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I have been reading a lot of press lately about the recent scientific study on the apparent permanent slowing of metabolism after major weight loss in former Biggest Loser contestants (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/health/biggest-loser-weight-loss.html?_r=0). I was curious if anyone knows about other studies that have been done on more gradual weight loss and metabolism rates. Does the change in metabolism always occur after weight loss, or are the Biggest Loser contestants a special case, since they lose weight pretty rapidly during the course of the show?

So for the last two years, my focus hasn't been specifically on "weight loss", but on general fitness, strength, endurance, diet and exercise, with the faith that the excess flabby-weight would eventually fall off. And even if it didn't, my sturdy mesomorph body type can do just fine below that nice layer of insulation, even if it jiggles more than I want it to. But for the next... four and a half months, approximately, my goal IS weight loss. Very, very specifically, weight loss. In October, I will be arriving in Vegas, at Ellismania 10, as a contestant in the co-main event, the Biggest Loser Bout. Approximately twenty other such individuals, with weights between 270 lbs and 450 lbs, have entered with me, and the TWO BIGGEST LOSERS (which will be significantly easier for the 350+ lb dudes, that's unavoidable) will compete for the year's Heavyweight Title Belt. It might be made out of tin foil, but we don't care... this is a fight for glory. I lost nine pounds pretty fast as soon as I put my mind to it... and over the last three weeks, with my diet and exercise and running and lifting and everything I'm doing, my weight has gone back up by a pound. At this rate, I'm pricing myself right out of the market. I need to lose approx 2 lbs a week until Vegas to be in real contention, and that was happening no problem right up until now. Three days a week, I'm at the gym, doing mostly upper-body exercises (my upper body is very weak), and walking/jogging. I know I'm building some muscle, and some of it is even visible (forearms, shoulders, a little bit of bicep), and I don't want to QUIT that, but I need to change my focus. I do a lot of walking, when I need to go to the store, walking at lunch, walking in the mornings if I wake up early. Weight loss. Cardio. Fat loss. I still have a LOT of weight around the midsection. I'm eating eggs after my workouts. I'm eating tasty soups at work every day. I'm not having seconds at dinner, I've cut desserts and pop almost entirely out of my diet. With my Fitbit and the website, I've got my calories down to ~2000 per day, maybe ~2500 on serious workout days, when I'm burning ~3500 according to the calculations. Once a week I'll have a big dinner with the family, once a week I'll have a restaurant lunch with my office crew, but that shouldn't be completely derailing my weight loss. Just looking for tips. Help. Advice. Focus. Whatever. Cheers!

So my company held an unofficial "Biggest Loser" competition running from October 6th through December 22nd (12 weeks.) Prize was a winner takes all cash prize collected from participants with a $20 buy in. After the 12 weeks, guess what has two thumbs and won the competition.... THIS GUY! By the scale at work (we weighed with work clothes on) I went from 224lbs to 193 lbs. A total of 31 lbs or 13.8% body weight lost! During the course of the competition I also started on StrongLifts as a means to get stronger and not just lighter. I've completed 8 weeks of the program (starting week 9 yesterday) and I have been tickled pink by how much better and stronger I feel. Getting up off the floor no longer required grunts or groans. Playing with my daughters is no longer a cardio workout and my wife has appreciated the extra... uh... energy. Now that I am close to my weight goal of 180 lbs (currently 184) I will be pursuing my strength goals of a 2xBW DL 1.5xBW Squat and 1xBW Bench without bulking. As of Monday my working weights were: Bench 110 lbs 5x5 Squats 165 lbs 5x5 Deads 195 lbs 5x1 Rows 115 lbs 5x5 OHP 85 lbs 5x5 (Failed at 90lbs 5/5/5/5/3 on Monday) Obligatory Progress Picture

