Biggest Loser

Biggest Loser starts soon and I can't wait! The show is not reality, and nobody (even me who likes to exercise) wants to spend 3-4 hours in a gym every day. But it's so fun to see what they do for training, and you just care so much about these people and their hopes and dreams that I'm completely hooked.

Last night I picked up a little booklet/magazine about Biggest Loser in the checkout line at the grocery store. There's some good information in this quick read. For example:

1. The idea of drinking a glass of water both before and AFTER a meal, so you can make sure you haven't over eaten. (If you can't drink a glass of water at the end of the meal, you probably ate too much.)

2. There's a cool little workout titled "Lunge off the Pounds" that includes lateral lunges, split lunges, and squats with shoulder presses.

3. The info on the upcoming season, as well as the "where are they now?" profiles on past contestants is all fascinating.


But I have 3 problems with the information they present:

1. They recommend a diet of 1050 calories per day for people 150 and under who want to lose weight. If you weight 300 pounds, you get 2100 calories per day, and the numbers vary for those in between those weights. That's not enuff, in my opinion. Then again, how else can you lose oodles of pounds in one week other than by severely limiting what you eat, and exercising ALL THE TIME!

2. In an intermediate ab routine, they recommend doing FIVE to SEVEN MINUTES of crunches on a stability ball. WHAT??? Ok, so I'm in pretty decent shape and can't imagine doing that much!

3. There's a little 5 minute workout that you can do at home. Here it is:

2 minutes jumping jacks (ok, boring, but ok)
1 minute plank pose (I learned how to make plank way harder and better at the seminar this weekend, but I'll write about that another day)
2 minutes mountain climbers

Have you ever DONE mountain climbers? This workout has you doing them for 2 minutes on the floor. The other night my workout included a minute of these with hands on a bench, and I swear I thought my timer was broken!

End of rant. Everyone should watch the new season (just try not to cringe when they have morbidly obese people doing plyometrics, cuz you know they'll keep on doing it).