Maybe the “biggest” loser is not always better long-term maintenance.
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Four out of the 14 contestants actually now weigh more than when they started.
Fellow contestant Daniel Cahill shed 17 stone throughout the programme and its aftermath and dropped to 13 stone 9lbs. If you’ve ever watched the show, it’s probably no surprise that the contestants couldn’t keep up the pace once they got home-the competition had them eating less than 1,000 calories a day while exercising five to eight hours straight, according to season 3 contestant Kai Hibbard, who’s publicly spoken out against the show’s unhealthy practices. They also examined the contestants’ resting metabolic rate (RMR) at three periods – before the competition, 30 weeks into the competition, and six years after the show.
Mr Cahill has to eat 800 calories a day less than the average man as anything more turns to fat. Their resting metabolism instead had slowed down further, as if their bodies were working even harder to get back to their original weight.
The project is the first to measure what happened to people up to six years after they had lost large amounts of weight with intensive dieting and exercise.
Researchers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) published on Monday in the journal Obesity what’s sure to be a disheartening study for many. While there have been many victories over the course of the show, with people losing massive amounts of weight, followup studies have demonstrated that much of this weight is often regained. “I am just blown away”.
Kevin Hall, Ph.D., metabolism expert for the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases at the National Institute of Health followed the progress of contestants from Season 8 for six whole years, and what he found was that those individuals were pretty much set up to fail in a way. He now weighs 295 pounds, with his body burning 800 fewer calories a day than a typical man his size.
A study of the contestants of the TV show “The Biggest Loser” suggests that a slowed metabolism, not a lack of willpower, is largely to blame.
Vincent told NBC’s Today show back in 2009 that she feared weight gain and needed to focus her attention to keep herself in shape.
In fact, it’s so hard, that some of the season eight cast are heavier now than they were when the show started. Take it slow. Losing weight needs to be a gradual process that starts off with small reductions in pounds and a change in your lifestyle as a whole.
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Yukick, 44, who went from 250 to 132lb on the show, said she plans out all her meals to avoid leptin levels causing a binge, Us Magazine reported. “There’s a lot of shame and guilt at the idea that they may not be able to keep the weight off on their own without medications or devices or surgery, because that is what the environment has taught us”.
