After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight

Well, I&#x27;d say that the endocrine reason sounds like a valid one. I can at least be counted in that group.<p>Last December, I was diagnosed with T2 diabetes. After talking with a researcher about this (have worked with diabetes research school locally due to job), I came across a few things:<p>1. Damage is done to the pancreas at 140mg&#x2F;dL 2. Too long at 140mg&#x2F;dL or above can cause permanent damage to the pancreas. 3. Early estimates indicate that 110mg&#x2F;dL is a lower limit of beginning damage to the pancreas<p>Ok. There&#x27;s a lot of moving parts in food. Nutritionists will tell you all sorts of bunkum, other than mineral assays and tests have discovered. But there&#x27;s a simple way here: keep blood sugar under 140mg&#x2F;dL, no matter what.<p>Is that possible? To keep your blood sugar under 140mg&#x2F;dL? Yes. The answer is &quot;Don&#x27;t eat foods that raise your blood sugar above 140mg&#x2F;dL&quot;. That&#x27;s interestingly easy. What it amounts to, is cutting out sugars and carbohydrates out of your diet, and extensively testing when you come across foods you&#x27;re unsure of.<p>My research shows that all the standard sugars are bad for me (Sucrose, glucose, fructose, lactose). I spike, and then fall. It also depends on what I&#x27;m eating with them. In those cases the rise and fall are longer.<p>Some complex carbohydrates I can handle. Potatoes are a nope, as are bread products. But spaghetti squash works with me well. I can handle it nicely, with a very low rise and fall.<p>I also end up eating a lot of fats, protein, and veggies. But I don&#x27;t crave sugar at all. I&#x27;ve always liked meats, and this gives me the ability to continue that.

The results of this study, while interesting, seem flawed to me because losing 200+lbs in only 8 months&#x27; time is ridiculously fast. I would be more interested in a study following people who lost weight very slowly and steadily over time, and curious about their metabolisms and recidivism rates.<p>I&#x27;ve lost 100lbs over the last three years and have had zero issue (so far, not saying I won&#x27;t ever) with keeping at this weight. I maintained the same weight, +&#x2F;- 3lbs, for most of 2015 without counting calories or following a diet. In December 2015, I decided I was ready to start intentionally losing more weight, so I tracked calories and lost an additional 15lbs over the course of three months. My experience with losing weight and maintaining weight loss are completely different than the results of the study in the OP, and I am curious how much of that difference can be chalked up to how long it took me to lose that weight.<p>Studies like the one in the OP are fascinating to me because no one seems to go &quot;Hey, your body achieved homeostasis at 450lbs (maintaining that homeostasis for however many years the person was at that weight) and it probably royally screwed with everything dropping half your body weight in 8 month&#x27;s time.&quot; It seems obvious to me that at that point the body is in full blown crisis mode trying to get back to the homeostasis it had developed previously. Eight months is not a long enough time to adapt to a new homeostasis, not to mention whether or not the body is freaking out because it&#x27;s &quot;starving&quot; and dropping fat stores at such a high rate.

I managed to lose 40 pounds last year, using intermittent fasting. That impressed people, but what&#x27;s impressed me is how easy it was to keep it off. I expected to have to do a lot more work than I have, I really seemed to have found a new &#x27;set point&#x27;, where I can simply let my body self-regulate eating and I won&#x27;t gain weight. Sometimes it even goes down.<p>I think a person&#x27;s state of mind plays a huge role. I used IF because it seemed the easiest way to incorporate a sustained caloric deficit into my lifestyle. The knob of &quot;how many times a day I&#x27;m eating&quot; was far easier to tweak than &quot;what I&#x27;m eating&quot; or &quot;how much I eat when I&#x27;m eating.&quot; I&#x27;m just really fucking lazy and found that over time, skipping meals works with my laziness.<p>With IF, I can eat what I want, as much as I want, just only once a day. I used to be really strict about once a day, now I&#x27;ll have a snack here and there, sometimes I&#x27;ll even have what amounts to a light meal outside of my main one. Getting adjusted was a pain, but I&#x27;d alleviate it by eating small amounts outside of the &#x27;window&#x27; and trust that I&#x27;d cheat less over time. Which I more or less did.<p>Ultimately I feel it&#x27;s not really worth it to try to fight your body too hard. If your system perceives a shock, it will defend itself. But humans seem hard-wired for big, dramatic gestures, and so they&#x27;ll do grievous damage to their metabolic systems like crash dieting simply because they can&#x27;t trust themselves to maintain a safer, more sustainable course of action like simply &quot;eating less and exercising more.&quot; I think a lot of people think of the idea of &quot;sustained lifestyle change&quot; and balk. Like they can never eat ice cream again or something.

