‘The Biggest Loser’ Diet

How to choose the right foods and set yourself up for weight-loss success following the Biggest Loser plan
By The Biggest Loser Club , This article is courtesy of The Biggest Loser Club online. For more on the diet, or for other weight loss advice, go to www.healthlifes.org
The Biggest Loser Diet is a calorie-controlled, carbohydrate-modified, fat-reduced, weight-loss diet geared to help you burn pound after pound of pure fat–and do so without deprivation or loss of energy.

What’s more, The Biggest Loser Diet is high in lean protein. Protein has a hunger-controlling effect on the body–which is why higher-protein diets are so effective for weight loss and fat-burning.

While on The Biggest Loser Diet, you have the freedom to eat a wide variety of foods, as long as you stick to mostly whole, natural foods.

“Whole foods” are those that have not been modified from their natural state, or have been modified only a little bit, for example, through cooking. Foods that have been substantially modified are classified as processed foods. Blueberries are a whole food. Blueberry toaster pastries are not..

The Biggest Loser Diet PlanBased upon the plan used on NBC’s popular reality TV show The Biggest Loser (where contestants compete to lose the most weight), The Biggest Loser Diet plan focuses on lowering fat, calories, and refined carbohydrates like sugar. The simple theory behind the diet is that weight loss will result if you eat fewer calories than you burn. Some of the rules for this diet are to eat three meals and one to three snacks a day, to use the “4-3-2-1 Biggest

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Loser Pyramid” as a guide for what to eat, and to keep track of your daily calories.
What makes the Biggest Loser Diet plan different?This is a low calorie diet, where you must do some calorie counting. Luckily a great online resource was designed to make calorie counting easy and efficient. The food pyramid used to create The Biggest Loser Diet plan is different from the standard USDA’s (United States Department of Agriculture) My Pyramid. The focus here is to eat more fruits and vegetables, and a moderate amount of whole grains, to increase the consumption of protein and to eliminate sugar and refined grains, like white bread, pasta and even potatoes.
What is the Biggest Loser Diet plan?The Biggest Loser Diet plan works by lowering your intake of fat, calories, and refined carbohydrates. Tracking your calories is a must, and purchasing food scales and measuring cups will help you learn exact portions until you can eyeball these on your own.
Although a book has been published with calorie guidelines based on a specific body weight, the online arena of The Biggest Loser Diet  is easier to use and does the math for you. All you need is your starting weight and a weight loss goal, and then meal plans are automatically planned for you, along with recipes and shopping lists. Animated fitness demos, an online journal, and a progress tracker are also provided as is a customized program for those allergic to specific foods and vegetarians.
If you don’t want to spend $5.00 per week for the website, you will need to learn the “4-3-2-1 Biggest Loser Pyramid,” which sets out the number of servings you can eat daily. This consists of four serving of fruits and veggies, three servings of protein foods (such as dairy, meat, and beans), two servings of whole grains, and an extra 200 calories from the diet’s list of selected foods, including various foods from the three categories mentioned above, as well as additional foods such as oils, salad dressings, olives, avocadoes, and sugar free fudgsicles. Depending on your calorie needs, you have to adjust the type of protein you eat and your portions sizes. The book provides sample meal plans, menus and recipes that follow the “4-3-2-1 Biggest Loser Pyramid” for different calorie levels (including 1200, 1500, and 1800).
The Biggest Loser Diet plan encourages eating four to six meals a day (three meals and one to three snacks), weighing yourself weekly, and avoiding certain “appetite-stimulating foods,” like white bread, white pasta, potato chips, and other junky and refined foods. The diet also suggests many substitutes so that you won’t miss your favorite foods. For example, get ready to experience spaghetti squash, instead of your everyday pasta.
As for a maintenance plan, The Biggest Loser Diet plan provides advice from past contestants on The Biggest Loser on how they kept their weight off. This includes keeping a food journal, sticking with the principles of the diet, only cheating every once in a while, and staying active. Many of the past contestants continue to exercise three to six times a week for an hour or an hour and a half.
The plan is also peppered with advice from prior The Biggest Loser contestants to help motivate you and the online community provides forums and message boards with thousands of posts by other members and past contestants. One unique idea suggests setting up your own Biggest Loser competition. The plan provides directions on how to set-up the competition and provides an official rules list. This is a creative way to get fit and create social support.
What are the weight loss expectations?
The Biggest Loser Diet Plan does not give any specific expectations and says that different people will lose weight at different rates. The plan mentions that two pounds a week is a safe and normal weight loss rate.
Is exercise promoted?
Exercise in the form of cardio, strength and resistance training are all important parts of The Biggest Loser Diet. For cardio, your goal is to build up to 200-300 minutes per week. The diet offers an online program called Base Training, which is encouraged as a starting point, It instructs you on building up to a minimum of 30 minutes of cardio exercise three to six times per week. This exercise can take many forms, from swimming to trampoline jumping, from cycling to wrestling, etc. Other online cardio programs are available, including Tempo Training and Interval Training, both of which allow you to choose the level that is appropriate for your fitness level. The Biggest Loser Diet plan does encourage you to speak with your doctor before starting any of the exercise programs.
The Bigger Loser Diet Plan also offers strength workouts online, including the Basic Stabilization Workout, the Strength and Stabilization Workout, and the Higher Volume Workout. As with cardio, you choose the activity level that is right for you. A basic tutorial is available for both the cardio and strength/resistance training so that you can feel more comfortable before beginning your exercise regimen. You can also track your activity online and view a demo of the exercise.

