Much to my disgust, The Biggest Loser has started again. This show is a complete scourge on the body of the obese.
Scourge means something that causes great trouble and suffering FYI.
I’m going to share with you why this is the absolute wrong approach for obesity and I called in one of my media friends to help us understand better why this continues even though our worlds top trainers and nutritionists shake their head at it.
CONTROLLED ENVIRONMENT VS REAL WORLD
Exercise
It’s not practical to train for 6 hours a day. In the real world obese people are getting in shape easy enough by just moving their body for at least 20 minutes a day.
Let’s look at some easy science to help you understand why.
A 150kg body actually burns MORE calories than a 70kg body. It’s the same thing as a large vehicle burning through more gas than a small car. It’s actually the equation Einstein invented: E=MC2. Energy and Mass are linked.
Cool huh! That’s why obese folk can start gently and still get great results.
The Biggest Loser clearly throws Einstein’s equation back in his face. I will explain why further down.
Extreme Dieting
The Biggest Loser contestants eat that magical (but not magical) number of around 1000-1200cals per day.
But hang on, our obese folk are burning more calories than our 70kg folk, so for a sensible calorie deficit, you don’t need to be pushing these malnourishment numbers. It is malnourishment, when you skip calories; you are also skipping the nutrients that go with those calories.
Most Biggest Loser Contestants go on to regain their weight again – this is a typical side effect of a stressed out, malnourished dieter. We see it all the time.
The Biggest Loser Diet is very low carb. Low Carb diets combined with stress are a hormonal disaster. When we are under stress our body wants to release more glucose, but if there isn’t any – it will break down your muscle tissue. No, you will never burn 100% fat – you will ALWAYS burn a mixture of carb and fat – so when under stress, doing 6 hours of exercise a day and being screamed at on nationwide TV it’s a good idea to chuck a carb or 10 in there.
Life
In the real world, we have kids, jobs, social lives, meltdowns, temptations and so on. Losing weight while learning to navigate those temptations in life would make for more useful TV.
FORCE, MASS, ACCELERATION & TORSION
No obese client should be training in the way that The Biggest Loser trains people.
We looked the equation that mass has an influence on energy. I have another funky scientist for you – Isaac Newton. His work around acceleration, force and mass can help us out here.
Mass will exert a certain pressure. Try it now – get someone to press down on your shoulders. Now, get them to press harder.
Now lets add some acceleration – Jump up and down and each time you jump down, get them to push you down even more.
Ok, so you may have just done that in your head – because you’re right, it bloody hurts and not in an “I did a good workout” kind of way.
Now just imagine the pressure on the ankles and knees of those contestants who are running and jumping. It’s not just their 150kg they’re moving, when you start adding acceleration. It ends up being 300kg+ of force going through the joints.
Now we’ll add some torsional strain to that. Obesity around the hip and thigh area displaces our hips. This creates rotations in the hip, knee and ankle joints. So now, imagine jumping up and down, while someone is pushing down on your shoulders, while your ankle joint isn’t quite lined up right.
There are safer ways to train obese clients.
YOU ONLY SEE HALF OF IT
Many of The Biggest Loser Contestants regain the weight they lost on the show. We don’t know why; it could be that their hormones took too much of a beating, the malnourishment could be triggering binges or they haven’t received the proper guidance when going back into life.
We don’t see what happens behind the scenes, so we can’t comment on how the contestants are re-introduced to the real world.
You know how the contestants lose 10kg in one week? I read something a past contestant wrote about how the weigh-in is not done weekly. Isn’t that interesting?
So this sets you up for a false sense of what is normal in weight loss, and when you “fail” to hit a 10kg loss in one week – you beat yourself up.
1kg of pure fat contains approximately 7000 calories of energy.
For the human body to lose 10kg of JUST FAT in one week, that human would have to obtain a 10,000-calorie deficit each day. So, if you eat 1000 calories, you would be exercising for about 10 hours, assuming you were burning 900 cal/hr during everyone single one of those 10 hours.
The math doesn’t stack up.
Matt O’Neill Nutritionist/Dietician states that to lose 10kg of weight in one week, you would be actually losing 3kg of fat, 3kg of muscle and 4kg of water.
REALITY TV IS PROFITABLE TV
So why does this continue? To understand better, I went to a media source, she had this to say:
“Reality TV is anything but reality as I’m sure you already know. Reality TV is one of the most profitable TV formats ever to be created. It’s like the Fast Food of television – they just keep sprouting up, and then replicating themselves around the world.
There is a saying we use in the industry Bren; if it bleeds it leads. What that means is that humans typically respond to fear, drama, pain etc on TV. This is what we see on The Biggest Loser. But think about it – you see it on every reality TV show; Real Housewives creating dramas, Big Brother always features strong personalities. We saw in NZ how Natalia Kills & Willy Moon were instructed to provide harsh feedback, a position they took a bit too far, but nonetheless, this is what sells TV.
TV is not there to entertain you, as much as you think it is. It is an advertising revenue source and the networks will only screen profitable shows. They have an interest to their shareholders first, and secondly to their audience.
So this is why The Biggest Loser Contestants have dramatic stories, and are pushed to dramatic limits so they can have dramatic breakdowns which leads to usually a dramatic overcoming of said breakdown.
It’s all mapped out in a format designed to keep us hooked in. Let’s face it, you kind of enjoy watching contestants fall off the treadmill don’t you?”
THE RESULT – YOU BELIEVE IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO LOSE WEIGHT
Overall, the result of this is that many people think they will never lose weight because they can’t possibly do what the contestants do on The Biggest Loser. I don’t blame ya! I can’t do what they do!
Repetition is an integral part of Brainwashing, and when you see the same thing over and over, you can fall into the trap of believing it.
To all my friends, readers and clients out there, this is NOT the way to lose weight at a normal, real life level and I’ll apologise on behalf of The Biggest Loser for making you believe it was.