The thing that drives me nuts about the multi-billion dollar dieting industry is that most of them know (based on multiple scientific research studies) that their approach does more harm than good … especially those that push “meal-replacements” or radically reduced calorie diets. It is healthier to be fat than it is to diet, particularly if that diet involves starvation and torture. That’s why I have always hated “The Biggest Loser” with a passion. People cannot keep the weight off after they go on that garbage show and the show knows it.
Now, there is yet MORE evidence that “The Biggest Loser” approach to “getting healthy” is poppycock – it actively harmed the long-term health of those who participated:
A group of researchers, led by Dr. Kevin Hall, a metabolism expert at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, studied what happened to the bodies of Season 8 contestants six years after the show. The research found that after such an intense period of diet and exercise, the contestants’ bodies fought tirelessly to regain the lost weight … Two main factors contribute: the decrease of a hormone called leptin, which controls hunger, and a damaged resting metabolism. When contestants began the show, their resting metabolism (meaning the number of calories they burned daily) was normal. While any dieting regimen will result in a decreased metabolism, the contestants changes were so radical that it was virtually impossible to eat so little that the body could maintain its current weight. Even more surprising was that in the six years following, their metabolisms never recovered—in fact, they became even slower.
Yep, once again science has discovered that low-calorie diets ruin your body and your metabolism, making you fatter and sicker than you were than before you went on the God-forsaken diet. The slower metabolism means that you can eat barely enough to keep a person alive … and still manage to gain the weight back.
Danny Cahill, started the show at 430 pounds and ended at 191 pounds—the biggest weight loss in the show’s history. He now weighs 295 pounds and burns 800 fewer calories per day than one would expect from a man his size. Dina Mercado started at 248 pounds and ended at 173 pounds. She now weights 205.9 pounds and burns 437.9 fewer calories per day than expected. Sean Algaier started at 444 pounds and ended at 289 pounds. He has regained all the weight and then some—he now weighs 450 pounds and burns 458 fewer calories per day than expected.
Think you’ll be the one who will keep the weight off? Bad news; you have a better chance of surviving a gunshot wound to the head than you do keeping weight off after losing more than 20 pounds. You have a 5% chance of living through a bullet to the head, but less than 2% chance of keeping the fat off for 5 years. Just think about that. And 2% may be a wildly optimistic number; doing the math from Weight Watchers data, only 2 out of every 1000 people keep significant weight off. That is 0.002%.
In fact, you will not only gain back all the weight you’ve lost dieting, you will gain additional weight after every diet you go on and those new pounds become part of your body’s “normal” weight.
Do you know how many “reduced calorie” near-starvation diets I’ve been on, starting when I was in 4th grade? Dozens! I’ve been on diets that didn’t let me have fat, didn’t let me have carbs, and didn’t let me have more than 1000 calories a day. In high school I took diet pills and drank a “nutritious” meal replacement for breakfast and lunch. Now, I am carrying around 80 more pounds than when I first became “fat” as a pre-teen. When I stopped all forms of dieting 12 years ago … my weight stopped fluctuating and I haven’t gained more than that since, regardless of what I eat.
As for exercise …. exercise is excellent for your health but you can still have a big fat butt while doing it. Multiple studies have shown that exercise makes you healthier BUT IT WON’T AXIOMATICALLY MAKE YOU LOSE WEIGHT.
In an article for a leading health journal the authors – who include British cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra, an outspoken critic of the food industry – accuse food and drink firms such as Coca-Cola of having wrongly emphasised how physical activity and sport can help prevent people becoming very overweight. The truth, they say, is that while physical activity is useful in reducing the risk of developing heart disease, dementia and other conditions, it “does not promote weight loss” … “Members of the public are drowned by an unhelpful message about maintaining a ‘healthy weight’ through calorie counting, and many still wrongly believe that obesity is entirely due to lack of exercise.” That “false perception”, they claim in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, “is rooted in the food industry’s public relations machinery, which uses tactics chillingly similar to those of big tobacco … denial, doubt, confusing the public and even buying the loyalty of bent scientists, at the cost of millions of lives.”
You know what makes you fat? A history of dieting, genetics, our gut microbiota, or sugar – particularly sugary drinks.
New research powerfully strengthens the case against soda and other sugary drinks as culprits in the obesity epidemic. A huge, decades-long study involving more than 33,000 Americans has yielded the first clear proof that drinking sugary beverages interacts with genes that affect weight, amplifying a person’s risk of obesity beyond what it would be from heredity alone.
And don’t think artificial sweeteners and diet soft drinks are any better. Artificial sweeteners and diet sodas make you fatter. They also damage your microbiota, increase your risk of developing type II diabetes, and put you at more risk for a whole slew of other harmful metabolic disorders.
Okay, it is easy to see how indigestible poisons like aspartame kill gut microbiota, but how do they cause diabetes when there is no sugar in them? Because your mouth tastes “sweet” so your brain releases insulin but WHOOPS no actual sugar in the body so there is a bunch of insulin with nothing to do but make you resistant or insensitive to the presence of insulin – and thus develop type ii diabetes. Seriously, artificially sweetened foods and diet drinks are terrible for you.
artificial sweeteners actually increase weight gain and raise the risk of metabolic disorders. For example, a study from Washington University School of Medicine reported by Medical News Today last year claimed the artificial sweetener sucralose is linked to increased glucose and insulin levels … [scientists] assessed the effect of long-term consumption of artificial sweeteners on humans by analyzing the data of an ongoing clinical trial involving 381 non-diabetic participants. From this, they found several associations between long-term consumption of artificial sweeteners and increased weight, increased waist-to-hip ratio (an indicator of abdominal obesity), higher fasting blood glucose levels and increased glycosylated hemoglobin levels.
Long story short, to be HEALTHY stop dieting and eschew sugary stuff and treat artificial sweeteners as if they were the Devil’s own mucus and exercise. This won’t make you thin if you are fat, but it will make the fat you feel better and live longer.
