How do they lose so much weight on The Biggest Loser?!

Even though I was a contestant on The Biggest Loser during season 3, I didn't actually get to live on the ranch and compete like the contestants do on most seasons, since there were 50 of us and only 14 stayed on the ranch. I was one of the "36ers" who lost the weight on our own at home. So how people managed to lose 30 pounds or more in one week, I had no idea... until I was the doctor for the show on seasons 4 and 5, that is.

First, it turns out that a "week" on TV is sometimes filmed over 7 days, but sometimes the filming schedule is longer and it might be up to 14 days before the next episode is filmed. They all say "this week" and make it seems as if every episode occurs 7 days after the last, but that's just not the case. So, those 30 pounds might have been lost over 2 weeks, not just one.

Second, the contestants pretty much universally dehydrate themselves before weigh-ins. They cut out carbs (which makes them deplete their glycogen stores, which also makes them lose water with it) and cut out salt to lose as much water weight as they can through diet, and then they exercise and sweat without drinking water to replace their losses. This drops an enormous amount of weight due to water losses without actually requiring any fat to be lost.

Finally, they actually do lose a lot of fat. They might work out up to 8 hours in a day, and are watching their caloric intake closely. So a good amount of the weight lost is real fat loss. Just don't be discouraged if you can't lose the same amount of weight at home, since you don't have 8 hours a day to dedicate to exercise and you're not taking extraordinary measures to drop water weight.

Is willpower a muscle?

When trying to watch what you eat, have you ever noticed that it's easier to stick to your guns early in the day, but by late afternoon or evening you find it 10 times harder to resist those chips or that brownie? One of the most important factors in someone's ability to lose weight is self-control, or willpower. An obese person's ability to resist the impulse to eat calorie-dense foods, especially with junk food available around every corner, is critical to his or her weight loss success.

Researchers have found that willpower may be more like a muscle than we realized. And just like a muscle that fatigues after being used repetitively, willpower can fatigue with use, too. Muraven, Tice and Baumeister did a series of experiments in 1998 that found that people reported feeling fatigued after making an effort to control themselves, and the more difficult the challenge to their willpower, the more fatigue they reported. Then these people actually did worse when they were confronted with a subsequent unrelated test of self-control. Muraven, Tice and Baumeister speculated that, like physical exertion, someone’s capacity for self-control might draw on a limited resource and become depleted with short-term use, just like a muscle becomes fatigues after short-term use -- but they also suspected that willpower might actually increase over time with repeated use much as someone's physical fitness increases over time with repeated bouts of exercise.  

In fact, Mark Muraven did an experiment in 2010 that confirmed this theory: people who practiced unrelated tasks that actually required them to exert their willpower did better in the real-life challenge of quitting smoking.

This can have important implication for those of us trying to change our eating habits. Practicing small instances of willpower on a regular basis might actually improve our ability to control ourselves around junk food later on. And trying to face challenges to our self-control when we are already fatigued might be a recipe for disaster. Could this be why recent research has found a correlation between sleep deprivation and weight gain/obesity? Something to think about….

References

 Muraven, M. (2010). Practicing self-control lowers the risk of smoking lapse. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 24(3), 446-452. doi:10.1037/a0018545

Muraven, M., Tice, D. M., & Baumeister, R. F. (1998). Self-control as limited resource: Regulatory depletion patterns. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(3), 774-788.

 

Stuff yourself to lose weight!

Some of you might have heard of the "Volumetrics" diet -- the original book was published in 2000 by Barbara J. Rolls, PhD (a professor of nutrition at Penn State) after she had discovered in lab experiments that people naturally eat fewer calories when they eat foods that are low in energy density. Energy density is the amount of energy, or calories, in a food compared to how heavy the food is -- the lower the energy density, the lower calories per measure of weight. So for example, celery, which is made up of a lot of fiber and water, has a low energy density; cheddar cheese -- mostly fat and no fiber or water -- is very high on the energy density scale. By adding some lower energy-dense foods to your diet (foods high in fiber and water, like fruits and vegetables), you may fill up more quickly and end up eating fewer calories overall -- even though you consume MORE food by weight. The most recent iteration of the diet was published in 2012:
http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Volumetrics-Diet-Science-Based-Strategies/dp/B00ASP9JO0/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381256952&sr=1-2&keywords=volumetrics
Dr. Rolls' diet has won widespread acclaim from scientists and nutritionists, and is always listed as one of the best diets available.

