Earlier today, when I was writing about “The Biggest Loser,” I got off onto a tangent that I decided to cut out and make its own post. This is it. If it seems like I’m starting mid-thought, I kind of am.
Because there’s a cash reward for losing the highest percentage of weight on “The Biggest Loser,” a lot of contestants lose too much weight. Those of us who have struggled with weight have become conditioned to thinking of weight loss as the ultimate goal. But weight loss is not the goal — health is the goal, and the key to health is fat loss. Yes, fat weighs pounds, and the scale is the easiest way to measure success, but it’s not a direct correlation.
Let’s look at it this way. Suppose you’re 20 pounds overweight. Would you consider going to a surgeon and having your left leg removed? That would get you to your target weight. But you would clearly be less healthy than you were before, because not only are you still just as fat, you’re also missing a leg. If no one in the world would consider amputation an effective and useful way to lose weight, why are so many people willing to accept muscle loss for the same reason?
Your body needs fuel. When your body doesn’t think it’s getting enough fuel, it holds on to all its stockpiles — in the form of fat. So when you drastically reduce your calories — or when you create a drastic caloric deficit through a combination of eating less and burning more — you will lose weight, but at the same time, your body will hold on to the stuff it can most easily convert to energy: fat. But how can you lose weight and store fat at the same time? By losing muscle mass.
The problem with our obsession with weight is that we tend to think all weight loss is the same. But just as amputating a leg isn’t an acceptable or useful method of weight loss, we should avoid techniques that cause our bodies to lose weight by way of muscle depletion. Just as with the absurd amputation example, you’re not addressing the actual problem, which is the fat in your body.
So getting back to my point about the contestants on “The Biggest Loser,” I think they often lose too much weight. Because the show doesn’t distinguish between fat pounds and muscle pounds, contestants who are trying to win $250,000 have a lot of incentive to lose muscle mass, because it is a quicker and easier way to lose weight. Just starve yourself, and you will lose weight. Create a massive caloric deficit, and the numbers on the scale will go down. But you will be less healthy, and your body will be less able to maintain its fitness level, which means you’re much more likely to rebound and put weight back on.
For me, $250K isn’t worth that sort of damage.
So true