I wonder...calories/biggest loser

So I'm watching Biggest Loser and it seems like they exercise about all day...and very, very intense. I wonder how many calories they are allowed to eat per day. Imagine those hard workouts what a huge "deficit" they'd have...lol. I wonder if they follow the same rules about eating enough to have a less than 100 deficit and such.  Anyone ever heard?

I read in a news article that they figure out their daily calorie limit by multiplying their weight by 6. So a 250lb person would eat 1500 calories. They also said the mininum they let a contestant eat is 1000 calories towards the ending of the show when some of the females weigh around 150lbs.

Original Post by salmander23:

and in my opinion, the damage of being obese FAR outweights the damage of losing that extra weight maybe too quickly. I think it's better to have them lose a bunch of weight and be in a healthy range and then even if they gain a few pounds after the show, they wouldn't be obese. Does that make sense at all?

Not to me.  Yes, there are long term risks associated with obesity, but I also think there are risks with extreme weight loss schemes that can leave people both physically and mentally worse off short and long term than they were before the weight loss. 

The physical toll is the risk of malnutrition, the risk of losing too much muscle and bone mass, super stretched out skin that never recovers its elasticity.  The mental toll seems even worse to me.  If I lost bunches of weight while supervised, then put some or all of it back on, I would feel like a complete loser (and not in the way they mean in the show title).

Many studies show great health benefits from even 10% weight loss regardless of the starting weight.  So, if a 300 pound person loses 30 pounds, they can be much healthier and at less risk of long term problems, even though at 270 they are still obese.  Some experts recommend losing 10% over a 6 month period, maintaining the new weight for 6 months, then losing the next 10%, etc.

I have lost about 20% of my starting weight over the past 10 months, and am still losing steadily at about 1 to 1.5 pounds per week.  I feel (and look better), and although I will be even happier when I get to my final goal, I see no hurry to get there, because nothing will really change once I do.  I will still need to keep eating well in appropriate quantities, and moving enough to maintain my goal weight and my health.