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Happiness health self-help weight control

Biggest Loser Wins, Or Do They Really Lose After All

Biggest Loser, is a TV show where you need to be obese to get on the show. The winner is the person who loses the biggest percentage of weight relative to their initial weight. The premise behind the show is that you will be entertained by watching people who are seriously overweight struggling with their emotions, serious food rationing, and an exercise regime that belongs in a barracks.

The latest US series winner, Rachel Frederickson, lost 155lbs, around 60% of her starting body weight. The last 45lbs disappeared in just 2 months. That’s around 5lbs a week.

Interestingly she says that her weight gain was the result of a relationship break up.

The big question is did she lose too much too fast?

I’m also curious about whether or not it will stay off.

You see the prize for this feat of body sculpting is $250,000. Money is a powerful motivator. One quarter of a million dollars is a lot of money, clearly Rachel was more motivated than the other contestants.

I wonder, now that the money is in the bank, whether she has the will to maintain her current pattern of eating and exercise. I suspect that, if she plays her cards right, she can monetise her momentary celebrity and prolong her moment in the sun. There is a rich world out there for celebrity exercise videos, telling her story, endless chat shows while the star still shines, and so on.

My issue is not with Rachel, she worked very hard and received a well-deserved reward. My issue lies with the encouraging and lauding of rapid weight loss. Rapid weight loss is bad for your health. Rachel’s BMI is now significantly below normal – in other words she is under-weight. Still, that’s just Hollywood isn’t it? Every female working in CelebrityLand pretty much has to be underweight. Normal body weight just looks, well, fat compared to the majority of female celebrities.  It seems to be a lifestyle choice. Still the financial rewards provide the motivation to maintain the situation.

But take away the money and what is left to drive the starving yourself every single day for the rest of your life?

My work with weight loss focuses on easy and sustainable lifestyle changes; changes that are small shifts in eating behaviour over a long period of time. This works. Weight is lost gently. There is no fight with food. There is no battle with denial. Eat what you like; just eat what you need and no more. It works. There is no gruelling regime to follow. Of course my recommended rate of 2lbs a week is far too slow for most people, despite the fact that those 2lbs stay off for ever rather than creep back on, and Rachel would not look much different now if she followed my weight loss plan. She would also be considerably poorer.

However, because the change is assimilated slowly it is effortless to maintain. It is based around changing attitudes to food. There is no reason to treat your body as an enemy that must be brutally punished for having the audacity to look fat and unattractive.

Good luck to you Rachel, I sincerely hope it all works out for you.

 

…and if you want to know about a gentler, permanent way to reduce your weight then check out my book How to Lose Weight Easily and Free Yourself from Diets Forever.

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How About a Cup of Instant Weight Loss?

If you are a coffee lover like me, then you will find instant coffee unpalatable. It’s not a patch on the real thing. It’s just the same with weight loss. When I get a cup of good coffee I like to drink it slowly and savour every mouthful. That way the pleasure stays with me long after the coffee is finished. So much so that one really good cup of coffee a day is more than enough to satisfy me. Any more than that and it just becomes normal and all the pleasure is lost.

Now the speed of weight loss is a big issue and one of the reasons why many people make the wrong choices.

I mean, when summer is approaching, or that special event like a wedding, and you really need to look good it’s no use talking about taking one or two years to lose that excess weight permanently. You want it gone and you want it gone now.

But we live in a society of instant gratification. If you have a weight problem then your kitchen is likely filled with instant snacks where all you have to do is open the packet and your need is satisfied. Entertainment is available at the touch of a button in most living rooms – whether that be tv music magazine, internet, or book.

Walk down any high street and you won’t go far before you are tempted by the aroma of that fresh coffee I mentioned earlier. Delicious coffee that you can be enjoying in moments – along with the sugar, the cream and maybe even a cake. Hungry? Then nip into a fast food outlet and again within moments you are sitting down and satisfying that desire.

No waiting. No delay. Instant.

The weight is piled on like this so why shouldn’t it come off the same way?

Well it can.

At the end of the day if you don’t eat you’ll lose weight. The bigger the difference between the calories you eat and the calories you use in exercise the faster the weight loss. Live on nothing but water for a week and you’ll lose a bit of weight (I’m not recommending this, by the way). Unfortunately those who are overweight tend to be those who don’t exercise much. The greater the excess weight the fewer calories burned through exercise so that’s a bit of a vicious circle. The one thing you need to do – exercise – that would allow you to eat more without adding weight, is the one thing you don’t want to do.

But excess weight is a bit like smoking. Smokers think that this cigarette (the one they are about to light up) won’t kill me and so they smoke that one. They think that with every cigarette, until one day they are lying in hospital with a smoking related disease wondering how they could have been so stupid. Eating is just the same. This little cream cake won’t make much difference. I’ll make up for it tomorrow. These three spoons of sugar won’t matter. I’ll have less tomorrow. But it all adds up. At the end of each day you are either heavier because you ate more fuel than you used; or you are lighter because you used more fuel than you ate.

Of course food isn’t just fuel. It’s pleasure too… and distraction… and emotional support… and a love substitute… and a boredom buster… and social oil… and that’s why it’s such a problem. And there are so many lies about food – like you are somehow a bad person if you don’t clean your plate. Waste is evil and so are you. Better to be fat than waste food. We use food to make ourselves feel good. It doesn’t work because the ill-feeling is born from beliefs about self and no amount of eating has any impact on your thinking style. It takes a different approach to make the change where it needs to be made. If you want to find out more about this check out my weight loss video.

So we are conflicted. Eating just the right amount of fuel for the energy we use up in a day feels like we are being denied something we deserve. And when we are denied something we want it all the more and this is the vicious circle that makes rapid weight loss so difficult to do, and if you are one of the few who succeed in rapidly arriving at your ideal weight – you will not maintain it. Rapid weight loss – because of what it does to the body, is almost impossible to maintain without engaging in a lifetime of struggle with food and who wants that.

If you want to find out more about what rapid weight loss does to your body and why it is so difficult to maintain that lost weight then check out my book How to Lose Weight Easily – and Free Yourself from Diets Forever

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Michael