Why you shouldn't starve yourself to lose weight.

Anyone ever watched the biggest loser?

If you never did, I’ll give a brief summary of the show. The biggest loser is a reality show consisting of people with BMI of over 38 and above competing to lose weight. They work with a team of trainers, nutritionists, dieticians, doctors and experience drastic weight loss in just about 30 weeks. That is like going from 430 pounds to 250 pounds in just 7 months and 2 weeks. That is cool right?.. Wrong.

Anyone will be happy to lose over 170 pounds (Close to 80kg) in less than a year, that is insane! but guess what, about 60% gained back more than half of the weight lost. some even went beyond what they started with.

Why did this happen??

The contestant were put on an extremely low calorie-diet, they ate about 700–1200 calories per day and exercised like crazy. This was great at the beginning, they were able to lose weight drastically because they had energy from the excess fat stored in their body. Their body probably needed more than they were consuming but didn't sweat it because they had enough stored fat to exercise and workout like crazy and then, it got to a point where their body started holding on to whatever amount of calories it was given. This means irrespective of how much they exercised, they couldn't lose weight because their body needed something to keep in, this is called a Plateau, it is when your body gets used to the calories you are consuming and you start burning fat less or not at all.

As they lost weight, they lost some muscles along with fat, especially since a lot of exercises they did were cardio based exercises. Muscles helps to keep your metabolism up. When you build up your muscle, you build up your metabolism, that is, your metabolism becomes fast and it is easier to lose weight even when your body is at rest.

The biggest loser is a reminder of what happens when we look at the fastest and quickest way to weight loss but not the most effective way. I am an advocate of self experimenting. I believe in people finding a routine and lifestyle tat works best for them and sticking to it. If you need help finding a routine that will work best for you, check out my page (https://rayoailara.disha.page/) and send me a message on whatever platform.