BIGGEST LOSERS?!?!?!

I'm always looking for a better way to stay fit and drop some pounds. You might say the magic bullet. (NO SUCH THING FOR WEIGHT LOST OR FITNESS) Here are some great tips from the TV show Biggest Losers
How Big Losers Burn Fat
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.
Brady Vilcan took a hard look at his life and realized he was setting a poor example for his two kids. "We rarely got a lunch break at CVS," says Vilcan, a pharmacist. "I'd often go all day without touching food. If Vicky cooked, I might have three large servings. But mostly, I'd pick up cheeseburgers or pizza." He would also bring candy home from the pharmacy for the family. While watching TV, he might have two or three bowls of ice cream. "My grandfather was heavy. I remember going to Weight Watchers with my mom when I was a kid. Now my 4-year-old daughter, Lucy, outweighs my 7-year-old son, Chance. We've got to break this chain."
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."
Weigh your fillet. The first thing Vilcan did when he returned home from the ranch was buy a food scale. "Portion size can get away from you in a heartbeat," he says. "If you want to lose weight, you have to know what a serving is and how many calories are in it." Do you really need to order that 16-ounce fillet when the 8-ouncer will fill you up? Each "Biggest Loser" contestant's daily calorie limit is calculated using a formula that considers starting weight, body-fat percentage, activity level, and goal weight. For Vilcan, it's between 1,750 and 2,000 calories, depending on how much he's exercising. "Realizing how much exercise it takes to expend the calories in food really puts things into perspective," he says. "I mean, look at these cheese fries from Outback Steakhouse. They're 2,900 calories. No friggin' way am I gonna eat that."
Start with weights, finish with cardio. Strength training with weights creates an afterburn effect that keeps your body churning through calories at a higher rate, even at rest. And it's widely known that muscle is more metabolically active than fat. So "Biggest Loser" contestants pump weights about 2 hours a day. "In the beginning we focused a lot on weightlifting to build up the muscle," says Brantley. "Then we switched to more cardio to shed the pounds." The key with cardio is to find something you enjoy doing to beat boredom. "I hated the elliptical; it was too easy, I didn't feel like I was doing anything. Now the spinning cycle, that's fun, and it is a real workout. I'll do 2 hours a day on that."
Pig out once a week. One day a week at the "Biggest Loser" ranch is designated a high-calorie day, when contestants can go over their calorie limits. "We do it to make the point that this isn't going to be a life of deprivation," explains Harper. "You can't sustain that. You want to develop healthy habits you can live with."
The contestants typically choose to order out for burritos. "The next day, they really feel the effects of all the sugar and sodium-filled food," says Harper. "They feel like crap. They learn very quickly that a healthy body that's been exercising and eating right doesn't want all that fat and processed junk."
Book court time for 2015. The biggest lesson "Biggest Loser" contestants learn is that their healthy lifestyles don't end when the cameras stop. "There's no finish line. That's a big pill for people to swallow," says Harper. "Every single day for the rest of your life, you are going to have to make better food choices, and move around a bit more."
Michaels calls it "composing a life." "You use fitness to re-create a different set of experiences and attitudes: You go from past experiences of 'I'm a loser, I'm fat, I'm worthless' to 'I'm capable, I'm strong, I'm confident.'" Once you've made that paradigm shift, Harper and Michaels say, you've won.
Harper's secret weapons
Bob Harper, who was a trainer for 20 years prior to joining "The Biggest Loser," believes the brain is the most powerful muscle for weight loss. "I know that this struggle always has an emotional component," says Harper. "Losing the weight isn't all that hard; it's about understanding your relationship with food and taking control of your life." Here are his four top tips.
Ask yourself a question. "Are you ready to change your life? That's the first thing I ask my clients. They have to decide for themselves if they are serious about committing. They have to intellectualize it and see the path ahead of them as a long-term thing."
Treat calories like coin. "I'll limit a 400-pound guy to 2,200 calories a day. I tell him it's like you have a bank account with 2,200 calories in it. You can eat whatever you want; just don't go over the limit."
Eat to program your brain. "First thing I tell my people is that they've got to eat to lose weight. Eat every 4 hours. They know they have to eat within the first 30 minutes of getting up in the morning to set their clock accordingly. And that first meal has to have a good balance of protein, carbs, and good fats."
Learn to cook. "If you are cooking your own food, you know exactly what you're putting in your body and how proper fuel makes you feel," says Harper.