Exercise, metabolic process, and weight: New information in the Greatest Loser

The Greatest Loser would be a popular reality tv program that ran on NBC for more than ten years beginning in 2004. Inside it, participants with weight problems competed with one another through intense physical challenges and ate a lower-calorie diet to determine who could lose the greatest number of bodyweight.

Prior findings from studies from the Greatest Loser contestants demonstrated not just that metabolic process slows drastically following significant weight reduction, but additionally that regaining the dropped a few pounds doesn’t restore metabolic process to its pre-weight reduction levels. What this means is those who have lost considerable amounts of weight must stick to an very low-calorie consumption to be able to maintain that weight reduction. One show contestant lost 239 pounds and achieved fat loss of 191 pounds, yet six years later, after regaining 100 pounds of this dropped a few pounds, needed to consume an 800-calorie-per-day diet to keep his weight.

New information about exercise and metabolism

A more modern study through the same investigator aims to describe and interpret the findings in the Greatest Loser considering a power conservation model. With what he calls the “restricted type of human energy expenditure,” Dr. Kevin Hall theorizes that since the contestants involved in large, sustained periods of intense exercise, their metabolisms slowed substantially to be able to reduce their metabolic rates and therefore minimize alterations in total energy expenditure. Quite simply, their physiques made automatic compensatory changes to keep energy balance.