Biggest Loser Forces Re-Examination of 2-LB/Week

A recent article in the New York Times was titled “On ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Health Can Take Back Seat.”
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by David Greenwalt
Biggest Loser has inspired millions of people worldwide to get off the sidelines and into the game of becoming better fit and losing weight. Biggest Loser has experienced growing pains in front of millions of loyal viewers each week. They, like all of us, admit they are still learning, growing and making mistakes along the way. The season-starting mile walk-run is one example of their learning pains. Two contestants had to be hospitalized—one with serious issues requiring a two-week hospitalization and additional modified exercise for at least two more weeks. According to the New York Times article the mile walk-run is just one example of things the show will be changing going forward.
Not everyone keeps the weight off after completing Biggest Loser but even under the intense scrutiny of media worldwide it has been estimated that approximately 50 percent of the contestants keep most of their weight lost off. If these numbers are true it stands out very favorably when compared to national, commercial-diet relapse rates north of 90 percent.
People lie, cheat and steal. It’s a fact of life. Contestants on Biggest Loser are no exception. When you put $250,000 on the line and the potential to earn multiples of the grand prize in endorsements, speaking engagements, private-label products and more, the likelihood of lying, cheating and stealing would be expected to rise. Even so? While reports from past contestants indicate some fairly extreme dehydration methods were used to make weight for the finale or even in-season weekly weigh-ins the reality is dehydration doesn’t account for the continued week-after-week success of measured fat loss for Biggest Loser participants.
The Weight Lost Is Extreme And Outside the 2-Pound Per Week Standards
Standard medical weight-loss advice says one should not strive to lose more than about two pounds per week. This might have made sense when the average starting weight of the overly-fat was in the 200-pound range. But now, in the world of XXXXL morbid obesity where starting weights routinely are above 400 pounds the same two-pounds-per-week advice is overly conservative. Allow me to break down why I make this claim with a 400-pound man example.
To achieve a two-pound loss of real body fat in a week we need to create a 7000-calorie deficit. Routine weight-loss advice suggests achieving half the deficit from exercise and half from an energy reduction dietarily. But this advice often times becomes immediately conflicted. Depending on how timid or aggressive the prescriber is and also how poor the health is of the 400-pound man, exercise prescriptions will range between 20-30 minutes a few days per week up to about 50-60 minutes most days of the week. Breaking this down into caloric burn the advice would mean an average caloric burn of 128 kcal (short for kilocalories) per day up to 428 kcal per day. Feel free to write me if you want the formula for how this was determined. It is immediately clear that the most-common beginning exercise prescriptions fall short of having exercise do its “half the job” part in creating the 1000-kcal/day deficit needed for the two-pound fat loss desired.
The other half of the caloric deficit must come from a reduction in energy (calories) consumed each day. A male weighing 400 pounds may be consuming 5000-6000 calories per day to maintain that weight. If he actually does ramp up his exercise minutes to achieve a 500-kcal burn on average per day from exercise then he only has to pull 500 kcals away from his daily dietary regimen to achieve the two-pound loss. This would mean he’d have to make changes to his dietary program so that he consumes somewhere between 4500 and 5500 kcals per day. This gargantuan consumption puts the 400-pound man eating about double what the average, healthy-weight man will be eating to maintain his healthy weight. While it may be sound and safe to begin our 400-pound man with a very conservative reduction in energy, in just a few, short weeks at most, this man can safely and healthfully, reduce his energy intake even further.
There certainly is a floor to sane and safe energy-reduction recommendations. Depending on frame size and height it may not be advisable for a 400-pound man to dip below about 2000 kcals per day on a routine basis until or unless he has reduced his bodyweight by about half. While total energy intake is important what should be watched even more closely is the quality, variety and nutrient density of the food and drink he consumes. Vitamins, minerals, fiber, protein quantity, quality and variety, carbohydrate quantity, quality and variety, fat quantity and quality and water intake should also be considered and tracked. We are a nation of overfed, overfat and nutrient-starved people. Calories consumed are not all that matter.
So how did I get this far removed from the central focus of my New York Times Biggest Loser safety review? I suppose I got here by being the natural contrarian I am and an expert in the wellness field specializing in weight loss. In my opinion The Biggest Loser program isn’t mostly about “anything goes” dieting. It isn’t mostly “do whatever it takes to win even if it’s likely to kill you” sensationalism. In my opinion The Biggest Loser program shows us all what is possible when everyday, ordinary men and women fully commit to improving their health, saving their lives, and changing from the inside out for what the participants and any remotely-positive viewer hopes is a lifetime of not only weight-loss maintenance but happier, more-productive, more-content living.
The average viewer is not going to be able to replicate Biggest Loser results unless he or she is also given the amazing opportunity to press the “pause button” on life and literally live in a world completely devoted to exercise, lifestyle change and healthy eating. Even so, by pushing the weekly weight-loss boundaries under the supervision of medical and fitness professionals, The Biggest Loser offers hope for the actively-engaged and fence-sitting obese wondering if there is any way out of the self-described hell that has become their life. And for wellness and weight-loss experts out there Biggest Loser should cause some reconsideration of the pat prescriptions and advice promoting two-pound-per-week safety limitations.
People are capable of more than they think. We, the experts in this field, should not be so limited in what we think our clients are capable of achieving. Experts working closely with patients and clients should be willing to re-examine beliefs and apply real science to the XXXXXL-people most current textbooks haven’t properly addressed. We should be moving away from “two-pound per week” robotic advice and instead applying percent-of-bodyweight weight-loss advice we can back up with formulas not only addressing calories in and calories out but also the often-overlooked nutrient density factors regardless of calories consumed or expended.
In health,
David
http://www.LeannessLifestyle.com