Less Fat, More Muscle

New research by the Pennington Biomedical Research Institute in Baton Rouge shows that the workouts done on The Biggest Loser not only lose massive amounts of weight but also gain muscle mass.  This one two punch—less fat, more muscle—is the key to real fitness.

The scientists tracked the participants across the entire season, measuring weight, body composition and resting metabolic rate.

USA today reported on their findings, which were presented this week at the meeting of the Obesity Society in San Diego:

• “Overall, the contestants dropped from an average 49% body fat to 27%.
• After 30 weeks, participants lost an average of 128 pounds; 81% was body fat and 19% was fat-free mass, mostly muscle.

This huge loss of body fat and minimal loss of muscle ‘is quite remarkable,’ says lead author Darcy Johannsen, assistant professor of skeletal muscle physiology at Pennington. ‘This means the vigorous exercise helped the contestants preserve their muscle mass, which is the most metabolically active tissue of the body.’”

Read more about this study in this USA Today article, "Biggest Loser workouts drop fat without losing muscle mass".

As the Fitness Equipment Partner of the Biggest Loser we are extremely proud of the trainers, show and contestants. 

For those of you watching this season of The Biggest Loser you can see just how hard they all work as a team to achieve these amazing results.

It may shock you, but we expect this season the numbers will be even better.  This season The Biggest Loser replaced all their elliptical machines with Cybex Arc Trainers, which we call the fat burning machine.

As we noted in a recent blog, if an average person does three hours of moderate exercise a day on an elliptical, at an average of 625 calories burned per hour, he will burn 13,125 a week.  In comparison, if that same person did the same level of exercise, for the same amount of time on the Arc Trainer he will burn 15,225 calories.  A pound of fat is equal to roughly 3500 calories.   The weekly difference in weight loss is almost a full pound—and that is for the average person doing just a moderate work out. 

As amazing as the Pennington Institute’s findings are, with the Arc Trainer this year’s contestants have a major fat burning, muscle building advantage.  We can’t wait to see how they do.