Last challenge I decided to stop doing what I thought I should, and just do what I enjoy and love. After my surgery, I have to start over with a lot of things, and being back with J and healthy again, means a lot of things have changed recently...and I need to go back to basics and build my castle the way that works for me, rather than how someone's else's castle is built, from the ground up. My things that I enjoy: 1. Yoga (but I have realized that in order to "do" yoga, I need the perfect surrounding space...which makes me not "do" it.) 2. Reading 3. Cleaning and organizing and decorating my house (but I can't get the process started on my own...stupid Executive Functioning!!! grrrr! so I never actually do it either) 4. Climbing, jumping, running, generally acting like a child outdoors (I don't ever do this either, because I'm afraid of hurting myself mostly, and trying to get someone to do it with me is like pulling teeth around here and I don't like going alone, so I dont do this either) 5. the beach 6. Quiet (which is more of a need than a want, but I have teenagers, so you can imagine how much I get of it) 7. Cold weather (and I live in Florida...grrrrr) 8. Not having to worry about money (hahahahahahaha like this EVER happens ) 9. Helping people 10. Games (video, computer, board games etc.) 11. Making things colorful (decorating them, coloring them, crafts...whatever, I love looking around me and seeing lots of color) 12. Learning new things (which I am not sure why I shy away from this so much...fear of failure is the only thing I can guess, because I really love learning in general) Goal 1: Practice at least ONE video from MyYogaPro every day (the videos vary in length and can be as little as one pose length, so doing one per day is not difficult, but it will get me started back on my "doing yoga" path) A: All of the yoga all of the days! B:36/42 C:30/42 D:24/42 Fail: Less then 4 days/week! Goal 2: Do the Mutant Money Makeover PvE to tackle the dreaded money problems. Bonus: I had already set up a meeting with a Dave Ramsey Certified Financial Planner and our meeting is July 9th...so that will make me stick with this even more (I hope) Complete each assignment each week and stick to my budget. 6/6: A 4-5/6: B 3/6: C 2/6: D 1/6: F Goal 3: Biggest Loser 3.0 which will involve changing my food and exercise too. Lose weight and complete weekly challenge: A Lose weight or complete challenge only: C Neither: F Goal 4: More Organizing/Decorating/Cleaning a la Flylady Do my morning and evening routine and daily mission every day A: All of the cleaning all of the days! B:36/42 C:30/42 D:24/42 Fail: Less then 4 days/week!

5 Details They Cut from My Season of 'The Biggest Loser'By Evan V. Symon May 13, 2014 232,034 views In 2006, The Biggest Loser was in its third season. This hit reality show focused on a group of 14 people sent off to live in a complex together, with the goal of losing weight via the fastest possible methods that weren't amputation or amphetamines. However, behind the hasty weight loss, trumped-up drama, and dramatic music, there lurked a dark side. Cracked talked to The Biggest Loser Season 3 runner-up Kai Hibbard, who told us ... #5. They Hid Real Relationships if the Fat People Were Deemed "Too Fat" Fuse/Fuse/Getty Images Have you ever seen a reality show like The Real World or Big Brother? They all have romantic relationships carefully crafted to draw the audience in. And besides being possibly faked, can you guess what else those relationships all have in common? Skinny people. TV just can't seem to bring itself to show fat people falling in love unless it's the two comic relief characters having their arcs wrapped up in such a way that we don't have to see them bone. Robert Voets/CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images Over in sitcom-land they'll do fat guy/hot wife, but don't you dare think about reversing those roles. The Biggest Loser had romantic subplots that would build throughout the season, too, but the producers and editors made sure to Jim & Pam that shit as slowly as possible. Those "relationships" weren't allowed to bloom until both partners were skinny enough that their kisses were safe for a presumably very shallow audience that knows love only as something bedazzled on the butts of pretty girls' pink sweatpants. AlexZabusik/iStock/Getty Images "Sorry, 'Attraction Can Be Based on Non-Physical Qualities' just isn't cost effective from a glue and rhinestone standpoint." And no, that wasn't because those couples were only down to clown once they were both skinny. Obese people like genitals and emotions as much as anybody else. It was just the cameramen's sacred duty to make sure as little of that got caught on film as possible. They'd straight up refuse to follow actual couples to catch a glimmer of real romance because, and this was their actual reasoning, "Who wants to see two