The Biggest Loser Diet, Analyzed

Although I’ve only seen part of one episode of the TV show “The Biggest Loser”, I’ve been curious about the Biggest Loser Diet I’ve been hearing about. I was sure it is low in calories, but how were the calories distributed? In particular, did contestants cut down their carb intake? To aid me in my research, I took the description of the Biggest Loser Diet in Prevention magazine, and created menus for three different days of the diet. I tried to choose menus that I thought would be typical when following the guidelines, and deliberately avoided making choices that were the highest or lowest in carbs in each category. Here’s what I found out about the Biggest Loser Diet:

1) Calories: The diet has about 1100 calories per day – all three days came to within 35 calories of this in either direction.

2) Carbohydrate: The menus I chose were between 88 and 120 grams of carbohydrate per day, which was between 42% and 53% of the calories. The diet does not allow any added sugar, refined grains, or potatoes, so most people would be eating a diet that is somewhat lower in carbs, and much less glycemic than the way most people eat.

3) Protein: The diet is relatively high in protein. The menus I chose were between 100 and 120 grams of protein per day, which was between 35% and 46% of the calories.

4) Fat: The diet is very low in fat. The highest fat day was the one where salmon was included; that one had 20 grams of fat at 16% of calories. Other days were around 12% fat.

Thoughts on the Biggest Loser Diet:The whole point of the Biggest Loser TV Show (and the part I object to, which is why I will not watch it) is to lose large amounts of weight as fast as possible. Of course, this makes great TV, but outside the confines of the strictly-regulated regieme of the contestants (and probably not even there), it’s really not a good idea.

For most people, this diet would not be sustainable, as after awhile hunger will assert itself forcefully into the equation. Small, relatively inactive women might be able to sustain it for longer periods, but part of the idea of getting healthy is to become active. For this reason, I’m not a fan of low-calorie diets, as I think they tend to set people up for failure in the long run. At the very least, the number of calories should be customized to the individual.

I am also not thrilled with diets which are very low in fat, as our bodies need fat to run well. In this diet, the fat is mostly replaced with protein, rather than carbohydrate, which is an improvement over the usual low-fat diet. Still, I can’t imagine many people living with this for more than a few months, and most of them would drop out long before.

The diet is said to be “carbohydrate modified” in that all refined carbs are eliminated, and other high-carb foods are limited to moderate amounts. This is a good thing, and this amount of carbohydrate restriction works for many people (though some people require a lower-carb diet).

Conclusion: The Biggest Loser Diet could be the basis for a workable diet. I suggest that anyone who tries it and has difficulty add sources of healthy fat if they get hungry. For example, add avocado, nuts, olive oil, coconut oil, flax seeds, etc. (Saturated fats are probably also fine, at least in the context of a low-carb diet.) If they continue to have trouble, they can try cutting out some of the grain servings.