These Losers Never Quit

Another lesson: Skipping meals is not a good strategy. "Because of the competition, you can start really restricting calories," Chopin says. "You think, 'Wow, if I eat less maybe I'll have a better week.' But we found if we deprived ourselves too much that we didn't have as good results. It was better to eat smaller meals than not at all."

This proven, old-fashioned approach to weight loss is one the show's key messages. "We are trying to talk about lifestyle changes," Broome says. "We are trying to change people from the inside out."

Contestants also learn how to prepare their own food. "My family thought that we had a chef [at the ranch] who cooked meals for us with just the right amount of calories, protein and fat," Chopin says. "But that wasn't the case. We had a nice kitchen and nice equipment, but all the cooking was done by ourselves."

Then there were the workouts. Like other contestants, Kelly Minner, 31, a teacher from Bethlehem, Pa., who lost 79 pounds on the show, was surprised by their duration and intensity at the ranch. "We would work out like six hours a day," she says. "That was our job."

When the three finalists went home for several months before the finale, Minner worried that she would slip into her old, bad habits. "I learned that I have to take time for myself and schedule things," says Minner, who has now lost a total of 102 pounds.

She also focuses on habits, not just on the number on the bathroom scale. Before the finale, Minner weighed herself several times a day at home. "I would be obsessed, and if it fluctuated I would be devastated," she says. "But that was for the show. In real life, it is about being healthy."

Poppi Kramer, 35, a 5-foot-2 actress and comedian from New Jersey, weighed 232 pounds when her manager suggested that she audition for last season's show. "I was not even interested," says Kramer, who had previously shed 50 pounds on the Atkins diet, then regained that weight plus 70 pounds more. "The mortification! I didn't need it."

But then Kramer says she realized "that there are not a lot of roles for someone with a lot of rolls."

She went to the ranch but then, as part of a new plot twist last season, was immediately sent home to try to lose weight on her own. Huizenga and a registered dietitian monitored her progress, but Kramer was largely left to her own devices.

"Anybody can go to a fat camp, where they are secluded, and lose weight," says Kramer. "What I learned by coming home and doing it myself is how to problem-solve and really take care of myself."

She ate 1,100 calories a day -- about 20 percent of what she had been consuming before her time on the show -- and spent at least four hours a day working out. "Any time I had an appointment, I also set aside half an hour to walk to it, so I saved a lot of money on taxis, too," she says.

Her efforts paid off. Eight months after beginning the show, Kramer had lost 125 pounds -- more than half her weight -- and earned a spot on a "Biggest Loser" reunion show.

"It will be a year in December since I lost the weight," she says, "but it will be a big deal when it becomes five years."

The possibility of being invited back for more televised reunions helps keep Chopin motivated to maintain his weight.

"The maintenance thing is a lifetime commitment," Chopin says. "I'm glad that there is a little bit more accountability for me than the average person who loses weight. The main thing is that my health is back and I will be there for my 4-year-old and my 7-year-old and my wife. But if I start to pile on weight . . . well, there probably will be another reunion show." ¿