Jillian Michael's interesting comment

JessLLoser

Jillian just said something phenomenal on her podcast this week. 5/27 episode

She said,

Contestants on Biggest Loser were exercising a lot but not aggressively working out. They were active for 6 to 8 hours a day. Walking around the ranch or on the treadmills. This is optimal for someone who is morbidly obese.

For the average person 30 min to an hour 4 or 5 days a week is plenty for someone trying to lose weight. If your a marathoner, or triathelete make sure your eating enough calories to fuel that burn your creating. You have to eat like an athelete to perform like one. You have to eat a lot.

How much are you working out? Do you eat back your exercise calories?

I never ate back my exercise calories and I never counted my daily life exercise. I also never lost weight even though rabidly counting my calories. I am always active for 6 to 8 hours a day.

Ever notice how they never say how many calories each contestant is eating. I`d love to know that.

shorty35565

I work out 6 days a week for about 45 mins to an hour.
I eat about 1600 a day. I dont eat back my exercise cals because I upped my cal goal on here to suit my needs. I wasn't eating enough b4 & wasn't losing any weight because of it. I really hope 1600 is good. It's what my coach suggested.
I'm a housewife, so I say I'm sedentary.
I don't watch the show but probably a lot given they weigh a lot.

da_sammit

the aussie BL contestants were netting 1200cals a day. they said it on one of the "learn how to cook" eps..

shorty35565

the aussie BL contestants were netting 1200cals a day. they said it on one of the "learn how to cook" eps..

Wow, that's really low all things considering. But I guess they're experts, so they know what they're doing. I started eating tht low when I was 185lbs & I think I prob lost muscle eating like tht.

theartichoke

It varied based upon starting weight and other factors like pre-existing medical conditions. From the sample diets Bob talked about it seems they ate 1200-1500 a day. Here's the kicker though. They were pulling burns in the range of several thousand calories a day. A 300-400lb person walking on a treadmill for 1 hour will burn near 1000 calories. You'd have to be on it for 3 to 4. What they were doing is netting, in the thousands, negative calories each day. There were doctors around 24/7 and they were tested and treated for the various deficiencies this caused. It's also a reason many of them have failed to maintain their loss.

If you're netting low each day your metabolism will slow down to match your intake. What happens when they begin to eat again, live normal lives and exercise as a person at a normal weight? They gain because the metabolism slowed to match intake and now sees a normal amount of calories as too many. If they maintain a VLCD they keep the weight off. The gain they experience after the show would eventually normalize but few are able to make through the adjustment process without giving up and returning to old habits.

The closer we are to goal weight the more important it is to eat enough. Our bodies no longer have many fat stores to pull from. Without enough energy, from calories eaten or fat burned, it will slow itself down to preserve itself. Think about it this way. Our bodies could care less about our weight loss goals, it wants to survive. We fight it, it fights back. Eat more to lose more sounds completely counter-intuitive but it's true.

Crystalchaos72

I do things all wrong but it works just right.....I eat my tdee + exercise and create a small manual deficit.......so my average intake is around 3000-3200. I have a physical job, literally walking around for 7.5 hours pushing something ( a machine or a mop)I also try to work out 5 x's a week but only usually manage 4.......I have been doing this for a month (eating tdee+ exercise with my own manual deficit) and have lost oh I think 5 #'s......trying to get back to my low 'happy weight'

theartichoke

I do things all wrong but it works just right.....I eat my tdee + exercise and create a small manual deficit.......so my average intake is around 3000-3200. I have a physical job, literally walking around for 7.5 hours pushing something ( a machine or a mop)I also try to work out 5 x's a week but only usually manage 4.......I have been doing this for a month (eating tdee+ exercise with my own manual deficit) and have lost oh I think 5 #'s......trying to get back to my low 'happy weight'

With your loss I think you've been doing a lot of things right! Great job! I don't know all the details but it sounds like you're eating at a cut just below your TDEE. That's perfect! Congratulations on your success!

