biggest loser diet plan

Biggest Loser Diet Plan Health Concerns

I thought I’d bring attention to one of the most popular health related reality shows on tv – The Biggest Loser. If you haven’t seen it the concept is to take obese Americans and make them battle each other out to see who loses the most weight by the end of the season.

To be honest, as a health coach and personal trainer I’ve never paid much attention to the series, a quick and fast drop in weight is always something that I’ve viewed as being borderline life threatening.

Now that The Biggest Loser seems to have taken North America by storm and numerous seasons later I think it’s important to bring light to the dangers which can result from the strict diet plans and intense workouts inherent to the show.

Biggest Problems with The Biggest Loser Diet Plan & Workouts

First and most importantly, the show sets a false sense of reality with quick and easy weight loss. What we get in an hour or two of watching the show on a weekly basis is not the entire picture.

How many of us are able to have personal trainers on hand for several hours each day? How many of us healthy meals prepared for us that follows strict diet plans to the tee? Do we really know what is going on behind the scenes of the tv show?

These are all questions we should be asking or at least pondering. We shouldn’t have some preconceived notion that whenever we want we can quickly drop 100 pounds in just 7 weeks time. That is quite extreme and although these contestants are not just obese but severely obese is there more to this than it seems?

Is it possible that if we too make a change to our diet that we will lose the 15lbs in just a few weeks? It should be possible if the contestants can loose 100lbs in just 7 weeks right?

The answer is no! If you are severely obese it is a lot more likely that you will drop weight quickly by changing your diet just a little. The thing with weight loss in these situations is that when someone is in the severely obese category, dropping weight is very rapid at the beginning and throughout. It does however get considerably more difficult once they get to the average weight category.

Health Concerns of The Biggest Loser Diet Plan & Workouts

Anyone who is reputable in the health industry knows that quick and rapid weight loss is not only unhealthy, but it is down right dangerous. We are talking about serious problems with cardiac function and bone density issues like fracture becoming a very likely factor.

In fact, throughout the seasons of the show there have been many of these issues with the contestants and some have been hospitalized because of it. And who knows exactly what the long term implications will be for these people? Pretty scary if you ask me, and speaking of long term…

The show isn’t showing or teaching anything of real value. Quick fixes and masking symptoms are by far the most prevalent problems in North America’s health industry (heck the same thing can even be said about our financial sectors!).

Wouldn’t it be more helpful to look at the real reasons of why most of us don’t eat as healthy as we should be? Is it lack of knowledge of what goes in the fast foods we buy, or the improper labeling and marketing hype that beguiles most of us? Perhaps, it is not only this but deep lying emotional problems that many don’t face and mask with eating?

The debate can go on and on, but my goal for writing this article is that we are fully aware that this is just good tv. Sure it’s reality, but it’s in disguise and should be taken as a pure form of entertainment, nothing else.

Your time is perhaps better spent educating yourself about your health and asking yourself what is it that is really holding you back to achieving your goals. Is it simply that you need a good diet plan and workout routine to follow, or is it something more sophisticated?

I’ll do my best to keep providing you with relevant articles that concerns you the most so that you have a resource you can turn to regularly to help you make the best decisions. So far I’ve had numerous people email me and let me know how much this site is helping them stay on track and that is the most rewarding experience of this all. Please keep providing me feedback by leaving comments and adding to the discussion of these articles so we can all collectively ramp up our knowledge and excel to achieve our objectives.

What are your thoughts about The Biggest Loser and the diet plans plus workouts they show on tv?