I was always somewhat critical of the Biggest Loser on TV so when a local training center asked if I would volunteer to coach 8 biggest loser contestants for a radio promotion I figured it would be  a good research project.

This is what I learned:

I admire anything that can inspire and motivate others to improve their lives. I do however see a string or irony where that something that inspires exercise can keep someone parked on the couch for 2 hours at a time.

I actually volunteered for a local Biggest Loser competition here in VT over a year ago for research into this very subject. Here’s what I learned….

1) The amount of time spent training and the effort put into even my little biggest loser group was way, way WWWAAAAAYYYYY more than the average gym goer gets. When We had our first meeting I told everyone I expected them to get 3-4 hours of activity per day. The members on the show get that much exercise before lunch and they are not even half way through the day. Video editing can make each workout day seem shorter than it really is. Make no mistake about it, the contestants on that show are training like pro athletes.

2) It’s a game that’s all about the number on the scale. So with that in mind we used some strategy like limiting salt intake and drinking minimal water 24 hours before weigh in to get that number as low as possible. We certainly used tactics I wouldn’t have ever advised in any other situation.

3) The camaraderie is very good, and people helped each other left and right. As a whole everyone had massive success on the program but once the program was finished everyone scattered and lost all of their results. (So far as I know) I even went out of my way to try to stay in touch and offered crazy low prices at the gym I work at (the boss was not happy) to keep the train roll’n but few took me up on it. By the end of the year everyone was back to square one so far as I could tell because the system that produced the results had ended. The lesson here is that it’s important to establish habits and fitness tactics that you can keep for years into the future.

4) As far as the show goes I know some people feel down that they don’t lose the weight or have that kind of success in real life, but I also think that some of the past seasons have done a good job of keeping things in context like in that one episode where they all had to take on jobs and had only 2 hours a day to workout.

I often use the show as a perfect example that the best way to achieve big results is to literally put your current life on hold and live some other life for a while. Military boot camp is another example. It’s important to keep in mind that hardly anything from the contestants former lives follows them to the camp. That’s why they have limited contact with family and  friends. It’s a perfect example of how every little thing in your life is a factor in your fitness and not just the diet and exercise.

So yea, good, bad and like everything else take what you like and throw away the rest.

Oh and BTW my team had the most weight loss in my own little Biggest Loser competition. I had some real rock stars!

Be fit and live free,

Matt Schifferle