Biggest Loser Iceland finale episode

[Thor]

I figure since a lot of you followed my progress during the show, here is the finale of Season 1 where I placed 2nd in the at home championship.

Unlike our US and other counterparts, 1 week in the show is one week in real life, no tricks, the total time from start to finish is 6 1/2 months.

Its in Icelandic, but still always fun to watch these finale episodes where people do incredible things, the top 3 were really impressive considering the time we had, I hear the US version is 12 months in total.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4v...it?usp=sharing

Here's a few pics, the magazine of our before and after's as well as on finale night we took a great selfie.

Large version of this photo:

NSFW!

[nik-]

How has your weight been since the end of the show Thor? Have you been able to maintain at least some of the routine you had there?

[Thor]

Summer has been tough, up about 15kg but I'm back to a pretty strict regime again after the summer fun.

Starting at the end of August I will be doing a 6 day weight lifting split (late afternoons) and 3 mornings (mon/wed/fri) with HIIT training those days.

Its not easy, but I'm far better equipped now to deal with the ups and downs than I was before the show, not to mention the pressure of wanting to look good going out in public as people still stare when they see you out and about.

We have been asked by the producers to sit down for a recap show in December which will interview us and see how we are doing, its voluntary but I think most of us will do it, at least 7 or 8 out of the 12 for sure, so that is an added bonus of putting on pressure, no one wants to be on that show looking worse off than finale night.

[Thor]

Here's how I look now, these are all from the last few months:

NSFW!

[RyZ]

Good for you. I'm sure it took a lot of hard work both physically and mentally but Im sure it's worth it all. Great success story from one of our own.

[Street Pharmacist]

Extremely interesting findings after following biggest loser contestants post show:

After significant weight loss, metabolism slows waaaaay down. One guy burned 800+ less calories per day than a normal person his size

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/05/02....co/oG7Rye2pae

[pseudoreality]

That was an interesting, be it sad read.

[Street Pharmacist]

Goes to show is likely very important to not gain the weight in the first place

[ernie]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

Goes to show is likely very important to not gain the weight in the first place

Indeed, unfortunately many of us gain it. Likely why you typically want to lose it in a slower more controlled manner so the metabolism drop isn't so severe (my guess).

Also why one should simply support people who are trying to drop pounds (or keep them off) no matter what the end result is. It isn't about willpower for many many many people.

I struggle mightily with my weight and the only time I can honestly even try to keep it off for any amount of time involves me measuring my weight every day or two and honestly usually being hungry. The hunger rarely goes away.

[pseudoreality]

Originally Posted by ernie

Indeed, unfortunately many of us gain it. Likely why you typically want to lose it in a slower more controlled manner so the metabolism drop isn't so severe (my guess).

Also why one should simply support people who are trying to drop pounds (or keep them off) no matter what the end result is. It isn't about willpower for many many many people.

I struggle mightily with my weight and the only time I can honestly even try to keep it off for any amount of time involves me measuring my weight every day or two and honestly usually being hungry. The hunger rarely goes away.

Hopefully the science will continue to evolve and better treatments can be developed. Having a metabolism where you burn 800 calories less a day than normal and are always hungry would suck.

I've had two people close me dramatically lose weight (100+ pounds). One did it via surgery and the other by getting addicted to running. Fortunately they both have been able to keep it off. Personally I have a 3-year 25 lb cycle where I slowly gain the weight over three years, diet/exercise hard to lose it over a few months, then repeat. In an ideal world I’d drop 35 lbs and keep it off, but lately I’ve had some personal set-backs that have complicated things; wife/baby in hospital for 4 months, broken leg, rediscovering Doritos, etc.

[ernie]

Yes I go through a cycle as well though at the end of every cycle I end up weighing more (which as we've all learned is actually typical). I don't have many issues losing it and I actually enjoy exercise...play hockey every week at least once, I like many of the intense Beachbody workouts.

