The Biggest Loser Research Study

OK, first I want to tell you one last thing about the Reverse Taper Diet- Simply that it was designed with the goal of preventing post-weight loss weight-rebound. You know, how people diet like crazy, hit their ideal weight, then 3 days later they are back up 15 pounds?

I want that to stop.

My goal with Reverse Taper is to literally have you ‘plateau’ at your ideal weight and leanness.

That’s the idea behind RTD – eating well and staying lean.

OK, now enough about that, I have something else I want to discuss with you.

If my future telling software is accurate then the on-line community is going to be BUZZING about one particular new study coming out.

After all, the subjects in the study are practically celebrities.

This particular study is on a group of people in “a nationally televised weight loss reality TV show where participants are voted off weekly”

Gee – I have no idea what show that could be 😉

Anyways, here is what I want you to look for – really distorted scaremongering –

Here’s why:

I took the numbers of all the participants, particularly their BMR’s and then used the predictive equations to figure what we think their metabolic rates SHOULD be.

Here’s what I found –

In the beginning of the study, when the average weight was 328 pounds (162 pound of body fat!), the average BMR was almost 2,700 a full 700 calories ABOVE what even the most generous equations suggested.

At the end of the study when the average body weight was 200 pounds, (they lost more than 120 pounds) the average BMR was 1,900 –  Still a full  100 calories ABOVE what even the most generous equation predicted it should be given their lean body mass.

Heck, it was still higher than my BMR!

So here’s my confusion, and my guess:

My bet is that everyone focuses on the almost 700 calorie ‘drop’, and not the fact that in the end their metabolic rates were right where they should be. And I doubt ANYONE will be concerned with how HIGH their metabolic rate was in the beginning.

This is the part I find confusing – their metabolic rates are MASSIVELY elevated when they are overweight – like with sepsis! Is this evidence of a metabolic ‘slow down’ with dieting or a ‘hyper metabolism’ from a body that is in really, really rough shape??

To me, the ultra high metabolic rate just shows the damage of being more than 100 pounds over-fat, how much work the body has to do at this level of fatness, and it adds strength to argument that obesity of that degree truly is a disease state.

And at the end of the study, to have lost over 100 pound of body fat, and have a metabolic rate that is precisely where it should be seems to be an amazing accomplishment, but will somehow it will be turned into more metabolism scaremongering.

To bad, because the study itself is full of things to be positive about, yet the negative sells better.

Keep on keeping on, and remember, the story is usually much more complex than the headlines suggest.