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We believe everyone has the right to love their food and feel proud of how they choose to eat. Join the coaches at Confident Eaters as they share their insights and advice to ditch diet culture and step into your power. They've guided thousands of people out of emotional eating, compulsive overeating, and stressful relationships with food. With science based tools and inspiration, what awaits you? Body confidence, food freedom, and joyful ease with eating.
Who Wants to Be The Biggest Loser Anyway?
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Georgie: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Confident Eaters Podcast, where you get proven methods to end overeating, emotional eating, and stressing about food. We are heading for harmony between your body, food and feelings, hosted by me, Georgie Fear, and my team at Confident Eaters.
Christina: You may have heard about or seen the recent three part documentary series called Fit for tv, the Reality of The Biggest Loser on Netflix. I used to love watching The Biggest Loser on TV with my family, which is kind of strange to think about now, but it was really one of the earliest reality shows to air.
For those of our listeners who don't know, the Biggest Loser was a reality TV show where overweight contestants competed to lose the highest percentage of body weight through intense diet and exercise regimens with the winner receiving a cash prize.
Georgie: The show framed weight loss as a competitive transformation journey, often emphasizing dramatic physical change over long-term health. The documentary explores the legacy of The Biggest Loser, which ran on TV from 2004 to 2020. Through interviews with former contestants, producers, trainers, medical staff, and health experts, the docuseries aims to explore the tension between creating compelling TV and safeguarding the health and wellbeing of participants. On its surface and in listening to the producer's perspective, the original show, biggest Loser was meant to be purely inspirational. However, as you listen to the testimonials of contestants, there's numerous allegations and critical reflections of the show's practices. It seems there were some really ugly things going on behind the scenes.
Christina: As coaches who work with individuals who have struggled with their relationship with [00:02:00] food, body image, and health for decades, we wanted to share some of our own reflections on the docuseries and the show that sparked it. That's what today's episode is all about. So let's get into it.
Georgie: As soon as the show launched, the Biggest Loser was a topic of controversy. Even the name of the show hinted that it was going to continue the awful legacy of the entertainment industry, dehumanizing and shaming people who don't fit the literally narrow Hollywood ideal. And it did. I mean, what creator dreamed this up?
Anyway, let's show big people sweating, struggling, running on sand and trying to turn down donuts. Let's make the women wear sports bras and shorts and let's find a way to put the label loser in the title. I'm just, I'm baffled that numerous people must have agreed on this concept and thought, yeah, that sounds good.
Fine with me.
Christina: Controversy and shock were present from the show's inception over the weight loss methods. The exercise intensity and volume were way above what an average person would be advised to do to get healthy or lose weight. Even competitive athletes wouldn't be putting in as many hours a day of training as contestants on the show were expected to. Reports from former contestants and trainers consistently describe about four to six hours of exercise per day.
With some claiming six to eight hours a day during the on ranch phase. It was usually a split into multiple sessions, like a long morning cardio, afternoon circuits and strength, and then homework cardio, like doing the treadmill or elliptical. To give that context that's roughly 25 to 40 hours a week, about three to 10 times the public health guidelines.
Georgie: So three to five hours is the public health guideline, like wow. The weigh-ins were often the most dramatic segment of the show, but what the viewers were not told [00:04:00] was that the weigh-ins did not take place at regular intervals. While the show aired like clockwork once a week, creating the illusion of weekly weigh-ins, it was actually all prerecorded and the weigh-ins happened according to the production calendar. Sometimes there were three weeks between filming different weigh-ins and other times they were as little as five days apart. This helps partially explain some of the seemingly unbelievable losses between scale checks. Unfortunately, it also amplifies the unrealistic expectations of viewers at home who thought they too could and should be losing 25 pounds a week.
Christina: What the contestants ate on the show was also an extreme deviation from what is considered normal or healthy. Contestants recount being pushed to dangerously low calorie intakes, often around 800 calories per day. They were given lists of forbidden foods and under strict supervision. One former contestant recalled an incident where the participants were shown on camera swigging milk for its beneficial calcium, but as soon as the cameras stopped, the trainers made contestants spit out the milk.
Georgie: Let's not forget the health and safety concerns. We'll get to talking about the long-term implications on the participant's weight and psyche, but more immediately while they were on the show, safety was really not taken seriously. People were shown training through injuries, throwing up and even being hospitalized with life-threatening muscle damage. I'm definitely glad nobody died, but it was a real risk taken by the producers. Someone could have had a heart attack, a blood clot or kidney failure. It could have been disastrous.