Problem is I lose some weight get addicted a bit to the exercise and push myself too far. Last time I lost 40 pounds and blew my back out (always had a L4-L5 disc issues but aggravated it severely). I basically had constant spasms for a few months, severe weakness down one leg and when that finally settled down I had to do physio for several months. But it led to inactivity and piling the pounds back on. If it's not the back it's breaking my foot blocking a shot etc.

So it's a yo-yo. This time I'm taking it slowish. Making sure the calories I eat are sufficient and can help my maintain some weight loss if my activity level drops because of injury (you never know with the back). I make sure I get a little something sweet for my sweet tooth every day even if it's just a werther's at the end of the day. I don't worry about a bad day but make sure i don't string them together at all (tough during business travel).

It's going well. Down 40 pounds thus far at a steady 2 lbs/week. Need to lose more. My hope is of course to get to my target but then the real work begins....maintaining or increasing the activity level and the calorie intake. It's not just for the time of the "diet" and exercise it's forever. And that is daunting. Really daunting. I love food. I'm never full...even if I stuff my face all day I'm never full. That's where the willpower thing does exist...you have to push yourself through. Push yourself past the doughnut case. I've tried mentioning to to people but they don't really understand...it is sometimes a visceral physical reaction when you pull yourself past that doughnut case. Even months later it's just as hard as it was on day 1.

[TorqueDog]

The problem with TBL is it's just a spectacle for TV. None of this is sustainable living.



I've been coaching a friend of mine in Edmonton (not professionally or anything) and starting from 365 lbs in mid-November of 2015, he's down over 80 lbs and is on pace to be down 100 lbs in July. All from making sustainable adjustments to his diet, tracking his macros and calories. No exercise required; he's not ready for that (by his own admission), but when he is, it'll be gradually introduced and light due to a pre-existing knee injury from high school sports.

All I did was advise him how his diet needs to be adjusted, gave him a calorie range to stay within, and for the first few weeks, exchanged texts pretty much daily to ensure he was comfortable with the process, to field any dietary questions, and provide support. Now, we touch base on progress every week or so simply because I'm excited to hear how well he's doing, not necessarily to coach him... I don't really need to, because how he eats is a part of his lifestyle now.

If you approach the process for your weight loss as a temporary change to reach a goal, you're going to fail and you're going to get fat again. I already learned that the hard way once. You have to embrace it as a change to how you live. If you want to eat like you did when you were 400 lbs, it needs to be a once-a-month sort of treat, or you're going to be 400 lbs again.

For anyone curious, I introduced him to keto. I use it for my cuts now.

[Thor]

Yoni! He's an excellent spokesperson for trying to counter this diet industry, along with Kai Hibbard who's been an outspoken critic of the show after her season on the BL US.

Low carb has been the only thing that has really worked for me, I'm also dealing with a knee injury so my exercise is near zero, but we all know that diet is 99% of the fight anyhow for obese people.

Yoni is also a proponent for gatric bypass for people who have been obese for a long time because of its high success rate. In Iceland the lap band has become very popular and pretty affordable, 10,000 CAD approx, but I've been trying to stear people away from it in Iceland as its success rates are much lower and the benefits of the biome change with gastric bypass fall in line with what the latest research says about our stomach and brain connections in the obese.

This article has gained a lot of attention and I really hope we start to see a shift in people's understanding of the obesity epidemic.

[TorqueDog]

We've butted heads on this subject before, but I can't disagree with anything you've said here. Diet is the biggest thing to overcome, you will never out-exercise a bad diet. Keto/low-carb was transformative for me, and primarily because it forced me to learn about macronutrients, satiety of food, etc.

I don't always eat low-carb now, but I'm comfortable with that dietary lifestyle and can use it for extended periods of time very effectively... in fact, I actually prefer it. I can say with certainty that I will forever have control over my weight, knowing what I know now, which is why I'm a huge proponent of better education on this subject. Health classes when I was in school were not terribly well equipped for this.


I also don't like the lap-band and gastric bypass procedures. They aren't fixing the cause. They make you feel full, but from physical volume of food. Different foods have different caloric densities. A kilogram of broccoli (depending on preparation) will give you ~340 calories (and that's a lot of friggin' broccoli), but only 100 g of cheese will give you ~403 calories. Those procedures (obviously) aren't capable of discerning high calorie foods from low calorie foods.

