|
 NLP
Article 10 - Why "The Biggest Loser" is the Biggest Stinker
You’d probably have to be from another planet not to know
what The Biggest Loser is all about. A bunch of seriously
obese men and women are launched into extreme food deprivation, and
exercise regimes so harsh that, in the words of Ed Martin on
MediaVillage.com “Half of these people looked like they were
going to have heart attacks, the other half like they were on the verge
of strokes”.
But with overweight and obesity rates rising, and death rates caused by
being fat and/or inactive going through the roof, isn’t this
show at least doing something about it?
The problem is that while the show claims it’s about healthy
weight loss, what it actually demonstrates is the most dangerous method
with the highest failure rate, damaging not only the participants, but
anyone who is led to believe this is what weight loss is about.
The faster
loser is the fastest fat regainer
In a world where human fatties have governments and health scientists
apoplectic with worry, and rightfully so, it’s not surprising
that there’s been a massive amount of research on the
effectiveness of various approaches to weight loss.
All around the world, in every civilised country where research has
been undertaken, it has been thoroughly demonstrated that dieting and
exercise programs not only don’t work, but they make people
fatter!
Over 95% of people who go on a diet put the weight back (and more)
within 3 years, and over 98% of people who lose weight through an
exercise program put the weight back on (and more) within 1 year!
Matt Hoover, winner of The Biggest Loser in 2005, has had a growing
girth ever since. By 2006 he had really bulked up, and now in
2007 there he is complete with big double chin.
It’s simply not possible to lose weight that fast and not
jeopardise your metabolic rate and your general health.
Rapid weight
loss is not fat loss
Any health scientist will tell you that it’s impossible to
lose or gain much more than 1 kilo of fat in a week. And yet
contestants on The Biggest Loser regularly report massive weekly losses
(25 lbs) and Matt even had a weekly gain of 12 lbs!
So what’s going on?
The participants absolutely didn’t lose or gain much fat when
they reported those big figures. What they lost or gained was
most likely fluid, and when fluid is lost that fast, the
metabolic rate also drops, and that’s just one of several
serious health effects of rapid weight loss.
If it’s a low-carbohydrate diet the effects are even
worse. Carbohydrates help retain water, so naturally when you
drop them you lose fluid, further lowering metabolic rate.
Carbohydrates are also absolutely essential for retention of muscle
mass, and if you lose muscle mass (which is highly likely if
you’ve suddenly cut your calories) your metabolic rate will
plunge even lower.
No wonder people put back weight so fast, and end up fatter than ever,
and often sick and exhausted from fatigue.
The Biggest
Loser punishes people for doing healthy things
One of the most certain ways to actually turn people off exercise is to
force them to have such a negative, stomach-turning, painful example of
it that every time they think of being active, they actually feel sick.
Yet another way to turn people off exercise is to berate or criticise
them as they struggle, and even make them feel guilty or pathetic for
not doing better. The Biggest Loser ensures that every time
their graduates think about exercise in the future, they’ll
have strong negative feelings that eventually will sabotage any efforts
to be more active.
As well as turning people off exercise, The Biggest Loser uses
techniques that actually get people really addicted to unhealthy,
fatty, sugary food. Food deprivation is notorious for
creating food cravings.
The Biggest Loser goes even further than mere deprivation, taunting
contestants with their favourite foods and turning the addiction scale
to the max!
The Biggest
Loser is not reality
Millions of people tune into The Biggest Loser every week, and you only
have to visit one of the many web forums that have sprung up to see the
tragedy of masses of people actually believing that this is a valid
approach to losing weight.
They rarely understand that the “Losers” are under
24-hour-a-day watch, by a whole team of people. That the
“Losers” don’t have any kind of
day-day-life, aren’t at a job, aren’t being part of
a family and in fact aren’t even a part of a normal community.
They’re
not learning any life habits at all that are transferable to the real,
outside world
Viewers rarely have the knowledge that some of the
“Losers” are regularly purging and vomiting in an
effort to win the big bucks, or at least not “let
down” their team.
Nevertheless it’s so sad to read the hatred that is flung at
contestants who are seen as inadequate merely for doing something as
harmless as eating a Mars Bar.
It’s a beautiful but awful repetition of that infamous study
of “blue eyes/brown eyes” where people were taught
to brutalise others who didn’t fit into an arbitrary
classification.
The Biggest
Loser does not meet basic guidelines for healthy diets
Despite the show’s lip service to healthy practice, even the
show’s own medical consultants admit the program puts people
at risk, turfing out Jules Condon and Sam Birrell because of danger to
their health (heart problems and deep vein thrombosis).
Sadly, these two were so brainwashed that they actually wanted to
continue!
Nutritionist Kathleen Zelman points out that what the Blue Team eats
has inadequate levels of complex carbohydrates, and that its low-carb
regime will cause muscle loss, particularly when paired with a heavy
activity level.
She also says the Red Team eats too few calories to sustain the
workouts and fails National Academy of Science Guidelines on carbs,
proteins and fats.
Dr Michael Dansinger, a medical consultant on the 2nd series, himself
points out that the dangerously-low calorie intake can’t be
replicated safely at home.
Scientific
studies suggest that weight gain due to dieting is around 6 billion
pounds per annum
That’s an awful lot of fat! But it’s
true. The average dieter actually gains around 5 pounds of
fat a year, and it’s estimated there are 1.5 billion dieters
in the world at any time.
The Biggest Loser is very much to blame for a growing portion of that.
Studies consistently show that dieting has severe health and other
impact on our lives:
· Diets cause people to gain
weight through lowered metabolic rate
· Diets almost always result
in reduced nutrition because they restrict food variety
· Dieting impacts on mood
because of the interplay of psychological deprivation on hormone
production, frequently causing depression or anxiety
· Dieting also lowers or wipes
out your libido
· Dieting suppresses your
immune system
· Your lowered metabolic rate
makes it harder to exercise and in fact you may develop fatigue
syndromes
· Food deprivation causes food
cravings, so that every diet you go on adds to the severity of your
problem
· Dieting is absolutely linked
to eating disorders in children, and this is fatal for 50% of children
who develop anorexia
My number one
tip to stop gaining weight
Stop that diet and promise you’ll never, ever, diet
again. If you only do this, although you may initially gain
weight, your metabolic rate will recover, and you will lose at least 5
pounds and never regain it. You will over time feel a lot
better, with a lot more energy, you’ll feel better about
yourself and you may even feel like learning about a healthier
lifestyle, even learning about the 14 things that people do by mistake
that lower metabolic rate, or taking up a sport that you can play for
the pleasure of it.
In other words, you’ll get a life.
The Biggest Loser? Find the “off” button
and use it, because The Biggest Loser is absolutely The Biggest Stinker!
About
the
Author: Christine
Sutherland is the
founder of The Lifeworks Group Pty Ltd.
She is a behavioural therapist, clinical
researcher, and
internationally-published author of a range of reference texts for
health
professionals, corporate managers, and the general public.
You
can contact Christine on christine@lifeworks-group.com.au.
|
