What happened to The Biggest Loser? Did people actually keep the weight off? Yes, but not much.
And yes. It was cancelled, but now it’s back and as toxic as ever.
Here’s What Happened To The Biggest Loser TV Show Participants 6 Years After The Show Ended:
The Biggest Loser TV is so American … and gives us valuable lessons.
Firstly, here’s a link to the science study I talk about which followed 14 of The Biggest Loser participants.
What lessons can we learn?
- 13/14 participants gained back significant amounts of the weight they lost
- 4 participants gained back more weight
- The average metabolism at the start of the show was 2600 BMR and by the end of the show the average BMR was 2000. 6 years later average BMR was 1900.
Lesson? While it may be popular and even mainstream to try really hard to lose weight …
Trying super hard just isn’t sustainable.
An approach focusing on habits and What You’re Eating (instead of How Much) is better, in my humble biased opinion 🙂
What do you think about The Biggest Loser TV show?
What Happened To The Biggest Loser TV Show Commentary:
The Biggest Loser is as American as apple pie.
Ok, well not quite that American.
There’s even some news about participants being drugged in order to lose weight on the show, but back in it’s hey-day, The Biggest Loser drew millions of people to it’s show.
The Biggest Loser started in the 2000’s, well after apple pie had been a traditional mainstay. People eat a ton every day – the opposite of fasting – and exercise a ton!
The show boomed and has since petered out. It has probably diminished because of movements like health at every size which promote moral equivalency to bigger bodies.
Why did the show peter out? Who knows.
But perhaps it’s because science like the type of research conducted by Kevin Hall started coming out.
Kevin and his team followed 14 Biggest Loser Participants.
They tracked them during the Biggest Loser, during the Biggest Loser, and 6 years after the Biggest Loser.
The results were … typical. That’s what happened to The Biggest Loser.
Significant weight regained. Metabolism slowed down.
And trust me I hate to say typical …
I have been criticized by going to hard on diets without giving enough useful information to counterbalance my critiques.
That’s why in this video I really make sure to talk about 2 keys …
- switching your focus to What you eat instead of How much
- Long term approach
I’ll talk about these two keys briefly later on but first let’s understand why these 2 keys are so important in relationship to the science on the Biggest Loser.
The Biggest loser tracked participants metabolism.
What is metabolism?
Metabolism is how fast your body burns calories without exercising.
And the key thing is …
Is that rapid weight loss slows down metabolism.
Why is this?
Well, rapid weight loss is seen from your body’s perspective as starvation.
When the body thinks that it’s starving, in order to stop you from starving, the body starts trying to cling onto every ounce of body fat.
This was an evolutionary mechanism that helped us survive during food shortages, as a species.
And the same evolutionary mechanism is at hand while we diet and lose weight rapidly.
Our body think it’s starving to death and so it slows metabolism down!
Unfortunately, metabolism doesn’t oftentimes pick back up speed.
From this study, the participants lost metabolism speed and it never went back up, even after the participants gained weight.
So this brings us to the 2nd of the 2 principles I recommend: long-term.
Long-term approach can be tough because oftentimes you become motivated to lose weight after visiting the doctor who threatens you with a heart attack.
Or some other negative happens and you become motivated to lose all this weight really rapidly!
To sustain your journey through the long term, you might want to check out the support group Overeaters Anonymous.
Of course this approach fails. What happened to the biggest loser? Now you know.
So first, take your time.
But how to take your time?
How to lose weight comfortably?
Well… the key is eating.
Heck, the point is not weight loss.
The point is eating.
If you eat right you can avoid binge eating, emotional eating, and many other bad things.
But it comes down to eating.
So what about eating?
This brings me to the first principle I mentioned – What instead of How Much.
Focusing on How Much means you are not as focused on Quality.
You are focused on Quantity.
This keeps you in a state of worry as the overall message is to eat less.
When you are in a paradigm of eating less, you are going to screw things up.
Eating less is the implicit methodology focus when you attempt to lose weight, most of the time.
With an Eating Enlightenment, however, you realize that the key is to focus on What You Are Eating.
In this methodology then you can stay full.
And this type of fullness is satisfying.
When you eat foods that are high in natural fiber, protein and good fats you get full and don’t want to eat more.
The snacking drops.
The binge eating, late night eating, compulsive, and emotional eating drops as well.
By getting rid of these bad habits, then weight loss naturally occurs.
It’s a slower methodology, but by keeping your body full, then you don’t suffer the drop in metabolism either.
Let me know your thoughts.
