NARRATOR: While the Biggest Loser reveals why diets fail, contestants like Danny, who continued to exercise, kept off 10 to 13 percent of their weight. And medically, that’s a success, because modest weight loss has huge health benefits, from lowering blood pressure to preventing diabetes.
There’re also medications that signal the brain to feel full and help people lose 10 percent of their weight. And if you want to lose 100 pounds or more, there’s another option.
One that Muriel Mena chose to avoid the fate of her mother.
MURIEL MENA: I was three. And I remember she was talking on the phone, and she collapsed, because she had a heart attack. And then I just remember E.M.T.s rushing in.
NARRATOR: At age 44, Muriel’s mom weighed 300 pounds and had died of heart disease. As an adolescent, Muriel began struggling with her weight, just as her mother had.
MURIEL MENA: I was going to the doctor’s and having to get my heart checked, and I was like, “Wait. This is weird. Like, I’m 13 at a cardiologist’s.” It was always in the back of my mind, “Oh, this is what she passed from.”
NARRATOR: By age 16, Muriel, like nearly 5,000,000 American teenagers, had obesity and qualified for bariatric surgery, which bypasses or removes part of the stomach.
CAROLINE APOVIAN: Bariatric surgery is the only way that most people with severe obesity can, not just lose weight, but, most importantly, keep it off.
So, you’ve been doing great. The first thing I want to show you is 275 was your highest weight; your body mass index was 43. After surgery, you went all the way down to 172 pounds and a B.M.I. of about 28. And that’s really fantastic!
Originally, we thought that bariatric surgery worked by making the stomach much smaller, so that you couldn’t eat a lot of food. We now know that the hormones that come from the G.I. tract and go to the brain, change in a way that cause satiety earlier, sooner and with much less food.
NARRATOR: These signal changes, between the gut and brain, help the body reset its set point for years. But hunger can return, because our weight is as regulated as our blood pressure and heartbeat.
RANDY SEELEY: The ability to control our weight is distinctly outside our conscious control. People don’t like to hear that. We all want to think that we’re in control of when we put the fork down. But there are lots of biological forces that are controlling what weight it is that you end up at.