Extreme diligence seems to be the only way to fight this. If I stop exercising, the pounds pack on within weeks. If I insure I burn at least 3000 calories a day (usually much more), I can maintain my weight indefinitely. But I walk to work and I exercise for 1-2 hours daily. Most people cannot or will not do this.<p>Add in the extreme carbohydrate and fat-laden diets most readily available to America and it&#x27;s a perfect storm for our Wall-E future, no?<p>When I cook at home, I can avoid this by eating a little bit of meat&#x2F;tofu&#x2F;tempeh&#x2F;etc with a pile of greens, but restaurant fare is a little bit of vegetables, a small slab of meat, and a super-size portion of some fancy grain of the week if not just white rice. Sigh...

&gt; <i>A study of Season 8’s contestants has yielded surprising new discoveries about the physiology of obesity</i><p>No it didn&#x27;t. Just another example of junk science.<p>&gt; <i>Now burns 800 fewer calories a day than would be expected for a man his size.</i><p>&quot;Expected for a man of his size&quot; is a fiction. What they are insinuating here is that the rapid weight loss did long term damage to his metabolism. But to confirm that, you have to have data on what is burn rate was when he was previously at his current 295 weight. (Which he must have reached at some point in his life long before the participation of <i>Biggest Loser</i>, on his way to becoming 400-something). Comparing to what can be &quot;expected&quot; based on plugging 295 into some model is not adequate.<p>Maybe he previously also burned hundreds of calories less than what can be expected of someone of his weight. Maybe it&#x27;s been like that most of his life!

There are at least three equilibriums that are apparently of relevance, based on what I have read. These are:<p>1. the hunger cycle - the hormones emitted during hunger<p>2. the metabolic cycle - the neuropeptide y&#x27;s and other such unmemorable names, near the decision making part of the brain<p>3. the hydrocarbon cycle – the hormones emitted as a result of fat cells that are not flush with hydrocarbons<p>Diets address number 1. Number 2 and 3 are the more relevant for long-term success, but not enough is understood about them.<p>Here&#x27;s a TED talk with some illumination:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ted.com&#x2F;talks&#x2F;sandra_aamodt_why_dieting_doesn_t_usually_work?language=en" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ted.com&#x2F;talks&#x2F;sandra_aamodt_why_dieting_doesn_t_...</a><p>Research about weight control and loss is further conflated by profit-oriented companies that derive their primary income from &quot;diet cycles&quot;.<p>That said, the failure of dieting is not new information: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;newsroom.ucla.edu&#x2F;releases&#x2F;Dieting-Does-Not-Work-UCLA-Researchers-7832" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;newsroom.ucla.edu&#x2F;releases&#x2F;Dieting-Does-Not-Work-UCLA...</a><p>The only known sure way to achieve substantial long-term weight loss is hyper-diligence in portion control and metabolic stimulation. Few can do it.<p>One of the unknowns is whether fasting survives long-term trends, such as the &quot;5-2 fast&quot; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thefastdiet.co.uk&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thefastdiet.co.uk&#x2F;</a><p>All to say, the long-term results of the biggest loser accord with the latest research in weight control and loss.

Now, here&#x27;s my opinion, and I know it might be wrong. Anyone, please feel free to correct me, but:<p>Everything I&#x27;ve read suggests that 1lb muscle requires about 50 calories a day to maintain.<p>The workout programs these contestants are using are focused <i>solely</i> on cardio, or very heavily focused on cardio.<p>If <i>as part of</i> the 239lb weight loss, Mr Cahill lost 8lbs-10lbs of muscle (and never regained it), there&#x27;s your <i>entire</i> 400-500 calorie difference right there.<p>Like I said, I could totally be wrong, but over the last year I lost 93lbs (as of today), but my measured BMR is actually <i>higher</i> than it should be (and higher than it was when I started). I attribute that difference to my focus on lifting weights more than cardio.

&gt; The difficulty in keeping weight off reflects biology, not a pathological lack of willpower affecting two-thirds of the U.S.A.<p>Fifty years ago, two-thirds of the USA were not obese. Biology has not changed in that time. What has?