obese people making out?" If we can stomach watching the oompa-loompas from Jersey Shore drunkenly chewing on each other's faces, we could probably manage a couple of hefty folk gettin' tastefully busy in the bushes. #4. The Results Were Skewed and Took Way More Exercise Than They Showed Creatas Images/Creatas/Getty Images Every week on the show, you watched us exercising and working out. That's part of the process, of course -- making people healthier. But they don't show the additional mandatory six hours or so of us furiously flailing the pounds away. They much preferred filming us right at the end of a workout, when we looked like lazy quitters for stopping so early. Even the giant scale they had us all weigh in on was fake. And sometimes the "healthy habits" you saw on the show were no such thing: My season made a big deal of showing us all drinking our milk to prove how nutritious it was. But as soon as "cut" was yelled, the trainers made us spit it out. Calories do not trump calcium, apparently. They claim the weigh-ins you see are weekly, but that's a straight-up lie. When people exclaimed "I lost 12 pounds in a week!" that wasn't always the case. It's all based on filming schedules. Sometimes the real period between weigh-ins was over three weeks, and you got liked like a rock star for losing so much weight so quickly. Other times it was only five days, and the audience thought you were phoning it in that week -- after which you probably hung up and dialed for a pizza, you lazy cheese-beast. Losing five pounds in five days was actually pretty dangerous on its own, but the audience didn't care. The show trained them to expect more results than were reasonable, safe, or sometimes even possible, and failure to deliver in the fat arena got you a thumbs-down. NBCUniversal Television Distribution "This pleases us ... for now." #3. The Show Has Absolute Power Over You RGtimeline/iStock/Getty Images During Season 3, the gimmick was having contestants from all 50 states. To get to the core cast of 14, they flew us to LA, put us in church vans, and drove us off to somewhere in California. The entire time, we were not allowed to talk to the other contestants. Then we were essentially locked in our hotel rooms, being let out only to do shoots or doctor visits. They confiscated all of our stuff -- no TVs, books, magazines, nothing. We weren't even allowed to call our families. My parents didn't know where I was until three weeks later. Jason Merritt/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images "We were a day away from sending Liam Neeson to come find you." They make the fat women walk out in sports bras and spandex shorts. That's only for the ladies, of course -- guys don't have to stroll out in nothing but the classic jock-'n'-socks combo; they get normal exercise clothes. On the "plus" side, once you dumped a bunch of weight, you got to wear a tank top again. Once we're skinny, we've "earned" the right to wear a tank top and dress like a human being who might like to have sex someday. The obese are already seen as something less than normal humans, so the show-runners thought it would be perfectly acceptable to put us in horse stalls and make us run on a horse track, because hey, maybe that small percentage of personal trainers that believe yelling in your face while you're on a treadmill are right and shame does burn calories. To protest, I simply walked the course, refusing to run until they asked me to at the end, hopefully ruining the competitive spirit of the challenge (and, of course, they called it like a horse race all the while). I felt like maybe I'd be able to preserve a little dignity by not running. But in retaliation, they acted like I was just too fat and exhausted to finish. Later, fans on the Internet threatened me because HOW DARE I NOT RUN FOR THEIR AMUSEMENT? CAESAR OF THE FATTIES IS DISPLEASED. Jean-Leon Gerome I have a great suggestion for what to do with those thumbs. That happened to other contestants, too. If you didn't act grateful enough, or you had the audacity to demand to be treated like a human being, they made you look like a huge jerk on TV. That is the mighty power of the television editor: With enough time and a copy of Adobe Premiere, you can make Mr. Rogers look like a blood-drinking psychopath. One woman in my season was one of the kindest individuals I have ever met in my life. Five years after the season ended, she even donated a kidney to save a complete stranger's life. That's the kind of nice we're talking about here -- the full Ned Flanders treatment. But