4 Biggest Lies About The Biggest Loser

I just read an enjoyable article about the many ways The Biggest Loser misleads people who want to shed weight and get in shape. I paraphrased it for a quick read. For those of you who want to read the article in it's entirety (and I highly recommend it) the link is pasted below.

http://www.t-nation.com/powerful-words/4-biggest-lies-of-the-biggest-loser/comments

• The Biggest Loser is a show about fitness that teaches people nothing about fitness.
• The show tells uninformed viewers that exercise must be debilitating and that scale weight is the only thing that matters.
• The show keeps people ignorant about the metabolic impact of building muscle and sustained fat loss.
• The Biggest Loser overemphasizes cardio, making its overweight followers injury-prone, metabolically weak, and skinny fat at best.
• The show does have some redeeming factors for already-fit viewers. 

Lie #1: Exercise has to be excruciating in order to be effective. The exercise routines the trainers put the contestants through are not only rigid, they are unrealistic. The competitors train for 4-6 hours a day.

 

Lie #2: The scale is ultimate barometer for success. If you're adding muscle to your body, while losing weight, you won't see such a dramatic drop on the scale. Muscle weighs more than fat. A 150 lb woman with lean muscle is going to appear smaller than a 150 lb woman who doesn't workout.

 

Lie #3: Effective workouts involve tons of cardio. Wrong! The most efficient way of losing body fat and keeping it off is to add lean muscle. Cardio might "get you there" quicker, but most people fail to keep the weight off.

 

Lie #4: Your life must be overhauled to get into shape. Wrong again. The show implies this by moving contestants to a ranch for six months. They are put on strict diets and train 4-6 hours a day. It is unrealistic to keep such a routine in the real world. Most people are going to return to work and get tempted by the morning bagels. People have kids and spouses, who will want to eat the foods they've always eaten. What needs to be overhauled is the way they look at food. They need to look at food as fuel and not as a crutch.