In the other direction, see the documentary &quot;Why Are Thin People Not Fat&quot; where a group of thin volunteers are overfed by about double their normal calories for 4 weeks:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.bbc.co.uk&#x2F;2&#x2F;hi&#x2F;uk_news&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;7838668.stm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.bbc.co.uk&#x2F;2&#x2F;hi&#x2F;uk_news&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;7838668.stm</a><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;U1hbPXooB1U" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;U1hbPXooB1U</a><p>They all easily return to their starting weight, and at least one volunteer gains muscle but not fat. The body is amazing at maintaining homeostasis. Here&#x27;s an nytimes article from 2011 that discusses much the same thing as the article submitted:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2012&#x2F;01&#x2F;01&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;tara-parker-pope-fat-trap.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2012&#x2F;01&#x2F;01&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;tara-parker-pope-...</a>

From the article (emphasis mine):<p>&gt; Mr. Cahill was one of the worst off. As he regained more than 100 pounds, his metabolism slowed so much that, just to maintain his current weight of 295 pounds, he now has to eat 800 calories a day <i>less</i> than a typical man his size. Anything more turns to fat.<p>Presenting the numbers like this seems intentionally confusing. Casually reading this seems like he&#x27;s eating 800 calories a day and still gaining weight.<p>What they&#x27;re really saying is that he&#x27;s eat $AVG_295_LB_MAN_CALORIES - 800 per day. That&#x27;s probably around 4000 calories a day.

I really need to lose weight, my heaviness has started to lead to other health problems, but I find that whenever I try to eat significantly less, I have difficulty concentrating on heavy mental tasks (i.e. programming, my job).<p>The constant feeling of hunger distracts me, or my mind just drifts, until I get some food in me again.<p>I never see any of these articles even acknowledge this as an issue, either as if no one else has this problem, or no one else who is dieting has a job that requires so much brain power.<p>Since there&#x27;s other programmers here, I was curious if other people have noticed something similar, and how they addressed it.<p>My current plan is not so much to limit my eating (beyond some mild calorie restriction) and instead force myself to exercise more often, but I&#x27;d like to be a bit more aggressive with my diet if possible.

It seems like exposing your body to colder temperatures is a sure-fire way to increase your metabolism: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;archive&#x2F;2015&#x2F;01&#x2F;does-global-warming-make-me-look-fat&#x2F;383509&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;archive&#x2F;2015&#x2F;01&#x2F;does-glo...</a><p>May be a little uncomfortable, but way better than screwing up your metabolism via extreme dieting. I&#x27;m consistently perplexed as to why the ice-vest-under-the-clothes weight loss method hasn&#x27;t taken off yet.

I can give personal, anecdotal experience as to why this happens and a chart from Withings will illustrate perfectly. I know what I have to do now, and I&#x27;m fighting like hell to make it happen.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;LR1wbH8.png" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;LR1wbH8.png</a>

Boxers and other people doing martial arts competitively have always known this. There has been a &quot;walking around weight&quot; concept since I can remember. Maintaining lower or, even more importantly in that context, higher weight takes concentrated effort.<p>BTW it&#x27;s a really weird post-Christian belief that there is some you apart from your body and it can do things against your will.

<i>&quot;Soon the scale hit 265. Mr. Cahill started weighing and measuring his food again and stepped up his exercise. He got back down to 235 to 240 pounds. But his weight edged up again, to 275, then 295.<p>His slow metabolism is part of the problem, and so are his food cravings. He opens a bag of chips, thinking he will have just a few. “I’d eat five bites. Then I’d black out and eat the whole bag of chips and say, ‘What did I do?’”&quot;</i><p>The article is light on the details post-TBL, but it sounds like recidivism in terms of diet is probably a major root cause of weight gain. Also, maybe it&#x27;s hard to tell whether they&#x27;re doing steady-state cardio or high-intensity interval training (steady-state cardio has been shown to paradoxically cause weight gain in people). In any case, it sounds like they need more guidance and check-ins post-show.

There was an article on &#x2F;r&#x2F;science 1 or 2 weeks ago which stated that the body needs about a year after the weight-loss to accept the new weight as normal. Before that normalization is done it is very easy to regain the initial weight, after the normalization it gets easier.

I encourage everyone to read the &quot;physiology&quot; chapter at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Adipose_tissue" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Adipose_tissue</a><p>TLDR: Blood sugar spikes above certain level are toxic, so the body responds with an emergency action of stashing the sugar wherever possible, including muscle, liver, and fat tissue. The former two are rather limited in their capacity, while the latter is unlimited. Ongoing elevated levels of sugars in the bloodstream is an ongoing cleanup job for the fat cells, and they never get aground to release the accumulated energy back into circulation.<p>At the &quot;hardware&quot; level, that&#x27;s all there is to obesity - overabundance of quick carbs (sugars, flour, starch).

