The Biggest Loser Study
Written by: Brad Pilon
Let’s talk about that ‘Biggest Loser Study’ everyone is talking about…
But we’re going to save some time and cut right to the chase.
All this study showed me was that you can’t out metabolism a bad diet.
Why?
Let’s start at the beginning, when these people had a measured resting metabolic of over 2,600!!!
That is an enormous amount of calories being expended at rest.
As an example, my resting metabolic rate is around 1,700. My good friend John Barban, who is 2 inches taller than me and carries around 15-20 pounds of more lean muscle then me has a resting metabolic rate of 1,850.
These people had a resting metabolic rate of 2,600…. almost 1,000 calories higher than mine!!
They also had almost 50% body fat at a weight of well over 300 pounds.
This was their supposed baseline… but I just don’t see how any sane scientist could call these numbers ‘baseline’ or ‘normal’
To me, they are obviously elevated. A state of hypermetabolism – I don’t know how else to say it, but these people were not well and it showed in their resting metabolic rate measurements.
At the end of 30 weeks of competition, they had lost more than 100 pounds (averaging more than 4 pounds per week of loss!!!)
They also lost almost 25 pounds of Lean body mass!
And their metabolic rate was measured at right around 2,000 calories (still much, much higher than mine)
THEN 6 years later these people had gained back over 12 pounds of lean body mass and (unfortunately) almost 80 pounds of fat.
Their resting metabolic rate was STILL around 1,900.
Still higher than most people.
The bottom line is In 6 years they gained back much of their weight, in spite of having a high metabolism.
YES the researchers in this study did use equations to guess at a predicted metabolic rate that was almost 500 calories higher… That’s what all the hoopla is about
These people’s high metabolisms weren’t as high as the scientists think they should have been based on they predictions?!?!.
That’s what the media is latching on to.
But I see something much different… they gained a lot of weight despite having a metabolism that is MUCH HIGHER than the average person.
So yes, there is a relationship between your metabolic rate and your ability to lose weight and your ability to keep the weight off… but don’t let the media fool you, these people weren’t suffering from a metabolic rate of zero… they just had a metabolic rate lower than this particular group of scientists expected (mind you it was higher than other equations would have predicted).
…There was much more going on with their physiology then just their metabolic rates.
In fact the most interesting part of the study was the wild fluctuations in Leptin that occurred in these groups while they were losing weight, which gels really well with what my friend John says in his program called The Venus Factor. Just another piece of the puzzle… a puzzle that obviously includes many unmeasured lifestyle factors.
In the end I want you to know that you can lose weight despite what your metabolism is or isn’t, and maintaining that weight loss takes significant adaptations to your lifestyle… In my opinion Eat Stop Eat is one of those adaptations – something many people have used successfully to maintain weight loss for years.