Christina: During the first season, a contestant named Ryan Benson, who was also the season one winner, claims he put no food in his body in the final stretch. At weigh-in his urine, had blood in it, which is a sign of severe dehydration or kidney stress. Tracy [00:06:00] Yukich, season eight collapsed during a challenge, which was what we mentioned earlier and was later diagnosed with rhabdomyolysis a serious condition that can damage muscles, kidneys, and organs.
Georgie: So as we've covered the concept of the show, its premise and its methods were raising eyebrows right from the beginning. While it's concerning that this seems to have contributed to its popularity with viewers, what's even more frightening is that it didn't stay confined to our TV screens. In the years after the show was popular, many workplaces or gyms held their own Biggest Loser competitions, thinking that this might be a way to motivate people and have fun while getting results. I thought it was a bad idea then, and I still feel that way.
Christina: In retrospect, I have to agree, even though at the time I didn't know better and I thought those ideas were like a fun thing that people were doing.
Georgie: Yeah, I mean, competition can add a fun and motivating element to some things like a spelling bee or a basketball tournament. But when it comes to health and weight loss, competitions are a bad idea for a lot of reasons, most of which we've probably learned through being in this profession. Like we see things and like, oh yeah.
Now in retrospect, things look different.
Christina: Definitely. Firstly, you cannot run a fair competition because we all have different bodies and minds and starting places. Like the example of the woman who developed rhabdomyolysis during a one mile run. Clearly she was not starting in the same condition as the other people who were able to run it without any medical consequences.
People physically respond differently to exercise programs, calorie deficits, illnesses, and other stimuli. Biology isn't meant to be a sport or contest.
Georgie: Secondly, competitive formats encourage extreme methods. Not eating at all like that season one winner did. Dehydrating, using laxatives, stimulants and self-induced [00:08:00] vomiting are examples of extreme behaviors, which are not healthy, but these are all alleged to have been part of the Biggest Loser Show, and these elements also happen when it's just an office contest, even if there aren't $250,000 on the line.
Christina: But here is the key reason that we hate these short-term challenges. While people are engaged in a 12 week or 26 week transformation program, whether it's framed as a contest or not, they aren't learning what they need for lifelong weight management. They are testing themselves to see how hard they can push for a temporary spurt when what they really need is to discover how to pace themselves so they can keep engaging in healthy behaviors for decades.
They need to create habits which are rewarding and comfortable enough to continue, and basically nobody is doing that in a short term challenge or weight loss contest.
Georgie: Also making a person's weight loss progress public, whether that's via major network television or just posting it on the office bulletin board can cause a lot of unintentional psychological damage. While this can be an attempt to provide social accountability in this form, it really fails. Shame and embarrassment are the natural consequences, and virtually everyone feels like their results aren't good enough. Usually only one person feels good- the person who's winning the contest. On the television show, contestants who weren't losing as much weight were portrayed as lazy, defiant, or incapable. None of these were true. Sometimes they were injured, sometimes they were giving it their absolute best. Greater levels of public humiliation shame and stigma have never and will never help people become healthier. This isn't just our opinion. It's been supported repeatedly by research in various forms.
Christina: The fact that contestants were totally removed from their normal lives makes for good television on the biggest loser, but it [00:10:00] doesn't foster lifelong behavior change. When people return home and the cameras are gone, they're surrounded by their beer loving friends, the excellent fried chicken place on the corner, and the teenage daughter who loves baking.
Being at a ranch with a fully equipped gym and kitchen full of healthy food, not to mention TV cameras to catch anyone who succumbs to the midnight munchies, does not mirror real life. Real life for most people includes major time constraining responsibilities like work and childcare. Negating the possibility of spending eight hours on the elliptical.
So it's not a surprise to us that Biggest Loser participants regained about 75% of the weight they'd lost in the six years following the show. The show was about ratings and profit, not equipping people for better health.
Georgie: So in the short term, contestants went through hell. Let's talk about the long-term effects of their experience. The documentary references studies showing that contestants years after the show still burn far fewer calories on average than expected, about 700 calories per day, less than equations would predict. This suggests that there's lasting metabolic suppression. Also participants tended to regress in their dietary restraint slowly increasing their calorie intake. This explains why, as Christina said, they regained about three quarters of the weight they lost. And at the six year mark, former contestants were eating about 90% of the calories they customarily consumed before the show.