While I did not specifically follow Dr. Rolls' Volumetrics diet plan when I lost my 120 pounds back in 2006, I definitely DID subscribe to her philosophy and ate the way she recommends. I love to eat. I feel comforted when my belly is full. I feel a lot of anxiety if my belly is empty; when hunger pangs start, it might as well be a full-on emergency. I know that's crazy, but that's me (and many other people who have weight issues). So in order for me to feel satisfied while also significantly lowering my caloric intake, I had to start stuffing myself with veggies. LOTS of veggies. One of my favorite recipes that I made up is a hearty low-calorie vegetable soup that I make without any added fat. I eat it for lunch pretty much all winter; adding half a cup of kidney beans to 2 cups of the soup provides extra protein and fiber, and I truly feel stuffed after eating it. Broth-based soups are one of the stars of Volumetrics, so if you're interested in trying this eating style, give my homemade vegetable soup a try!

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Makes ~10 2-cup servings

2 tsp Herbes de Provence
1 tsp fennel seeds, crushed with a mortar & pestle (optional)
1 medium onion, chopped
8-10 ounces sliced cremini ("baby bella") mushrooms
1 10-16 ounce bag of chopped kale
2 large or 3 medium zucchini, chopped
2 28-ounce cans diced tomatoes in juice
2 T Better 'n' Bouillon soup base (I use beef, but chicken or vegetable works too)
splash of red wine vinegar
water
salt/pepper to taste

Heat 1 cup water in a large stockpot over medium heat. Add the Herbes de Provence and fennel seeds and simmer while you chop the onion. Add the onion and simmer for a minute or two (until translucent), then add mushrooms and kale (picking out very large stems). Continue simmering over medium heat and stir intermittently while you chop the zucchini. Then add the zucchini and the tomatoes. Fill each empty tomato can with water and add that too. Then add the soup base and vinegar, turn the heat up to high and bring to a boil, then turn down to low-medium to simmer for 10 minutes, stirring intermittently. Taste the broth and add salt and pepper as desired. (I often add more soup base, too, but that adds a lot of sodium, so if you're trying to watch your salt intake, be cognizant of this ingredient!)

Will eating olive oil reduce heart attacks?

On my drive in to work on Monday morning, I listened to a story by Allison Aubrey on NPR's Morning Edition about the benefits of eating olive oil, and that fresh-pressed oil provides the most benefit:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/09/30/226844915/to-get-the-benefits-of-olive-oil-fresh-may-be-best
Ms. Aubrey referred to a large randomized controlled trial that was published in The New England Journal of Medicine in April 2013
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1200303
that found a benefit when people in Spain who were at high risk of heart attacks and strokes added 4 tablespoons of olive oil a day to an already Mediterranean-type diet (that is, a diet high in fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, olive oil, and cereals and low in dairy products, red and processed meats, and sweets).

Ms. Aubrey stated in her story, "And what researchers found was that a Mediterranean diet rich in olive oil cut the risk of heart attacks and strokes by 30 percent. The nut group, which was consuming olive oil as well, did well, too." This is a touch misleading, though -- and a classic problem with how journalists interpret and report data from clinical trials to the general public.

What the study actually found was that there was a small decrease in the number of strokes in people who consumed the added amount of olive oil, but that there was NO DIFFERENCE in the number of heart attacks, or in the number of deaths (see Table 3 in the paper for the actual numbers).
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1200303#t=article
But because the study combined all three of these endpoints (stroke, heart attack, and death) into a single endpoint, they have been grouped together by the authors of the study -- and by journalists, who are inferring that the olive oil decreased the number of heart attacks and giving this misinterpretation to the public.

This isn't to say that olive oil doesn't have benefits. I just believe it's important that research findings don't get twisted when they are interpreted by journalists.

I also think we should keep in mind that 4 tablespoons of olive oil is a LOT of oil! Adding that much olive oil to your diet would provide an additional 480 calories a day -- and for people trying to watch their total energy intake in order to maintain or lose weight, this can be a significant amount of calories! If you kept your diet and activity levels the same and added 4 tablespoons of olive oil a day, you could pack on a pound of fat every week! So it's important not to just go out and start sucking down the olive oil from the bottle.

I personally think that the sensible thing to do would be to DECREASE the calories in your diet by decreasing other foods containing saturated fats (like butter; high-fat dairy products like cream, half-and-half, cheese, or ice cream; or red and processed meats like sausage or steaks containing a lot of fat) and simultaneously increase the amount of olive oil in your diet (by cooking with it or using it in place of butter or cream on bread or in sauces and dressings). This could provide the healthy monounsaturated fats and other healthy substances like polyphenols without adding extra calories to your diet: a win-win.