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How Big Losers Burn Fat

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The December issue of Men's Health magazine has a great article by Jeff Csatari called "How Big Losers Burn Fat". Through his recent interviews with Biggest Loser Cast and Experts, Jeff highlighted the secrets that help the show's contestants shed the pounds and rediscover their waistlines (and muscles!).

Find a good reason to lose. It took some time, but Ed Brantley finally realized he had a food addiction. "The cravings would come and I would be like, 'hey, let's get high,'" says Brantley. "I was literally hooked on the euphoria of eating." It didn't help that he and his wife, Heba, had a full social calendar with many an opportunity to wine and dine. "If we want to have children, and we do, we knew we had to change our lifestyle and take control of this," he says.

Never skip a cheese stick. After six seasons with the show, nutritionist Cheryl Forberg, R.D., says the two most common mistakes made by nearly all the contestants who've passed through the ranch are skipping meals, particularly breakfast, and not consuming enough calcium. "They feel they don't have time to plan ahead, but skipping meals can lead to grabbing fast food and overeating because you're starving," she says. To keep their metabolism revving high, Biggest Loser contestants are trained to eat five or six times a day -- breakfast, lunch, and dinner, small meals made up of high-water-volume vegetables and fruits, whole grains and lean protein, plus two or three snacks. "Most people don't get enough dairy products in their diet," Forberg says. "Men need 1,000 milligrams of calcium. You can achieve that through three servings of milk, yogurt, and/or cheese a day. We encourage a low-fat cheese stick with a piece of fruit for between-meal snacks."

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