So their diets eventually reverted. It wasn't all physiological change. For some reason, people basically stopped doing things the way they were forced to while taping. I'd suggest that one reason behind this is the fact that they were forced to, to accelerate the weight loss process as much as possible. Time was not taken to consolidate and recognize each [00:12:00] individual's motivations to change. And the low calorie diet rules were never presented as an option, which they as free-willed adults could choose to accept or reject. Flexible restraint was never introduced. There was only rigid restraint, which we know increases the odds of weight regain. If you're interested in the science behind why people regain weight and how you can not be one of them, check out our episode on Weight regain. We'll link to it in the show notes.
Christina: So in the long term, the physical results of the Biggest Loser method are disappointing, but not surprising. The psychological impact of the show is, I'm afraid, not much of a rosier picture. Instead of a healthy, happy relationship with food and exercise, prior contestants were left with lasting internal conflict about both.
There was a specific part of the docuseries that discussed some of the temptation challenges. These involved contestants being offered tempting low nutrition foods in unlimited quantities. They were encouraged and even incentivized to eat more calories at the risk of not achieving a successful weigh in that week.
Sometimes they were rewarded for eating desserts with privileges, like the opportunity to call their families. Talk about mixed messages. Foods which were forbidden, were all of a sudden being encouraged ? That whole concept goes completely against improving someone's relationship with food. These challenges are characterized by some interviewees as cruel psychological tests that don't teach any long-term skills and damaged their relationship with themselves.
Georgie: I just wanna like smack my head and like shake it when I hear about people like, oh, if you eat some of this cake, you can call your family. Like, oh my God, it like hurts me so much
Christina: Yeah.
Georgie: to even hear that that was a thing. I can only imagine how these participants felt about physical activity too after it had been so [00:14:00] excessively forced upon them. Instead of movement being associated with fun, a way of relieving stress or an enjoyable way to spend time with friends, or a way to get stronger workouts on the biggest Loser were about burning calories, suffering, and they were dotted with visions of falling and vomiting. That's not what I would call conducive to a healthy relationship to physical activity. I wouldn't be surprised if everyone went home and just wanted to sit on the couch for six months.
Christina: Yeah.
Georgie: It's worth mentioning not every participant had the same experience, and one woman in particular reports that her time on the show had a positive impact on her life. She felt that the relationships she formed with the doctor and with the trainers helped her gain confidence and that she's better for the whole experience. But most of the voices who have spoken up in the years since the show wrapped felt that their overall experience was negative. They lost weight only to regain it, and sometimes more. They felt shamed and used, and in many ways they were. After all the trainers and TV executives got rich. The participants? They got hair falling out, aching joints, and a sense of shame at regaining weight after millions of people had witnessed them publicly slimming down. But how could they keep their weight down when the methods that got them lighter were so extreme, so artificial, and then all of that support just vaporized.
Christina: One of the contestants mentions that there was no long-term support for the contestants after the show wrapped. Because the show made so much money, he mentioned it would've been nice if they had offered gym memberships or some kind of sustainable support for the contestants, as they went back home, returned to their normal lives. If the producers had cared about the human beings involved, perhaps this would've been designed into the program. Some producers allegedly expected or even wanted [00:16:00] contestants to become ill or collapse because dramatic outcomes made for better tv. The documentary Frames The Biggest Loser as a cautionary tale in reality television. How far a show can push bodies for entertainment.
It raises broader questions about weight stigma, how health is defined, versus how transformation is presented on tv, and who bears accountability for the long-term harm.
Georgie: And that's the main point of contention I see in all of this. It was a television show, not a health intervention. The contestants agreed to be a part of the show, perhaps believing that it would be more geared toward changing their lives, when all along it was about getting viewers and making money. I think it's interesting that through the cultural lens of 2025, the biggest loser looks egregious to most people, But if I read comments on that recent docuseries, some people today feel like there's nothing wrong with how the trainers behaved or how the contestants were treated. When we were preparing this episode, I looked at reviews on Reddit and read people's commentary on both the show and the recent documentary and I saw these reviews split into two camps: one which thought there was actual value in the abusive approach toward weight loss. People would say things like, that's what I would need to lose weight. Somebody screaming in my face. And when I read those comments and people were saying, that's what I would need to lose weight, it was never, that's what I needed to lose weight. This was never somebody speaking from the experience of having been motivated by it. It was just their guess at what would motivate them. And I, I've seen that. I've seen that when people come to us and they're like, I really need the food police. And I'm like, no, you really don't. So yeah. Even people who think that you know, the trainer yelling in their face is what they would need, I would suspect may not right.