I&#x27;m curious about how the metabolic rate of these former contestants is determined. Are they confined to a lab where their dietary intake and physical activity can be accurately measured for an extended period of time? Probably not. My best guess is that the subjects being studied are asked to keep food and activity journals and then these, plus their weight, is used to calculate their metabolic rate.<p>I&#x27;ve experimented with keeping a food journal in the past, and it&#x27;s exceptionally difficult to keep track of <i>everything</i> you eat without this extra work impacting your food choices. e.g. The chore of writing stuff down might prevent me from casually snagging a handful of nuts on my way through the kitchen, and consciousness about how it will look in the journal might make me pass on those chips. Even ignoring these problems, it takes a lot of effort to produce even remotely useful data. e.g. &quot;I ate a pear.&quot; is actually pretty vague. Breed, size, and ripeness all have a pretty big impact on the nutrients you&#x27;ll get from that pear. You need to weigh everything as a bare minimum. Also, you need to keep the journal <i>all</i> of the time, because if you keep it for just a week or two that sample likely won&#x27;t be very representative of your normal habits.<p>Likewise, activities are hard to keep track of. With a fairly standard ergometer (such as a Concept2 rower) you can get a reasonable measure of activity level in a workout. Lifting weights, running, walking, etc. are all much, much vaguer. 30 minutes of &quot;moderate jogging&quot; means different things to different people. Most people are likely to overestimate or habitually pad their activities.<p>So, you have a really vague, spitballed idea of what these people are eating and doing, combined with weight gain. Are their metabolisms really slower than expected, or is there a systematic error common to these people in that, after a period of extreme privation (i.e. the competition) in which some of them lost more than a pound a day, they are now underestimating their food intake and overestimating their activity levels?<p>How much can basal human metabolism really vary anyways? If humans can get by on substantially fewer calories, why don&#x27;t we all <i>typically</i> do this? Where does all the extra energy normal people inefficiently burn off go?

It&#x27;s worth noting that the amounts by which their metabolism was lowered are not as shocking as they seem at first.<p>The 300 calories a day difference in calories burned is very limiting if your BMR is 1800. But for some of these contestants their BMR, even at the lower weights, might be 2000 calories per day. And if they do moderate exercise, they can burn up to 1000 calories more than this. If you are expending 3000 calories per day then a 300 calorie difference is minimal.

Isolating a few of the variables would help clarify some of the questions this study raises:<p>1) Amount of excess weight &#x2F; median weight. E.g. Does the effect of the bodies homeostasis change as a person gets more severely overweight?<p>2) Speed of weight loss. Does loosing 1lb&#x2F;day&#x2F;week&#x2F;month affect the bodies homeostasis differently?<p>3) Types of foods affect on homeostasis. Do substances like sugar have a worse effect than others? Does a diet high in something like vegetables tend towards a healthier homeostasis?<p>4) Amount of time for homeostatic change. Does being 100lbs overweight for a year or 5 years make a difference?<p>&gt;&gt; And with his report from Dr. Hall’s group showing just how much his metabolism had slowed, he stopped blaming himself for his weight gain.<p>Its critical to help people struggling with weight loss to deal not only with the nutritional challenges, but also psychological issues behind weight loss (guilt, depression, helplessness). However, presenting the problem as a binary (purely biological vs purely will) may actually not be the best approach. The individuals still played a part in their initial weight gain. The repeated dietary decisions leading to obesity are obviously complicated by family history, misinformation, failure to realize the full consequences, and other factors both within and outside the control of the person. And neither does the person&#x27;s complicity, to whatever extent, in gaining weight mean they should receive any less sympathy or help. I say this because of the persistence of the myth that weight gain can be easily undone with just a few weeks&#x2F;months of discipline, a myth perpetuated by shows like The Big Loser. Weight gain is an insidious danger that can have long lasting implications and be very difficult to extricate oneself from. That point seems quite clear from the research but never addressed in the article.

Well of course they did.<p>That show had them losing a POUND PER DAY - that&#x27;s insane.<p>You&#x27;ll never be able to maintain that kind of metabolism and calorie burn, it would be a full time job and then some.<p>I spent the last year losing a pound per week and that was challenging enough.<p>I still can&#x27;t touch more than 2000 calories per day or I will gain weight and I run every morning.

