Please help me welcome Stephanie Watson as guest blogger for the week. Over the next week, you’ll read some great insightful posts that she was so gracious to share with us while I’m basking in the Jamaican sun.  I’m excited for you to get to know more about Stephanie.

This first post/article is Stephanie’s personal take on The Biggest Loser before/after.  Very interesting!  You know the show is coming up again quickly on January 5th.  Yes, I’ll be watching!  Will you?

Please welcome Stephanie!

The Biggest Loser Before/After

I love watching the show, The Biggest Loser.

It is exciting to see the contestants succeed, they make it look so easy! Even while I cry real tears of joy while watching their results, I cannot help but be pessimistic.

I looked up what happens to the contestants after their appearance is over. Unfortunately, most of the contestants either gain back all their weight, or most of their weight, eventually. I think we all know why this is true.

Like normal dieters, myself included, once you go off the diet and back to “normal” life, the weight is regained. Not many people have time to work out six or eight hours per day like the Biggest Losers Contestants do while on campus.

As a wife and mom of four daughters, who works at home as a Virtual Assistant, and is a full time graduate student, there just isn’t that much time left in my day to do anything for me, much less exercise six hours a day. I’m lucky to get in a five second walk to the bathroom for a shower.

What is the answer? How do we lose weight and get healthy if we can’t do what the contestants on the biggest loser do?

The answer is to treat our weight loss as something more than simple diet and exercise to lose weight. Diet and Exercise have to be true life changes that are possible to do in our busy schedules.

The truth is, if I gave up watching The Biggest Loser I could probably devote that time to going for a walk, or other exercise. Also, every single day of my life I could choose to make a better choice in what I put in my mouth.

My husband and I once watched a show about people who train for marathons. The premise was to ask, “Does exercise really help with overall weight loss?” The surprising answer was, no. I wish I knew what channel we watched this on, all I do remember is how surprised we were at the results.

Exercise did help the contestants with their endurance and lung capacity. However, the only people who lost weight were those who controlled their overall calorie intake. Even the people who had to drop out of training due to injury continued to lose weight as long as they were controlling their calorie intake.

This really helped me a lot. I tend to be an “all or nothing” type of person. If I can’t exercise today I figure I might as well eat the donut or bag of chips. Now I cannot use that as an excuse to backslide on my eating because it’s been proved for me, eat right, lose weight. It really is that easy.

Stephanie is a Virtual Assistant http://www.stephaniewatson-va.com and just started a community to help others who struggle with weight issues. http://www.toughloveweightloss.com