19 August 2013 /REUTERS, NEW YORK
Celebrity trainer
Bob Harper, of the weight-loss TV show "The Biggest Loser," has built a
career putting very obese people through some grueling fitness paces but
if he's learned anything from the experience, it's that diet trumps
exercise every time.
The Los Angeles-based trainer,
who was born on a cattle farm in Tennessee and arrived in California
some 20 years ago, said gone are the days when he believed it was
possible to just exercise the pounds away.
"It is all about your
diet," Harper, 48, said during a break from filming Season 15 of the
long-running US show. "I used to think a long time ago that you can beat
everything you eat out of you and it's just absolutely not the case."
Harper
has spun his TV fame improving the fitness of people who are 100 pounds
(45 kg) or more overweight into an empire with DVD workouts and the
best-selling book "The Skinny Rules," which offers tips to drop excess
weight.
He said if the “Skinny” of his book titles and fitness
DVDs is meant tongue-in-cheek, it is also the word that his morbidly
obese clients attach to most. "People say, 'Shouldn't I be fit?
Shouldn't I be healthy?', and I say 'Yes, absolutely. But what I always
hear from my contestants on the show is, ‘I just want to get skinny'."
In
addition to promoting a healthy diet, a big part of his exercise
routine includes lunges and other core-strengthening moves to burn
enough fat to let the inner six-pack shine through.
Harper said
the workout is aimed at getting the heart rate up because that's when
people are going to be able to burn fat and when fat is burned off, the
abdominal muscles are exposed.
He also adheres to the no-frills
strength and condition program called Crossfit, which is a series of
timed, ever-changing physical challenges that he says are suitable for
everyone.
"I'm working with people who are 500 pounds [227 kg] and
doing Crossfit on a regular basis," said Harper, who described the
approximately 20-minute workout as well-balanced. "To me Crossfit just
completely makes sense [as long as] you work at your level doing the
things you can do with proper coaching," he explained.
But Dr.
Mark Kelly, an exercise physiologist at the American Council on
Exercise, said that even with supervision, Crossfit can be risky if the
fitness groundwork isn't in place.
"Crossfit has very ballistic
training. You're asking people to move fast through a large range of
motion. Even with coaching, the foundation of stability, mobility and
psychomotor skill has to be laid [first]," he said.
Kelly agrees
that diet is the main factor that can lower weight, but it's exercise,
he adds, that allows that lower weight to stick. He cited the National
Weight Control Registry, a research study that includes people 18 years
or older who have lost at least 13.6 kg of weight and kept it off for at
least one year. Ninety percent of those in the study exercise
regularly. "They're the biggest losers across the nation," Kelly said.
"And the No. 1 thing they did was exercise on a regular basis. Many
simply through walking."
E. BARIŞ ALTINTAŞ
HAYAT ALVI
SİNEM CENGİZ
LAURA MOTH
DENİZ ERGÜREL
BEGÜM BURAK
MAHIR ZEYNALOV
MEHMET SOLMAZ
SEVGİ AKARÇEŞME
OĞUZHAN TEKİN
ŞULE KULU
LAMİYA ADİLGIZI
ALİ ZEYNEL GÖKPINAR
MUSTAFA GÜRBÜZ
ESRA MADEN
ERDOAN A. SHIPOLI
ABDULLAH AYASUN
ABDULLA HAWEZ
HALİL BİLECEN
M. EDİB YILMAZ
İSA ERASLAN
ERGİN HAVA
EMİRHAN YORULMAZLAR
HAROON MOGHUL
FATMA DEMİRELLİ
YUSRA GHANNOUCHI
JAMES KIGER
PINAR VURUCU
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