meshashesha2012

i think in one of the earlier episodes they said women ate between 1200-1600 calories and men ate from 1500-2000 calories.

also your net calories doesn't mean anything, especially when you're that larger and working out that much. when you exercise, depending on your exercise, your body basically has 3 ways to respond : get smaller, get stronger, or get more efficient. with them being that large and working out so much (even moderately) the first thing the body decides is to get smaller

i had already heard that the majority of the workouts weren't that hard. some of the contestants talked about how the TBL way of weight focused on a lot of cardio that the contestants did on their own or with the junior trainers. those last chance workouts are the toughest workouts they do and the only ones they get with the real trainer, so that's like 1 workout each 7-10 days

jenniejengin

bump

douglasmobbs

It varied based upon starting weight and other factors like pre-existing medical conditions. From the sample diets Bob talked about it seems they ate 1200-1500 a day. Here's the kicker though. They were pulling burns in the range of several thousand calories a day. A 300-400lb person walking on a treadmill for 1 hour will burn near 1000 calories. You'd have to be on it for 3 to 4. What they were doing is netting, in the thousands, negative calories each day. There were doctors around 24/7 and they were tested and treated for the various deficiencies this caused. It's also a reason many of them have failed to maintain their loss.

If you're netting low each day your metabolism will slow down to match your intake. What happens when they begin to eat again, live normal lives and exercise as a person at a normal weight? They gain because the metabolism slowed to match intake and now sees a normal amount of calories as too many. If they maintain a VLCD they keep the weight off. The gain they experience after the show would eventually normalize but few are able to make through the adjustment process without giving up and returning to old habits.

The closer we are to goal weight the more important it is to eat enough. Our bodies no longer have many fat stores to pull from. Without enough energy, from calories eaten or fat burned, it will slow itself down to preserve itself. Think about it this way. Our bodies could care less about our weight loss goals, it wants to survive. We fight it, it fights back. Eat more to lose more sounds completely counter-intuitive but it's true.

The reason why obese people often put back on weight after weight loss has a lot more to do with the fact that they were obese before hand. Although they have had a moment of enlightenment they have a predisposition for overeating and under exercising. There is far too much focus on what people are doing in the very short period of their life that they are losing weight and not enough on the considerably longer period afterwards where they are trying to maintain a healthy weight.

patranus

Its hard to take anything seriously from any person or property even remotely related to the spectacle that is "The Biggest Loser".

theartichoke

It varied based upon starting weight and other factors like pre-existing medical conditions. From the sample diets Bob talked about it seems they ate 1200-1500 a day. Here's the kicker though. They were pulling burns in the range of several thousand calories a day. A 300-400lb person walking on a treadmill for 1 hour will burn near 1000 calories. You'd have to be on it for 3 to 4. What they were doing is netting, in the thousands, negative calories each day. There were doctors around 24/7 and they were tested and treated for the various deficiencies this caused. It's also a reason many of them have failed to maintain their loss.

If you're netting low each day your metabolism will slow down to match your intake. What happens when they begin to eat again, live normal lives and exercise as a person at a normal weight? They gain because the metabolism slowed to match intake and now sees a normal amount of calories as too many. If they maintain a VLCD they keep the weight off. The gain they experience after the show would eventually normalize but few are able to make through the adjustment process without giving up and returning to old habits.

The closer we are to goal weight the more important it is to eat enough. Our bodies no longer have many fat stores to pull from. Without enough energy, from calories eaten or fat burned, it will slow itself down to preserve itself. Think about it this way. Our bodies could care less about our weight loss goals, it wants to survive. We fight it, it fights back. Eat more to lose more sounds completely counter-intuitive but it's true.

