How Big Losers Burn Fat - good points

Mangoaddict

How Big Losers Burn Fat
Take their advice and lose your gut for good

By: Jeff Csatari, Photographs by: John Loomis
0 Comments | 16 Recommended

Find a good reason to lose. It took some time, but Ed Brantley finally realized he had a food addiction. "The cravings would come and I would be like, 'hey, let's get high,'" says Brantley. "I was literally hooked on the euphoria of eating." It didn't help that he and his wife, Heba, had a full social calendar with many an opportunity to wine and dine. "If we want to have children, and we do, we knew we had to change our lifestyle and take control of this," he says.

Brady Vilcan took a hard look at his life and realized he was setting a poor example for his two kids. "We rarely got a lunch break at CVS," says Vilcan, a pharmacist. "I'd often go all day without touching food. If Vicky cooked, I might have three large servings. But mostly, I'd pick up cheeseburgers or pizza." He would also bring candy home from the pharmacy for the family. While watching TV he might have two or three bowls of ice cream. "My grandfather was heavy. I remember going to Weight Watchers with my mom when I was a kid. Now my 4-year-old daughter, Lucy, outweighs my 7-year-old son, Chance. We've got to break this chain."

Never skip a cheese stick. After six seasons with the show, nutritionist Cheryl Forberg, R.D., says the two most common mistakes made by nearly all the contestants who've passed through the ranch are skipping meals, particularly breakfast, and not consuming enough calcium. "They feel they don't have time to plan ahead, but skipping meals can lead to grabbing fast food and overeating because you're starving," she says. To keep their metabolism revving high, Biggest Loser contestants are trained to eat five or six times a day -- breakfast, lunch, and dinner, small meals made up of high-water-volume vegetables and fruits, whole grains and lean protein, plus two or three snacks. "Most people don't get enough dairy products in their diet," Forberg says. "Men need 1,000 milligrams of calcium. You can achieve that through three servings of milk, yogurt, and/or cheese a day. We encourage a low-fat cheese stick with a piece of fruit for between-meal snacks."

Weigh your filet. The first thing Vilcan did when he returned home from the ranch was buy a food scale. "Portion size can get away from you in a heartbeat," he says. "If you want to lose weight, you have to know what a serving is and how many calories are in it." Do you really need to order that 16-ounce filet when the 8-ouncer will fill you up? Each Biggest Loser contestant's daily calorie limit is calculated using a formula that considers starting weight, body-fat percentage, activity level, and goal weight. For Vilcan, it's between 1,750 and 2,000 calories, depending on how much he's exercising. "Realizing how much exercise it takes to expend the calories in food really puts things into perspective," he says. "I mean, look at these cheese fries from Outback Steakhouse. They're 2,900 calories. No friggin' way am I gonna eat that."

Start with weights, finish with cardio. Strength training with weights creates an afterburn effect that keeps your body churning through calories at a higher rate, even at rest. And it's widely known that muscle is more metabolically active than fat. So Biggest Loser contestants pump weights about 2 hours a day. "In the beginning we focused a lot on weightlifting to build up the muscle," says Brantley. "Then we switched to more cardio to shed the pounds." The key with cardio is to find something you enjoy doing to beat boredom. "I hated the elliptical; it was too easy, I didn't feel like I was doing anything. Now the spinning cycle, that's fun, and it is a real workout. I'll do 2 hours a day on that."

Pig out once a week. One day a week at the Biggest Loser ranch is designated a high-calorie day, when contestants can go over their calorie limits. "We do it to make the point that this isn't going to be a life of deprivation," explains Harper. "You can't sustain that. You want to develop healthy habits you can live with."

The contestants typically choose to order out for burritos. "The next day, they really feel the effects of all the sugar and sodium-filled food," says Harper. "They feel like crap. They learn very quickly that a healthy body that's been exercising and eating right doesn't want all that fat and processed junk."

Book court time for 2015. The biggest lesson Biggest Loser contestants learn is that their healthy lifestyles don't end when the cameras stop. "There's no finish line. That's a big pill for people to swallow," says Harper. "Every single day for the rest of your life, you are going to have to make better food choices, and move around a bit more."

Michaels calls it "composing a life." "You use fitness to re-create a different set of experiences and attitudes: You go from past experiences of 'I'm a loser, I'm fat, I'm worthless' to 'I'm capable, I'm strong, I'm confident.' " Once you've made that paradigm shift, Harper and Michaels say, you've won.

