Interesting interview with former contestent and Lyle McDonald:
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A few weeks ago, I made a comment about the tv show the Biggest Loser in the newsletter (for those not familiar with the show, it's a reality show dealing with weight loss that has both an Australian and US version).
In response, a former contestant sent me the following comments and told me that, with a few names removed, I could run it in the newsletter. I'm going to run it almost like an interview with his comments (in bold) followed by any comments I have about it.
I think what he sent is interesting as it points out
1. What can be accomplished in a short period when you put your mind to it
2. How unrealistic some of the changes on the show actually are relative to normal people.
In that vein, here's an interesting article about the show.
BL: I know that obese people are not your target audience but for anyon who cares, we worked out 4 hours per day 6 days per week. That started on day 2. Day 1 we worked out 2.5 hours. That is from sedentary to 2. hours.
We did 1 hour cardio in the morning and 1 in the evening by ourselves and the trainer came in every afternoon for two hours to put us through a circuit resistance based routine for an hour and sometimes her own crazy cardio routine for an hour or we did that third cardio hour on our own also. We never worked out intensely for more than 2 hours at a
time.
My comments: As I'm sure I've mentioned before in the newsletter (and brought up in at least one of my books), research in general has not supported exercise having a humongous impact on bodyweight. However, a lot of studies have used fairly moderate amounts of exercise in this regards. In contrast, large volumes of exercise, and the above can only be considered a 'large volume', especially coming from essentially a sedentary life, can have a fairly large impact.
BL: Our goal was to lose 1lb per day (3500 calories). Our particular trainers philosophy was that she was going to BURN it off you in the gym and if you had a poor day in the gym the VERY first question that was asked was "Did you eat". It had to be pounded into us that we had to eat. It seemed counterintuitive for many of us in a weight loss contest but it proved itself out when a teammate of mine upped his workouts to 6 hours per day and shrank his food to 500 calories per day (on his own) and only lost 3 pounds in 7 days while everyone else averaged 7-10.
My comments: This is an interesting idea as it's something I noted years ago and have commented on previously. The combination of lots of exercise with big caloric deficits tends to work extremely poorly and seem to slow instead of hasten fat loss for some reason. This is part of why I strongly recommended against lots of exercise in the Rapid Fat Loss handbook; the deficit inherent to the diet is already large enough to the point that adding a bunch of training seems to cause more harm than good. I don't know if the issue is simply metabolic slowdown or if there's something else going on (this my current new project now that the protein book is finally done) but I've seen it happen time and time again: excessive caloric deficits plus excessive amounts of exercise seem to do more harm than good. If you are burning a lot of calories through exercise, you have to eat. If you want to cut calories hard, you have to reduce activity.
BL: So that was a 75-25% Cardio to resistance training mix. Man what the body can do when it has the right trainer to push it. This years contestants work out even more (I went back to the show and worked out with them for 3.5 hours on an off camera day and they still had an evening workout to go). Of course your secluded, no phone, no newspapers, no internet - just you and other fatties so what else you going to do except the hated TV stuff, interviews challenges etc.?
My comments: I think that last point is a good one, another reason why some of what can be done on the show is unrealistic to normal people. Between the huge motivation to win (big money, fame) and basically being locked up where all there is to do is exercise, putting in huge amounts of training is much easier. Especially compared to the average person who is dealing with work, home, family, etc. and probably doesn't have 4 hours per day to exercise.
I also think it's interesting that the main focus is on cardio training especially with the recent tendency towards weight training based fat loss approaches. No matter how you cut it, 3 hours of cardio per day burns far far far more calories than 45 minutes of weight training, regardless of the type (or any small calorie burn afterwards).
I'd also add that, for extremly overweight individuals (who typically gain LBM as they get fat), weight training wouldn't seem to have much of a huge benefit. Possibly if it's done with higher reps/circuit style (to burn more calories, deplete muscle glycogen, etc.). But fatter individuals don't usually have to worry so much about muscle loss in the first place, pounding them with low rep heavy work just doesn't make much sense.
It bugs me though that they manipulate the show for ratings. They just gloss over some stuff I think is so important.... like how he lost that weight! hope it doesn't give anyone the wrong impression.... like you will eat chicken wings and drink cokes and still lose weight... that's a slippery slope. It will be fascinating to see him at the finale!
and I like the way they have added little diet tips and training tips!!!
AWESOME!!!!
GREAT JOB!!!!