she injured her leg during filming and couldn't run much, so she refused. The people on the show told her, "We don't care -- run," and she said no. Because she didn't comply, they edited the footage to make her look like the biggest bitch in the world. Without the whole "threat of injury" thing, she seemed like a big ol' entitled wussbasket. And guess what? She got death threats. She got so many death threats that NBC had to disable the messaging function on her part of the show's site. All because she had been injured the previous week and physically could not do what they were asking. Medioimages/Photodisc/Photodisc/Getty Images "You misunderstand; those were death threats of encouragement." #2. You Are Physically Ruined Afterward Juriah Mosin/Hemera/Getty Images Losing that much weight in such a short amount of time is not healthy, especially for morbidly obese people. The healthy way to do it is to lose weight slowly by eating well and exercising. But turning down the second slice of pizza and going for a walk doesn't exactly make for dramatic TV, does it? So we did things the other way: They frequently filmed us vomiting because they wanted the viewers to think that working out until you threw up was somehow admirable. It makes good TV, but it can also seriously harm you. NBCUniversal Television Distribution "No pain, no gain!" isn't so great when the gain is more pain. Everyone got injured at some point. It's a virtual guarantee that when you take a bunch of out-of-shape people and suddenly throw them into a Christian Bale-esque workout routine, somebody's back is not going to be up to Batman caliber. For example: My knees are fucked at 35. They should not sound like cellophane whenever I walk up and down the stairs. Can I prove the show did it? No. All I know is that I had no knee problems, and then I got on the show and started running up mountains at 260 pounds. feellife/iStock/Getty Images "Hey, losing meniscus still counts as weight loss." At the end of the series, my immune system shut down due to the effects of losing too much weight too fast. My hair fell out. I can't say I was in better health at 260 pounds than I am now, but doctors told me that everything I did to my body on the show was a physician's nightmare. Before the final big weigh in, I lost 19 pounds in two weeks. That's pretty good progress for half a year of eating well and working out. Doing it in a fortnight is madness. It's only a matter of time before some contestant's over-stressed heart gives out during ... I don't know, a faux-dog sled race with fat people instead of huskies. And when someone finally does die, I'm sure they'll edit him to look like another lazy fat bastard stealing a nap. #1. You Are Mentally Ruined Afterward 9nong/iStock/Getty Images When you're young, you don't always realize what the ramifications of your actions will be. The Biggest Loser had a huge impact on millions of viewers. All of the horrible things I did to try to "win" my health had consequences, and not only for my own body. Once, during a speaking engagement in Colorado, an overweight teenage girl came up to me after my presentation. She was a fan and desperate to emulate the weight loss results she saw on the show. She did everything she'd seen on the show, even the stuff we didn't actually do (like *gasp* drink the milk). Obviously her results weren't as drastic as ours had seemed to be. She didn't have careful editing and outright lies on her side. She was so crestfallen that she resorted to anorexia and bulimia. At one point she felt like such a failure that she tried to kill herself and wound up in the hospital. That's at least one life horribly impacted in the name of more compelling reality TV. But I've heard from lots of other people who tried the same unhealthy techniques to replicate the weight loss results shown on TV -- more than you can imagine. Digital Vision./Digital Vision/Getty Images "What if I change my name to Jillian? That's got to be worth a couple of pounds, right?" What I have come to realize is that I am, at least in part, personally responsible for this damage, because I participated in the show while not even considering the impact it would have. Looking back, I'm disgusted at the whole thing. There's no other show based on the concept of "competing for your health!" The public wouldn't stand for it if we, say, pitted cancer patients against one another to see who The Biggest Cancer Survivor was, but since we associate obesity with comedy, it's perfectly fine to turn overcoming it into prime-time television.

