem
Dieting is absolutely linked to eating disorders in children, and this is fatal for 50% of children who develop anorexia
My number one tip to stop gaining weight
Stop that diet and promise you"ll never, ever, diet again. If you only do this, although you may initially gain weight, your metabolic rate will recover, and you will lose at least 5 pounds and never regain it. You will over time feel a lot better, with a lot more energy, you"ll feel better about yourself and you may even feel like learning about a healthier lifestyle, even learning about the 14 things that people do by mistake that lower metabolic rate, or taking up a sport that you can play for the pleasure of it.
In other words, you"ll get a life.
The Biggest Loser? Find the "off" button and use it, because The Biggest Loser is absolutely The Biggest Stinker!
Christine Sutherland is a Perth clinical researcher, and a clinician specialising in weight loss. She is the author of "Beat Cravings, Shift Fat" and the founder of WeightChoice.Com.Au. You can read more on Christine's views on how to achieve permanent, easy weight loss on Source: http://ezinearticles.com/
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