Check out this feature story in today's NYTimes. It reports on a very good research study with albeit a small sample -- 14 of Season 8's 16 "Biggest Loser" contestants.

(FYI, TBL's Season 8 was in 2009.)

Summary: Dramatic weight loss lowered their basal metabolic rate, and it never came back up.

But we already knew that, after decades of yo-yo dieting, right?

BTW, one of the contestants (Rudy Pauls) had weight loss surgery since being on TBL and is doing pretty well weight-wise.

I predict this is going to be a huge news story for some time.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/health/biggest-loser-weight-loss.html?emc=edit_th_20160502&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=40256033&_r=0

Great thread, great topic! Loving the discussions!

http://acsh.org/news/2016/05/03/maintaining-biggest-loser-success-is-harder-than-attaining-it/

Many, if not most of us at some point in the recent past, have tuned into NBC’s reality show, “The Biggest Loser,” which depicts the struggles and victories of extremely obese individuals to lose weight. While there have been many victories over the course of the show, with people losing massive amounts of weight, followup studies have demonstrated that much of this weight is often regained. For example, as discussed in the New York Times, the man who lost the most weight — 239 pounds in seven months — has put about 100 pounds back on in the six years since that accomplishment.

The good-news part of this somewhat depressing scenario is that by studying such individuals scientists are learning more about the physiology of weight loss and obesity — information that may be helpful for future weight losers.

A major insight was that after weight loss, the contestants’ metabolic rates slowed. But what was new was that after a six-year period the rates did not normalize, but stayed low — and in some cases decreased even further. What this means is that the reduced obese can’t eat the number of calories that a person of the same size who had not lost weight can eat. In the case of the biggest loser above, to keep his new body weight constant he would have to reduce his calorie intake to 800 calories less than a non-loser of the same size. It’s as though the reduced person is fighting his or her own biology; so far there are no proven ways to change that.

However, research is ongoing to find something that can interfere with this situation. For example, the hormone leptin, which is produced by fat cells, signals the body that it has had enough to eat. When a person loses fat, though, leptin levels fall, and he or she becomes hungry. In fact, once the participants had lost their weight, they produced hardly any leptin at all. It might be possible for a drug to mimic the action of leptin so that the person doesn’t feel ravenous all the time.

While the results of the followup study were not encouraging for those with a lot of weight to lose, they don’t necessarily apply to those with more moderate weight-loss goals. Yes, the metabolism might well slow somewhat, but it’s unlikely that losing 10 pounds would slow it as much as losing 100. Obviously, the most reasonable way to deal with the issue is to avoid obesity in the first place, and thus to keep metabolism on an even keel.

Interesting info from the NYT:

http://nyti.ms/24syPBx

TL;DR=We're all screwed.

Just saw a response to the article first mentioned about The Biggest Losers show in this post. I have to say I did not know they worked out so much or ate so little either. That by itself would have let me know that was probably unsustainable.

It is a sort of rebuttal and realistic stance by The Washington Post that puts it all into better perspective and is more encouraging.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/05/05/why-the-weight-loss-study-everyone-has-been-sharing-is-kind-of-misleading/

Edited May 5, 201610 yr by ExcitedAt55

@@gpmed

I don't think so. I lost 100lbs and my RMR was higher than expected for someone my height and weight. I have lost an additional 30ish pounds and I am going to have it tested again soon. We will see if I have taken a nose dive after 120ish pound loss.

I think the issue is how they lost weight, not that they lost weight. You can't really let a "study" of 16 people be canon.

Edited May 5, 201610 yr by OutsideMatchInside

Just saw a response to the article first mentioned about The Biggest Losers show in this post. I have to say I did not know they worked out so much or ate so little either. That by itself would have let me know that was probably unsustainble.

It is a sort of rebuttal and realistic stance by The Washington Post that puts it all into better perspective and is more encouraging.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/05/05/why-the-weight-loss-study-everyone-has-been-sharing-is-kind-of-misleading/

Thank you for this link. Very encouraging news re the metabolic rate effects (nil) of rapid weight loss on WLS patients:

"The most telling indication that the high metabolic price “Biggest Loser” contestants paid isn’t a dieter’s destiny is a study that followed 13 pairs of subjects, matched for gender, weight and age. In each pair, one was a “Biggest Loser” contestant and the other a bariatric surgery patient. At the seven-month mark, the contestants showed an average penalty of 419 calories (and they weren’t followed after that point). After six months, the surgery patients showed a 201-calorie penalty, but after a year it disappeared."

And here's the actual (2014) study referred to, done by the same researchers that did the NYTimes-reported Biggest Losers Season 8 research:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4236233/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/05/05/why-the-weight-loss-study-everyone-has-been-sharing-is-kind-of-misleading/?tid=sm_fb

Excerpt below from the above article in today's Washington Post (my emphasis):

Is there a metabolic penalty, in other words, for getting lighter?

Much of the evidence shows that there is some, but the amount varies. And some of the evidence shows none. In the none category, there’s a study of women who lost 5 percent of their body weight (with a high-Protein diet and exercise) with no metabolic penalty. And two studies of people who underwent bariatric surgery, all of whom lost significant weight, showed no disproportionate decrease in metabolism. Sometimes, there’s a temporary metabolic penalty that disappears after a while. A 2012 meta-analysis that looked at data from nearly 3000 subjects from 71 different studies found no penalty.

Edited May 5, 201610 yr by Sylvia13

I realize this is an older thread, but I found it fascinating all around! Thank you @Sylvia13 for sharing that article in response. Meta Analyses are what you want to look at. They look at a bunch of studies/data on a single topic. Like the author mentioned, TBG study had a VERY small sample and those folks were wrecking their bodies. "Is there a metabolic penalty, in other words, for getting lighter?... A 2012 meta-analysis that looked at data from nearly 3000 subjects from 71 different studies found no penalty." And most of the studies that did find lowered metabolic rates found them to be minor and/or temporary. That is very encouraging!!

Apart from metabolic changes: does it really surprise anyone that all hell breaks loose once a person comes out of a highly controlled and motivating environment into "freedom" again after starving and exercising compulsively for months in a row ?