Why yes, yes they are. That being said, what the hell am I doing? Relaxation and Recovery are NOT my strong points, so it could be argued that I never stop "doing something", and that may be true, but why do I never "feel" like I do anything??? Perhaps because I don't "do" what is important to me. Why not? you ask. That IS the question. I have said before and I will say it again, I feel like my life is nothing but a series of chaotic events that I just manage, rather than actually living and enjoying my life...and I am starting to REALLY hate that. So, the ever present question in my head is "What do I enjoy?" and I have a few answers, and some of the realizations I have come to, aren't very pleasant, because well, I am not really a princess as much as i want to be...so I have to live in a world not structured for be to be a princess...and that is not how I like it! So...what do I enjoy: 1. Yoga (but I have realized that in order to "do" yoga, I need the perfect surrounding space...which makes me not "do" it.) 2. Reading 3. Cleaning and organizing and decorating my house (but I can't get the process started on my own...stupid Executive Functioning!!! grrrr! so I never actually do it either) 4. Climbing, jumping, running, generally acting like a child outdoors (I don't ever do this either, because I'm afraid of hurting myself mostly, and trying to get someone to do it with me is like pulling teeth around here and I don't like going alone, so I dont do this either) 5. the beach 6. Quiet (which is more of a need than a want, but I have teenagers, so you can imagine how much I get of it) 7. Cold weather (and I live in Florida...grrrrr) 8. Not having to worry about money (hahahahahahaha like this EVER happens ) 9. Helping people 10. Games (video, computer, board games etc.) 11. Making things colorful (decorating them, coloring them, crafts...whatever, I love looking around me and seeing lots of color) 12. Learning new things (which I am not sure why I shy away from this so much...fear of failure is the only thing I can guess, because I really love learning in general) So, my challenge goals are going to be to actually DO some things I enjoy, and not make excuses. The last time I did anything fun outdoors was when I was doing challenges for BL 1.0, and that seems like a lifetime ago, and i can't really do much physically at the moment anyway bc of my recent surgery...so those will have to wait. I am going to participate in BL 3.0 but it's not going to be part of my challenge this time. Probably next time for sure since it usually goes for more than one challenge round. Challenge Goal #1: Cleaning, Organizing and Decorating: Make a PvS (or PvP if anyone is interested) for doing Flylady daily routines, missions and zone work. and settle definitively on what I want as far as decor changes (I need new curtains and bedroom stuff mainly). I get a rainbow sticker for doing this everyday before 9pm. Challenge Goal #2: Quiet Time: Do the Mediations from the Mat and finish up the WoT series and use my earplugs in the house ALL the time if I need to. Spend 10 minutes after my breathing doing the Meditations, and just read before bed like I have been doing. I get a star sticker for the doing the meditations. Challenge Goal #3: Helping People: I have really been slacking on my Ambassador duties around here, granted I had a good reason, but it doesn't make me feel good to have committed to doing something and then not done it. I have done the same thing with my son's Scout troop and both make me feel terrible about myself. So I am going to go to his Scout meetings every week during this challenge and take on the training coordinator role that I have been assigned, and I am going to spend no less than 30 minutes, 3 days per week here helping out new and potential Druids. Challenge Goal #4: Learn something new: I need to learn how to do the various yoga breathing techniques correctly...and I really have put it off, because I don't ever feel like I'm "doing it right" and so I just quit...but I can't practice any asana right now, but I can damn sure sit on my mat and breathe...so I am going to spend 10 minutes a day just learning to breathe. I get a big smiley sticker for doing my breathing.

Here is the Nerdiversary Party plan All party food will be Yummy and make me happy when I eat it (ie. No gluten or dairy, limit sugar to ONE treat per week, except pre shark week, I get 3, and REALLY try to limit allergens)There will be lots of bendiness (back to 3x/week yoga)Will try new and exciting things with new (and old) friends (participate in all Biggest Loser 2.0 mini challenges)Preferably, all gifts will be Fiction books (I will read nothing but Fiction books for the entire challenge)There will be juggling (I got myself into a juggling PvP! O.o)No grades, no pass/fail, just going to enjoy the next six weeks the best I can, and do the things I love and that make me happy and feel good. My birthday falls on the Wednesday before the challenge ends, so it's a double dose of party!! "If it ain't fun, I ain't doin' it"