[ernie]

I've tried extremely low carb diets but ultimately they aren't sustainable for me. I like my fruit and higher carb containing veggies. I don't enjoy eating if I can't get them. So this time I've made a conscious effort to reduce carbs but not to anything close to a 5% level. I just can't do it.

But I did drop it from probably 70ish percent like many people eat in NOrth America down to about 40 so thaat I'm about 40:30:30 on any given day. This is the first time, ignoring some hunger which for me is inevitable it seems, I don't hate my "diet". It's satisfying to me in terms of what I get to eat and I don't find it a chore to maintain. The other thing I realized the past 5 months is that while I love some foods once I have a few bites the "oh my god this is good" has worn off and it's just eating at that point. Once that dawned on me I found it easier to portion control those, shall we say, less than ideal foods.

[TorqueDog]

Originally Posted by ernie

I've tried extremely low carb diets but ultimately they aren't sustainable for me. I like my fruit and higher carb containing veggies. I don't enjoy eating if I can't get them. So this time I've made a conscious effort to reduce carbs but not to anything close to a 5% level. I just can't do it.

But I did drop it from probably 70ish percent like many people eat in NOrth America down to about 40 so thaat I'm about 40:30:30 on any given day. This is the first time, ignoring some hunger which for me is inevitable it seems, I don't hate my "diet". It's satisfying to me in terms of what I get to eat and I don't find it a chore to maintain. The other thing I realized the past 5 months is that while I love some foods once I have a few bites the "oh my god this is good" has worn off and it's just eating at that point. Once that dawned on me I found it easier to portion control those, shall we say, less than ideal foods.

Well that's pretty much it, isn't it? Changing your relationship with food, seeing it for what it is: fuel when necessary. It's sometimes daunting because food is such a social thing.

[Thor]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

I also don't like the lap-band and gastric bypass procedures. They aren't fixing the cause. They make you feel full, but from physical volume of food. Different foods have different caloric densities. A kilogram of broccoli (depending on preparation) will give you ~340 calories (and that's a lot of friggin' broccoli), but only 100 g of cheese will give you ~403 calories. Those procedures (obviously) aren't capable of discerning high calorie foods from low calorie foods.

Actually Yoni specifically advised me to consider the gastric bypass, the evidence shows that this is the only surgery that resets in most cases cravings and the messed up connection between most obese people's stomach/brain connection.

The studies on gastric bypass have been excellent in its long term results and considering what we now know about the seriously obese losing weight and keeping it off long term this until we find something better for that category of people is truly a godsend.

Only of course as a last resort, I would never recommend it casually, you still have to make great changes but the surgery forces you to make changes immediately and for many years to follow which creates a learned habbit that should carry most for a long time. But what intrigues me is the last 3-4 years is all the research in the biome and its affect on how we eat, even the poop transplant stuff is very promising, not to mention the work being done on the gene editing to turn on 2 key genes that increase metabolism, which would be a godsend for overweight people who've had their metabolism damaged through years and years of yoyo dieting.

[corporatejay]

Torque my understanding is lap band is a last resort for people who may actually die from how overweight they are.

[Thor]

Not really a last resort anymore, although Yoni loathes the lap band because of a study that compared the success rate between Gastric Bypass, Gastric Sleeve and Lap band. The lap band failed horribly in comparison to Bypass which was by far the best method with truly promising results for those in trouble. Sleeve was a second to it, with it having solid success but he recommends to his patients only the Gastric Bypass because of the side benefits from it which most definitely the lap band does not provide.

I cannot emphasize this enough, the brain stomach connection is very powerful, the hormone grehlin which has been found to have profound impact on if people because of its key role in telling the brain its hungry.

We are at the start of all this research with this brain stomach connection and Gastric Bypass surgery allows a reset of sorts, which will give the patient a vastly better chance at keeping the weight off.

http://www.livescience.com/14689-wei...g-obesity.html

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-18779997