This jibes pretty well with my experience. Used to weigh about 220 at my peak, and I was eating a lot those days. Cut back, drank less, exercised more (running). Lost about 45 pounds.<p>However, at that point, I was running about 1000 calories a day, sometimes less (a big reason I think The Martian is bullshit). I was not starving. My body wasn&#x27;t starving. You can (and many people should) subsist on far less than the recommended daily allowance of calories.<p>If I eat a typical 2000 calorie diet, I will not just gain weight, but I will gain weight at a rate of about a pound or two a month.<p>I&#x27;ve currently gained back about 10 pounds of what I lost, so I&#x27;m going to have to turn on the afterburners again, but we really need to change the dialogue of what a standard of consumption and health is.<p>It&#x27;s very simple: if your body has a slow metabolism, you have to eat a lot less than most people.

Practicing weight <i>maintenance</i> before going on a diet helps to keep the weight off after a diet. Many people who struggle with their weight &quot;yo-yo&quot; as they go on various short-term diets, losing and regaining weight and never learning how to maintain a specific level.

I am curious if this same effect is also seen in those who lost weight via a calorie restricted diet without exercise. It could be plausible that the extreme exercise regimen alone causes the body to become more efficient.

Very little was said about the type of exercise they were doing. I&#x27;d guess that most of it was &quot;cardio.&quot; Would they have different results if they were involved in more specifically muscle building exercises, i.e, weight lifting (and with adequate rest)?<p>I&#x27;ve been following McGuff&#x27;s Body By Science protocol for the past 6 months and I believe that with increased muscle my overall health is improving much more than would have resulted from typical long and slow cardio.<p>Has anybody else tried this?

I have followed &quot;The Perfect Ten Diet&quot; and began swimming. Within a year, I went from a size 40 jeans to a size 33. I think I&#x27;m now a size 32. I haven&#x27;t weighed myself yet. I&#x27;m a lacto vegetarian (butter, cheese and curd, no milk).<p>I think that barring health reasons (e.g. Thyroid issues), it should be possible for an individual to eat healthier and shed excess weight. But it also comes down to &quot;How badly do you want it?&quot;

I wonder if it would be possible to ramp down like 10% in calories one year at a time instead of binge dieting like this. We are always looking for quick fixes.

I think the biggest thing we should take away from this study is that losing weight &quot;The Biggest Loser&quot; style is bad for your long term health, <i>not</i> that everyone who loses weight will gain it all back or that weight loss is impossible. In other words, don&#x27;t follow a &quot;Biggest Loser&quot; style program to lose weight.

And I&#x27;m in the second week of the Fast 5&#x2F;2 diet. Not very encouraging to read this.<p>Problem though is that I have to diet, my triglycerides are off the chart, my LDL cholesterol too and my fasting blood sugar are at the limit.... Hope I can keep my weight off somehow later.

Here&#x27;s a link to the paper: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;onlinelibrary.wiley.com&#x2F;doi&#x2F;10.1002&#x2F;oby.21538&#x2F;full" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;onlinelibrary.wiley.com&#x2F;doi&#x2F;10.1002&#x2F;oby.21538&#x2F;full</a>

I wonder why, when we talk about obesity, there is this tendency to use language that removes responsibility from the person, or at least move it from their mind to their &quot;body&quot;, as if they were different entities.<p>I think obese people fit the definition of addicts. Most of the time, other addictions are fought by pushing awareness on the person, forcing them to recognize they have a problem and that they need to change.<p>I don&#x27;t hear much &quot;you were born this way&quot; or &quot;that&#x27;s just what your body wants&quot; for other drugs. Is it because other drugs are always viewed negatively, whereas food is a pillar of life under normal circumstances?<p>Maybe it has to do with the very high prevalence of obesity, and the echo chamber being big enough that deflection and denial are harder to combat?

So, on a show where they have people lose weight in the most unsustainable (read: dramatic) way possible, they are then surprised they don&#x27;t keep it off? I am shocked. Shocked, I say!

Extreme weight loss indicates that your weight has high variance. A history of being overweight shows that its mean is high.

