Biggest Loser Asia

OK, this week since i am absolutely swamped with work and traveling for work, Kasey Brown decided to volunteer a post on my blog as a guest writer. So take it away Kasey....

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Hi everyone! Kasey here. Rajan's letting me sort of guest-write on his blog this week, so I thought I'd talk about the Biggest Loser Asia, which I just recently started watching. Mostly out of disbelief.

First I need to lay down a few scientific reasons behind why the show is completely retarded. I mean most of us know how retarded the show is, but we'll get specific. The entire premise of the show is ridiculous. The contestants are judged based on how much weight they've lost, NOT on how much fat they've lost. Does anyone here know how much weight you will lose if you fast for a week? Depends on activity level and metabolism of course, but whatever amount you lose, around 70% of that weight will be muscle, not fat.

The body has plenty of stored fats and carbs in the adipose (fat)tissue, but it does not store protein OR amino acids there. 1 protein is made of 20 amino acids. Each of those amino acids has an important job in the body. L-Arginine and L-Tryptophan help regulate hormones, while L-lysine assist in calcium absorption, bone formation, and fights viruses. L-Glutamine has a dozen different functions, as do the branch chain amino acids, Leucine, Isoleucine, and Valine. Out of those 20 aminos, 8 are ESSENTIAL (meaning you'll eventually die if you dont get them)

So where does the body store the aminos and proteins? In the muscles of course. And the body is more than willing to start tearing up its muscle reserves to provide itself with the vital tools (amino acids)it needs to continue living. Thats generally why fasting is a BAD idea, and eating 5 to 6 times a day is a GOOD idea. By getting protein in every one of those 5 meals, your body has no reason to tear down its own amino acid reserves (muscle). Since muscles are the primary providers of metabolic rate, losing muscle means fat loss becomes more and more difficult as time goes on.

This is also why the best way to beat a fat loss plateau is to start deliberately gaining weight. By eating more than you need and lifting heavy weights, you rebuild some of that lost muscle, which then helps you start losing fat again.

The creators of the show, and the trainers (hell even the contestants and most of the audience) are seemingly oblivious to any of this. As a result, the contestants work themselves to a dangerously unhealthy state, are extremely malnourished, and lose tons of muscle mass.

The real irony being that the show is supposedly related to the health and fitness industry, yet the contestants are the most unhealthy people I've ever seen. Underneath the layers of lose skin is probably a person with all the nutritional fortification of a holocaust survivor.

Call me crazy, but I always thought this is NOT what fitness is supposed to be. A lot of the people on the show have probably never consistently exercised or dieted before in their lives. Their first exposure to what diet and exercise should be like come from completely unqualified / uncertified trainers (more on that in my next post) who force them to do work they hate, while injured, and placing them on a

diet that are completely unrealistic.

I mean even in the United States Marine Core the training is brutal, but at least its productive. Physical training is given in measured amounts and they make sure you eat enough so you can see the results of your training. The point of yelling and screaming at you is to force you to develop coping mechanisms you'll need to survive in actual combat. The Biggest Loser Asia has you doing endless amounts of work that do nothing but place you in a catabolic (muscle wasting)state and the yelling / demanding is entirely pointless.

Contestants believe drinking loads of water before a weigh in is going to help, and no one corrects them on this because no one else knows any better either. The deficient diet and overtraining is probably why the contestants have so many various injuries, and yet the trainers still demand they train despite all the pain and injuries the trainers themselves cause without any considerable readjustments. Really, if your client's knee is hurt, how hard could it be to let them do bench presses instead of push ups, especially if the push ups are hurting the knee?

If someone has been weight training intensely, and he weighs in with a 0 kg weight loss, most likely he hasn't "plateaued" at all. He probably gained 2 kg of muscle while losing 2 kg of fat. This is actually the ideal situation - you want as much fat as possible offset by the replacement of muscle mass, and since a pound of muscle is smaller in size than a pound of fat, the contestants will definitely be getting smaller while keeping the same weight. So the ones who haven't lost any weight are actually getting healthier - and are chastised for doing so. Its like being healthy is actually a BAD thing!

There is so much wrong with this show, and I could go on... in fact I will go on next week (or whenever Rajan lets me post again)! Let us hear your feedback. Would you like to see more posts like this from me, or if you'd like to stick with Original Rajan Recipe?

If you found this post interesting and would like to know more about the exact how and why of fat loss and nutrition, ask us about Nutrition Science Level 1 course currently being offered from Kasey Brown Fitness.

This post was made possible by Fitness Malaysia, the letter H, and viewers like you!