Back in 2009, American dude Danny Cahill won Season 8 of the US version of ‘The Biggest Loser’, shedding an astronomical 108kgs in 7 short months.
But in the years since, more than 45kgs of the weight he lost has made its way back onto his body.
He isn’t alone. A large majority of contestants on the show find it very difficult to keep the weight off once they leave the house and don’t continue to train seven hours a damn day.
Noting this trend, a bunch of scientists have been busy studying contestants from Cahill’s winning season in an attempt to understand the physiology of obesity, and to explain why so many people struggle to keep the weight they lose off.
What they found was that anyone who deliberately loses weight, even if they start at a normal weight or underweight, will have a slower metabolism when the diet ends.
The scientist behind the study, Kevin Hall, tracked the ‘journeys’ of the ex-contestants for six years after their appearances on the show. The results showed that 13 of the 14 contestants regained weight, because the body fights incredibly hard to keep weight on.
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It’s all to do with resting metabolism, which dictates how many cals a person burns when they’re resting.
So, when the show started, the contestants had normal metabolisms for their hugely overweight sizes, meaning they burnt a normal number of calories relative to their weight. When the show finished up, their metabolisms had slowed down immensely, meaning their bodies weren’t burning enough calories to maintain their newfound smaller sizes.
Detailed in a piece by the NY Times, what shocked the researchers most was that as the years marched by and the contestants kept gaining the weight they’d lost, their metabolisms did not speed up. Instead, it became even slower than before.
Danny Cahill’s case was the worst – his metabolism has slowed so much that just to maintain his current weight, he can eat only 800 calories a day. Anything more, and he’ll begin to pile more weight on.
For context, the average man his age can eat 1800 a day to maintain a healthy weight.
While the findings of the study can be seen as wholly depressing, it might explain why there’s an obesity epidemic both here and in the States. Despite some people putting in their best efforts, they’re working against their own biology.
One striking point outlined in the feature was that those who are trying to lose weight shouldn’t blame themselves when the pounds come back with a vengeance. Obesity research has shown, again and again and again, that folk who diet are up against hormones and metabolic rates that pull ’em back to their old weight.
Another contestant in Season 8, Rudy Pauls, put it well when he told the Times:
“‘The Biggest Loser’ did change my life, but not in a way that most would think. It opened my eyes to the fact that obesity is not simply a food addiction. It is a disability of a malfunctioning metabolic system.”
Source: NY Times.
Photo: The Biggest Loser Australia.