Whilst all of the contestants needed to lose weight, I am concerned with the premise of this show. It has many good qualities: exercise and a balanced diet is very important. However, I note the following:<p><i>&quot;Mr. Cahill knew he could not maintain his finale weight of 191 pounds. He was so mentally and physically exhausted he barely moved for two weeks after his publicity tour ended.&quot;</i><p>This cannot be healthy. My concern is that the weight gain has occurred over the person&#x27;s lifetime, yet they can lose up to 30 pounds in a week. <i>The New York Post</i>, which I realise is not a terribly reliable source, reports that the show has frequent injuries and many contestants have had serious side effects. One contestant started losing her hair. Another showed possible signs of kidney failure. Yet another has president issues with short-term memory loss.<p>When I first saw this show advertised for the Australian version I thought it looked amazing, even inspirational. Then I saw the weigh-ins and the show&#x27;s mechanism used to judge contestants. It was for week-to-week weight loss. If you gained even a small amount of weight, there was a real danger of being evicted from the show.<p>It&#x27;s already known that yo-yo diets are incredibly dangerous. So I would like to know what the doctors on the show were doing - they must be aware that what they are doing is not medically recommended. They have a moral and ethical duty to ensure their charged live a healthy lifestyle, not an extreme one that the contestant goes through. I also wonder if the contestants are give enough information to consent to the regime the show puts them under. I think it&#x27;s telling (and frankly, I don&#x27;t think it should protect a doctor!) that the contestants must sign the following waiver:<p><i>&quot;No warranty, representation or guarantee has been made as to the qualifications or credentials of the medical professionals who examine me or perform any procedures on me in connection with my participation in the series, or their ability to diagnose medical conditions that may affect my fitness to participate in the series&quot;.<p>Are these really doctors? If they are, then this should in way reduce their liability for poor medical advice, nor the show&#x27;s.<p>My final concern is a bit more out of left field. This show is a data driven show. They record their calorific intake, blood pressure, time and means excercised, weight loss, psychological studies are taken... You name it, they do it. And it&#x27;s done under a very controlled environment.<p>The show is basically a medical study, albeit not one with a control group or published in a scientific journal, or ine that publishes their full results. Yet a study it is: whilst the methodology and transparency are flawed, their are plenty of studies that exhibit the same characteristics. The difference is that in a normal medical study at a university the study would need to be approved by an ethics committee and follow certain parameters. </i>The Biggest Loser* does not. Which means that I seriously wonder what level of liability - both personal and corporate - the producers of this show are letting themselves in for. They may have legal disclaimers, but if even one contestant can prove corrosion or a lack of informed consent as to what they were agreeing to, then those waivers would be worthless.<p>This show, frankly, is a huge concern.

This is a truly horrifying piece of information. It basically amounts to that going on a diet will make it harder to stay at the weight you had before your diet.

It&#x27;s weird I was allowed to submit this if it was already submitted. Maybe a bug?

What raises metabolic rate? High intensity interval exercise? Long slow distance?<p>I&#x27;m wondering if 2-3 hours of exercise training would be necessary to readjust the metabolism. It&#x27;s my gut as an athlete... Especially the very high intensity interval training.<p>This comes from sprinters having almost magically low fat in many cases, despite not doing nearly as much aerobic execise as, say, even a recreational marathoner.

Does that mean that formerly fat people who lost weight and eat little to keep a low weight with their slower metabolism live longer because their body has less energy throughput?

I get it: low-carb, hi-fat works for people and high-carb, low-fat works for people. Let&#x27;s just get that off the table, but can we, for the love of the sustainable planet, have a hi-fat person give their testimony on how they did it with plant foods instead of just feeding the &quot;mmmmmm more bacon, burgers, chicken and cheese!&quot; mentality?

While these people are on the show, they are living in house with other contestants. You can&#x27;t just order a pizza and sit on the couch with TV cameras and your co-stars watching you.<p>They&#x27;re forced to exercise for hours. If you&#x27;re at home you&#x27;re not going to wake up at the crack of dawn and do a 5 mile run and then do weights.<p>They&#x27;re forced to eat right. Food selection is limited. There&#x27;s no cheese and donuts and fast-food.<p>It&#x27;s no wonder that it&#x27;s impossible for them to keep this up. They just go back to normal which is &#x27;being lazy&#x27;.

Man this is so frustrating because I have a family member who is like this. I would really like to help them, but they just don&#x27;t seem to get it.<p>I think the problem is that these people want instant results. That&#x27;s not how the body works. If you want to become a runner, you start running often and because you love it. You don&#x27;t force yourself to start doing intense, one-and-done sessions in an attempt to get to your goal and then go back to your old lifestyle once you achieve it. You have to learn to play the long game and be patient.<p>I really believe that if these folks worked on a farm for several years, it would do much more to help them with their weight problems than these TV shows do.