Mangoaddict

How Big Losers Burn Fat
Take their advice and lose your gut for good

By: Jeff Csatari, Photographs by: John Loomis
0 Comments | 16 Recommended

Find a good reason to lose. It took some time, but Ed Brantley finally realized he had a food addiction. "The cravings would come and I would be like, 'hey, let's get high,'" says Brantley. "I was literally hooked on the euphoria of eating." It didn't help that he and his wife, Heba, had a full social calendar with many an opportunity to wine and dine. "If we want to have children, and we do, we knew we had to change our lifestyle and take control of this," he says.

Brady Vilcan took a hard look at his life and realized he was setting a poor example for his two kids. "We rarely got a lunch break at CVS," says Vilcan, a pharmacist. "I'd often go all day without touching food. If Vicky cooked, I might have three large servings. But mostly, I'd pick up cheeseburgers or pizza." He would also bring candy home from the pharmacy for the family. While watching TV he might have two or three bowls of ice cream. "My grandfather was heavy. I remember going to Weight Watchers with my mom when I was a kid. Now my 4-year-old daughter, Lucy, outweighs my 7-year-old son, Chance. We've got to break this chain."

Never skip a cheese stick. After six seasons with the show, nutritionist Cheryl Forberg, R.D., says the two most common mistakes made by nearly all the contestants who've passed through the ranch are skipping meals, particularly breakfast, and not consuming enough calcium. "They feel they don't have time to plan ahead, but skipping meals can lead to grabbing fast food and overeating because you're starving," she says. To keep their metabolism revving high, Biggest Loser contestants are trained to eat five or six times a day -- breakfast, lunch, and dinner, small meals made up of high-water-volume vegetables and fruits, whole grains and lean protein, plus two or three snacks. "Most people don't get enough dairy products in their diet," Forberg says. "Men need 1,000 milligrams of calcium. You can achieve that through three servings of milk, yogurt, and/or cheese a day. We encourage a low-fat cheese stick with a piece of fruit for between-meal snacks."

Weigh your filet. The first thing Vilcan did when he returned home from the ranch was buy a food scale. "Portion size can get away from you in a heartbeat," he says. "If you want to lose weight, you have to know what a serving is and how many calories are in it." Do you really need to order that 16-ounce filet when the 8-ouncer will fill you up? Each Biggest Loser contestant's daily calorie limit is calculated using a formula that considers starting weight, body-fat percentage, activity level, and goal weight. For Vilcan, it's between 1,750 and 2,000 calories, depending on how much he's exercising. "Realizing how much exercise it takes to expend the calories in food really puts things into perspective," he says. "I mean, look at these cheese fries from Outback Steakhouse. They're 2,900 calories. No friggin' way am I gonna eat that."

Start with weights, finish with cardio. Strength training with weights creates an afterburn effect that keeps your body churning through calories at a higher rate, even at rest. And it's widely known that muscle is more metabolically active than fat. So Biggest Loser contestants pump weights about 2 hours a day. "In the beginning we focused a lot on weightlifting to build up the muscle," says Brantley. "Then we switched to more cardio to shed the pounds." The key with cardio is to find something you enjoy doing to beat boredom. "I hated the elliptical; it was too easy, I didn't feel like I was doing anything. Now the spinning cycle, that's fun, and it is a real workout. I'll do 2 hours a day on that."

Pig out once a week. One day a week at the Biggest Loser ranch is designated a high-calorie day, when contestants can go over their calorie limits. "We do it to make the point that this isn't going to be a life of deprivation," explains Harper. "You can't sustain that. You want to develop healthy habits you can live with."

The contestants typically choose to order out for burritos. "The next day, they really feel the effects of all the sugar and sodium-filled food," says Harper. "They feel like crap. They learn very quickly that a healthy body that's been exercising and eating right doesn't want all that fat and processed junk."

Book court time for 2015. The biggest lesson Biggest Loser contestants learn is that their healthy lifestyles don't end when the cameras stop. "There's no finish line. That's a big pill for people to swallow," says Harper. "Every single day for the rest of your life, you are going to have to make better food choices, and move around a bit more."

Michaels calls it "composing a life." "You use fitness to re-create a different set of experiences and attitudes: You go from past experiences of 'I'm a loser, I'm fat, I'm worthless' to 'I'm capable, I'm strong, I'm confident.' " Once you've made that paradigm shift, Harper and Michaels say, you've won.

Anna_Banana

I'm glad they said that about cheese sticks. I eat one almost every day at 10:30.

And I completely agree with the pigging out once a week. I find when I don't I tend to lose slower. But on weeks like last week when I ate everything for T-day, I lose.

Great info Thanks