The Article :)

To be inserted in the middle of my ramblings :) Sorry Ugh stupid Blogger!

"i echo all that has been said about the fact that the Bigges Loser people have personal trainers and dieticians available 24/7 and their only job on the show is to workout and eat right and lose weight. not that it's an easy task...but if you had the time to put into it like they do, you could probably lose as much as they do...but that's not realistic b/c eventually you HAVE to go back to regular life where you don't have 6 hours a day to workout and a professional advisor telling you how much you've eaten and what to eat.

I would also add that losing 1-2 pounds a week is GREAT progress. Every pound of body mass is equally to 3500 calories. In order to lose 1 pound a week you must burn 3500 more calories than you take in, which averages to 500 a day. We all burn a minimal amount of calories just by being living, breathing, beings, so depending on your weight you will burn a certain amount of calories in every 24 hour period just by being alive. The heavier you are now, the more you burn for ANY activity, which includes sitting, breathing, standing, walking, etc. Then you burn more for activities. If you google "calories burned" you should be able to come up with a site that will tell you how many calories your body uses everyday, just by virtue of being alive. It is always slightly less for sleeping. Then consider what you are burning with cardio and other activities and see what you are taking in. For example, my body burns around 80 calories for just being awake, and I'm up 16 hours a day so that is 1280 calories I'm burning. While asleep it is like 70 calories which is 8 hours of the day, so there is another 560. That is 1840 total with NO activity. Because I do have to walk around the house, walk to my car to go to school, walk to class, etc. I would guess that I probably burn around 2000 a day total. This is kind of where they get daily value percentages from on the back of food labels. If I want to lose a pound a week, I have to eat 1500 or less calories each day so that I am burning 500 more calories than I eat per day and 3500 extra total calories each week. If I wanted to lose 2 pounds per week, I could still eat 1500, but burn 3500 more each week through extra activity (exercise)-that would be 500 calories a day in exercise, which isn't that easy!

This is long, and I'm sorry if you already know this...but if you don't it was a real eye opener for me a few years ago when I lost weight for the first time in my life. You really have to work hard to get that 3500 extra calories burned each week for one pound of weight loss. Now, imagine what it would take to get some of those numbers we see on the biggest loser! You really would have to workout to burn about 5,000 calories a day...which is a LOT of exercise, and still maintain a low calorie intake!"