The reason why obese people often put back on weight after weight loss has a lot more to do with the fact that they were obese before hand. Although they have had a moment of enlightenment they have a predisposition for overeating and under exercising. There is far too much focus on what people are doing in the very short period of their life that they are losing weight and not enough on the considerably longer period afterwards where they are trying to maintain a healthy weight.

I agree. Not resolving the reasons that get people morbidly obese to begin with certainly increases the chance that weight loss won't be permanent. VLCDs can be done safely but the reintroduction of higher calories needs to be done under supervision as well. That element was completely missing on TBL. What I was referring to earlier is the course of action a severely obese person can take vs a person close to goal weight. Those are 2 different places to approach diet and exercise from and noting, possibly in too obscure a manner, that they can't be measured against each other.

JessLLoser

Crystal Chaos, sounds like your doing everything perfectly right! Great job.

meshashesha2012

it seems that the majority of people who gained the weight back were the contestants who were in it to win the game, so it's not surprising that those people didnt learn much on the ranch that they could take back with them. i dont think that's so much the fault of the biggest loser as much as a factor of what happens in general to people who lose weight for a short term goal (ie class reunion, wedding, 250K, vacation, etc).

people dont need to be on a reality show to lose weight for a goal then turn back around and regain it.

in addition, in terms of obesity, i'm going to go ahead and say NOONE gets to be obese or morbidly obese without some sort of deep emotional issues they are using the food and the weight to cover up. these are issues that usually take years to overcome, not months. add to that the fact that the people on the ranch are away from most of their negative emotional triggers, it makes sense that they'd have more difficulty not falling back into old emotional habits once they returned home

theartichoke

I agree with you Mesha. There's more at play here than emotional issues though.

I would bet that if they'd been under the care of a doctor when they left the ranch the number of contestants able to maintain weight loss after returning to a normal life would be higher. Triggers aside, netting thousands of calories below BMR isn't sustainable long term and the metabolic and hormonal response to that must be off the charts. I wonder if the effect is linear. If metabolism adjusts by X % in response to X number of calories under BMR over the course of X time, is it proportional as the deficit increases?

Where is Yarwell? He'd know.

clioandboy

Its hard to take anything seriously from any person or property even remotely related to the spectacle that is "The Biggest Loser".

oh thank goodness I thought I was the only one lol!!!!! I truly despise it, and indeed anything like it!

Crystalchaos72

I do things all wrong but it works just right.....I eat my tdee + exercise and create a small manual deficit.......so my average intake is around 3000-3200. I have a physical job, literally walking around for 7.5 hours pushing something ( a machine or a mop)I also try to work out 5 x's a week but only usually manage 4.......I have been doing this for a month (eating tdee+ exercise with my own manual deficit) and have lost oh I think 5 #'s......trying to get back to my low 'happy weight'

With your loss I think you've been doing a lot of things right! Great job! I don't know all the details but it sounds like you're eating at a cut just below your TDEE. That's perfect! Congratulations on your success!

Thanks:)

Crystalchaos72

Crystal Chaos, sounds like your doing everything perfectly right! Great job.

Thank you too My pals know me as the 'food pusher'.....lol

Ahluvly

Check this out:

http://www.jillianmichaels.com/fitness-and-diet-tips/determining-your-AMR

It explains how to calculate your TDEE, which is your BRM x Daily Activity Rate + Weekly Burn. In order to maintain your current weight, you need to eat this, to gain weight, I would suggest increasing it by 10-20% and to lose weight at a steady rate, I'd recommend reducing your TDEE by 10-20%.

On the BL, I read some time ago that they were basically eating around 6 or 7 times their weight in pounds. I'm sure this should be really around 10-12 times your body weight.

Found these:

http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/biggest-loser-diet

http://www.thatsfit.com/2010/02/11/biggest-losers-calorie-burn-rate/


Hope this helps

meshashesha2012

here's an article that talks about the calorie burns they shoot for http://www.thatsfit.com/2010/02/11/biggest-losers-calorie-burn-rate/