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The Biggest Loser
2004 · TV series · 90 min episodes · 18 seasons
Created by Dave Broome, Ben Silverman, Mark Koops
The Biggest Loser features obese people competing to win a cash prize by losing the highest percentage of weight relative to their initial weight.
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8 comments on Hacker News
You might find this NYT piece on the winners of the Biggest Loser TV show interesting. Basically, "dieting" as a reduction in calories is a lose-lose game because your basal metabolic rate goes down so you have to keep eating less and less to keep it up.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/health/biggest-loser-weight-loss.html
Keeping up the basal metabolic rate is part of the rationale behind intermittent/extended fasting instead of pure calories-in-calories-out weightloss advice.
The reason they failed is because they stopped. For some reason people expect doing something healthy to their body for a few weeks is going to outweigh the years of eating bad food that they will repeat doing after losing weight.
Just look here at this prime example:
"Researchers followed 14 of the contestants from season 8 of The Biggest Loser, including the winner, Danny Cahill, for six years after the show ended. Thirteen of the 14 regained some of the weight back, and four of those gained back what they had lost – and more."
Imagine what would have happened to that person if he didn't go to the biggest loser and just ate the same unhealthy food for 6 years? Do you think he wouldn't have gained 10% more weight? It wouldn't make headlines if he did.
[0] https://people.com/bodies/the-biggest-loser-contestants-permanently-harm-their-metabolism-says-study/
For weight loss the devil is in the details, so your paradigm is far too broad to be useful.
For example, eating less is important, but eating too little is counter-productive and can do long-term damage to your basal metabolic rate.
Exercise is good for overall cardio fitness, muscle tone, joint health, and some excess calorie expenditure, but your body will not allow you to exercise away too much energy too quickly. Too much of a good thing here and you can end up damaging your BMR, you will feel exhausted/injured and your body will break-down muscle as much as fat.
https://www.vox.com/2018/1/3/16845438/exercise-weight-loss-myth-burn-calories
Your paradigm sounds a lot like what the contestants on the TV show The Biggest Loser did, and the vast majority of those dieters damaged their metabolisms and yo-yo'd back to their former obese selves.
> For instance, the contestants on the “Biggest Loser” TV show became paragons of self-control; some shed more than 100 pounds, something very few of us could ever achieve. And yet a recent study showed that even these incredibly disciplined dieters gained all the weight back.
This study has now become quite famous but it should be noted that the participants where given no help after the show and not surprisingly went back to their old habits.
> “Unfortunately, many contestants are unable to find or afford adequate ongoing support with exercise doctors, psychologists, sleep specialists, and trainers — and that’s something we all need to work hard to change,” -- from http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/health/biggest-loser-weight-loss.html
One participant did manage to keep most of the weight off but only through persistence.
I feel for those with real genetic disorders but for most of us we can lose weight and keep it off. New York Times articles which tell us that it's not our fault, that it's genetics, leptin, metabolism, aging, etc. are exceedingly popular but for most of the population these are just excuses.
Here us how you do it. Drop your daily calories to a very low but still safe level (1500 or less) by counting and writing down the calories of everything you eat. Do this for at least two months. Then start an exercise cycle where you do an hour of highly strenuous cardio at least five days a week. Continue for at least two months. Then go back to dieting. Repeat until you hit your goal weight. Then you can relax until your weight creeps up 10-15 lbs at which point you start the cycle again. This is what it takes for an average person in our modern society to stay healthy.
If this seems extreme consider that for thousands of years most of our ancestors endured much more physical exertion on a regular basis and on less calories. We live in a world of excess which is in itself a sufficient explanation for our obesity problem. Excluding of course those few people who actually suffer from weight related diseases.
> A study of Season 8’s contestants has yielded surprising new discoveries about the physiology of obesity
No it didn't. Just another example of junk science.
> Now burns 800 fewer calories a day than would be expected for a man his size.
"Expected for a man of his size" is a fiction. What they are insinuating here is that the rapid weight loss did long term damage to his metabolism. But to confirm that, you have to have data on what is burn rate was when he was previously at his current 295 weight. (Which he must have reached at some point in his life long before the participation of Biggest Loser, on his way to becoming 400-something). Comparing to what can be "expected" based on plugging 295 into some model is not adequate.
Maybe he previously also burned hundreds of calories less than what can be expected of someone of his weight. Maybe it's been like that most of his life!
Facebook laser targeted ads work wonders here if done correctly:
> UK, London, Single Men/Women, Interest:cooking, TV shows: Biggest loser or Hells Kitchen.
> Then send them to Landing Page.
Reality TV is actually a dream business product for entertainment networks. This works on two levels - people are far more inclined to follow stories if they believe the characters are real. Great authors and storytellers have the skill to create 'real' sounding characters. Reality TV works on the assumption that the characters are real - skipping over the part where the writers have to skilfully create the characters. Thus you don't need many writers to come up with reality TV, just general plot points.
The second part is that the actors generally work for free, or close to free. This gets around pesky actors problems, such as unions, conditions and all the other things.
So you have people with a lower internal bar to 'believing' the stories and getting involved, and a cast that generally is working for free under conditions that would get regular actors up in arms.
The result is big profits for a successful reality TV show. The problem is that reality is rarely interesting outside a game show or contrived setup (ie survivor, biggest loser). So you get quasi-reality shows like Operation Repo which is completely acted following scripts but posing as reality, through the 'reality like' shows where real events are distorted to highlight the differences, right down to proper documentaries which try and follow the facts as blandly as possible. And the ratings will, other things being equal, be inversely proportionate to the amount of 'reality' in the show.
Bottom line : people who are to go on reality TV shows would do well to avail themselves of the facts before going in. Whether this means getting an agent or something like that, I don't know. But wishing and hoping for fair treatment is an unwise strategy. (note: I'm addressing reality shows in general, not this specific example).
I think this startup would be a great partner for the Biggest Loser TV show. The show could provide the contestant with money and each week the contestant would make money if he/she lost weight. You could incorporate the original idea by forcing them to give some of the money back if they regain weight.