Christina: [00:18:00] Yeah.
Georgie: The other camp seemed to think that the show was entertaining because it humiliated people who deserved to be humiliated. They called the contestants, whiny, lazy, or complainers. I also noticed a so what attitude that I found disturbing, including oversimplifications, like, so they gave them caffeine. What's the big deal?
Christina: Yeah. So I think a question that could come up from this episode is what if you like a game or wanna make it fun and still get results by doing some sort of competition. There are ways to use support, accountability, and fun challenges to reach your goals, but you wanna make sure that you keep your eating and physical activity pleasant.
Shame should play no part in this. And you also wanna think about what you are doing this challenge for. It matters what you are incentivizing. If there's a cash prize for total pounds lost, that should be a red flag. don't incentivize what you can't control. Challenging yourself for the sake of developing healthy habits that you want to do for a long time can be prize I've seen certain challenges that encourage consistency and attendance at the gym, or eating more vegetables at dinner, for example If you want to try those out with your friends. This makes me wanna shout out our own accountability groups because I know Georgie, that you designed them to be individualized to each person for that reason. Each person gets to decide what the habits are that they wanna work on, and they are responsible to show up, practice their habits, be consistent, and encourage their accountability buddies within the group.
Georgie: Right.
Christina: I think that's a much more effective way than the challenges.
Georgie: and our accountability groups that we run from Confident Eaters were designed partially out of the disdain for the, the weight loss competition, [00:20:00] you know, whole, I don't, I don't wanna call it an industry because it's not just the biggest loser. I think Jillian Michaels had an app or a program called Diet Bets, where essentially you would place money on meeting particular weight loss goals, which makes me want to go, oh my God, you're still doing it wrong. But it makes me wanna do better. And I know that doing better is possible if we choose to not incentivize pounds lost, but the behaviors that produce the outcomes that we want, we have much more control over it. And, this is not an earth shattering revelation that like I've now dumped on you. Most people know that. They know that they wanna incentivize the process and not the outcomes, but many times we just need reminders. 'cause it's so easy to let you know if your goal is weight loss, it's really easy to focus on the weight loss. And I think we need supportive things like coaches, friends, or software that helps us stay focused on like, you need to do the actions, not just focus on the number on the scale. So. I also feel like I hate when one person wins and then other people therefore don't win
Christina: Yeah.
Georgie: because we all can succeed. So if you do want to use accountability with your friends, we also want you to reject fat stigma. This is something that was pervasive on the show and it still echoes in the comments left today on the docuseries. Creators and professionals who shame and degrade people with larger bodies are not helping to motivate you. Verbally Abusing people about their size is not okay. People who imply that excess weight results from greed, lower intelligence, or unwillingness to work hard, ought to get zero views and zero likes, in my opinion. So I don't encourage my clients or anybody that I care about to fill their social media feeds with this sort of sold as inspirational content. You know, if you [00:22:00] see fitness creators or nutrition creators that make you feel bad about your habits or your body shape or size, this is probably not gonna get you where you wanna be.
Look for people that help you feel good about who you are and what you're capable of, and that is more likely to support your journey. You don't need somebody to insult you or call you disgusting to help you change. If any of your friends take that angle, maybe you can educate them too, that that's really not effective. It also tends to be more effective to have somebody encourage you and believe in you, support you through your mistakes, and help you learn.
Christina: Remember that you have the rest of your life ahead of you, not just a date on the calendar for a wedding or a vacation. If you take on a challenge associated with a completion date, like a 5K race, for example, think ahead of time about what you'll do next. That way you don't just wake up the next day and cast all your healthy habits to the side because the event is over.
Georgie: If you have thoughts on the Biggest Loser TV show, or you watched the documentary on Netflix titled Fit for tv, the Reality of The Biggest Loser, tell us your impression. Was it fair? Was it ethical? Should there be any controls or laws about potentially harming people for entertainment? You can comment via email or drop a note in the chat box confidenteaters.com. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you next time on the Confident Eaters Podcast.