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Skip slide summaries Everything in This Slideshow. All rights reserved. Close Sign in. By the early aughts, two-thirds of the adult U. Much hand-wringing ensued about how, exactly, to overcome this rising trend, but one thing seemed indisputable: losing weight was paramount.
At the time, diet culture was going through its own transformation. Carbohydrates were out; dietary fat was in. Low-carb diets had been around for a while—the Atkins Diet, perhaps the best known, first appeared in the s.
Into the fray came The Biggest Loser. Plenty of weight-loss programs teased us with dramatic before and after images, including Weight Watchers, Nutrisystem, and Body for Life. But no one had showcased those transformations on television while we watched. As the origin story goes , around , J. Roth, at the time a year-old reality-TV producer, approached NBC with the idea of a show about obese contestants transforming themselves into thin people by burning off huge amounts of weight.
How much weight? But The Biggest Loser participants lost much more—in some cases, more than 30 pounds in a single week. The dramatic changes were driven by calorie-restricted diets and unrelenting exercise. The show enlisted a pair of charismatic trainers—Harper and Jillian Michaels, the fiery fitness coach from Los Angeles—included plenty of real tears, and featured humiliating challenges that made fraternity hazing rituals seem quaint.
Critics were appalled. Or forcing them to build a tower of pastries using only their mouths? The point, of course, was ratings. Some 11 million viewers tuned in to watch the season-one finale, according to Nielsen ratings. The program was a hit and would carry on for 17 seasons, making it one of the longest-running reality shows of all time. Things changed in the early s. In , Rachel Frederickson won the 15th season after she lost pounds—60 percent of her body weight, since she started the season at pounds.
When she appeared in the finale, she was unrecognizable next to the hologram of herself from the first episode. According to her new body mass index of 18, she was, in fact, clinically underweight. Many viewers were aghast. The show seemed to have become some sort of dark, dystopian comedy. The participants had gained back most of the weight they lost on the show, and in some cases, they put on even more.
Then, in May , the show was dealt a nearly fatal blow. Researchers from the National Institutes of Health NIH released a study that followed 14 former Biggest Loser contestants over the course of six years.
Almost all had developed resting metabolic rates that were considerably slower than people of similar size who had not experienced rapid weight loss. Although, on average, the participants managed to keep off some 12 percent of their starting body weight—which makes the show a success relative to most diets—the study indicated that the kind of extreme weight loss hawked by The Biggest Loser was unsustainable.
It was also potentially dangerous , given the risks associated with weight fluctuation. NBC Universal declined to comment on the results of the study. The study may have emboldened former contestants to speak out about their experiences on the show. In an incendiary New York Post piece published shortly after the NIH study appeared, several contestants alleged that they had been given drugs like Adderall and supplements like ephedra to enhance fat burning.
Reeling from controversy, and with ratings down, The Biggest Loser quietly vanished. There was no cancellation announcement. The Biggest Loser may have imploded on its own accord, but it may also have suffered collateral damage from a cultural shift that was undermining its entire premise. Even as the show was gaining popularity in the mid-aughts, health researchers and activists were questioning the effectiveness of a conventional diet and exercise—long assumed to be the unassailable solutions to weight problems.
The problem was our obsession with losing it. Uncoupling weight and health is a tall order. Diabetes and cardiac-risk factors soon follow. The idea that being fat might not be so bad—or at least less bad than our frenzied efforts to be thin—has been around since the fat-acceptance movement of the sixties.
To calculate your Body Mass Index, please do the following: Multiply your weight in pounds by Divide that answer by your height in inches. Then divide that answer by your height in inches once more. If your Fasting Blood Sugar is between and , you already have pre-diabetes.
Reducing your weight by decreasing your calorie intake , but never eating less than calories per day. Eat more fiber , whole grains, fruits, and vegetables, etc.
Eat less Saturated Fat Animal fats Monounsaturated fats are your most heart-healthy fats. Drink little or no alcohol. This results in less abdominal fat and lowers the triglyceride levels. Restrict the amount of Caffeine intake. Research shows that caffeine can increase insulin resistance.
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