The Biggest Loser: TV Trauma, Shame & Ratings

Grab your ankle weights & caffeine pills because today we’re getting a broader understanding of The Biggest Loser. It was one of the most predatory, manipulative and harmful reality TV shows to ever air- so why was it marketed as helpful? And why did people keep watching?

CW: all things surrounding weight, weight loss, and disordered eating

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
The Biggest Loser was a cultural phenomenon. Millions watched as
obese contestants competed to shed massive amounts of weight. It
went on crash diets and punishing exercises with tough as
nails trainer Jillian Michaels, hard Die Why, and humiliating binges

(00:21):
as some hungry contestants cat in to temptations. Now, a
new Netflix documentary fit for TV, The Reality of the
Biggest Loser, is shedding new light on the dark side
of the show, which ran for eighteen seasons before going
off the air five years ago. Dracy Yukich tells Inside
Edition she almost lost her life during a grueling mile

(00:43):
long run in ninety degree temperatures.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
She was rushed to the hospital.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
You say that you actually died during one of the challenges. Yeah,
my body was completely shutting down on me.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
I know that I absolutely did that day.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Suzanne Mendoka, a former police officer from Long Island, hear
it on The Biggest Loser in two thousand and five.
She says she was told to gain weight, yes, gain
weight before the show to make her weight loss more dramatic.
They actually asked you to gain weight before you showed up.

Speaker 4 (01:12):
I was so determined to be on this show that
I forced myself to gain thirty pounds.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
She ended up losing seventy eight pounds in six weeks.
After she was eliminated, she says she had a severe
eating disorder.

Speaker 4 (01:26):
It's not normal to go on a show and be
able to cut ten twenty pounds. There's nothing healthy about that.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
Contestants on The Biggest Loser chalked up eye popping weight
losses each week, which some experts considered to be unhealthy,
and many of those contestants say they put that weight right.

Speaker 5 (01:46):
Back on after the show was over.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
In two thousand and nine, Danny Cahill inspired America by
losing an incredible.

Speaker 6 (01:53):
Two hundred and thirty nine pounds in seven months.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
This is Danny today.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
Every pound is bad yea. Even the show's trainers were
shocked at the gaunt appearance of Rachel Frederickson, who lost
almost sixty percent of her bodyweight in season fifteen. Today,
she shuns publicity after.

Speaker 5 (02:12):
Being trolled over her shocking of hearings.

Speaker 7 (02:15):
If you want to be fat, shamed, dehumanized, treated terrible
because you're obese, you go on the Biggest Loser.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
That would never happen Today.

Speaker 8 (02:27):
Hello, neighbors, lovers, friends, and anyone who's ever felt fat
Shamed By Jillian Michaels, I'm Danielli Scrama and you're listening
to Broad's next Door. Put on your ankle weights, and
tune into your television trauma, because today we're getting a
broader understanding of one of the most predatory reality television

(02:49):
shows ever, The Biggest Loser. Premiering in two thousand and four,
the show made weight Loss into a kind of game
show with very unhealthy habits, tactics, a lot of shame,
a lot of blame, and millions of viewers. The damage

(03:11):
was really long lasting, and it's being exposed even more
through a new Netflix documentary.

Speaker 5 (03:18):
So we're going to talk about all those things today.

Speaker 8 (03:21):
If weight and disordered eating is a sensitive topic for you,
I recommend that you skip this one.

Speaker 5 (03:28):
This one is even.

Speaker 8 (03:29):
It's hard for me to talk about this stuff, so
I totally get it if you want to take a pass.
But there's a lot of really triggering stuff around weight
that happened on the show after the show, behind the scenes,
so please just be mindful of that going in. Hello,
how is everyone? I hope you are doing well. I

(03:51):
hope you are well fed. I hope you are self loved.
If not, I just want to give another warning that
this is going to be a rough episode around subjects
like weight gain, weight loss, emotional abuse, and Jillian Michaels.
So today we are talking about the Biggest Loser. There's
a new Netflix documentary. We are going to listen to

(04:15):
the trailer for it.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
Oh my lie, what have been the Biggest Loser?

Speaker 9 (04:20):
Work been work?

Speaker 3 (04:21):
Max?

Speaker 8 (04:22):
This?

Speaker 2 (04:22):
They that being on The Loser's just like winning the Latter.

Speaker 10 (04:27):
Whoever loses the most weight wins two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars.

Speaker 11 (04:31):
More than ten million people watched the finale.

Speaker 12 (04:34):
It was huge to see us in a gym, yelling, screaming.

Speaker 3 (04:39):
That's good TV.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
This is what America thinks is healthy and safe.

Speaker 13 (04:46):
Being seen as a person and not just a body
is much rarer for fat people.

Speaker 5 (04:53):
Well, The Biggest Loser was the best thing that ever
happened to us.

Speaker 14 (04:56):
We were not looking for people who were overweight and happy.

Speaker 11 (05:00):
I'm a secret leader. We were looking for people who
were overweight.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
I'm unhappy. Maybe you would fix my marriage, Maybe it
would fix me. Do you think it to be on
your show.

Speaker 15 (05:09):
That they were really reinforcing the stereotypes.

Speaker 1 (05:14):
People like making fun of bad people, and producers loved that.

Speaker 12 (05:18):
They were like, we want up, we want the madness.

Speaker 8 (05:22):
Of it all.

Speaker 11 (05:24):
I was given a caffeine pill.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
My organs were literally shutting down.

Speaker 16 (05:29):
You can't have a show based on weight loss that's safe.

Speaker 7 (05:34):
I could barely walk and I was in such pain,
and they said, just walk it.

Speaker 5 (05:37):
Off, just walk it off.

Speaker 3 (05:39):
I would never put anyone in harm's.

Speaker 10 (05:41):
Way to shame being a failure after being a success.

Speaker 2 (05:45):
Why did anybody let me know that I could have
just thrown my life?

Speaker 3 (05:48):
I think there's a bit of PTSD.

Speaker 9 (05:50):
Do you tell me one show that's actually changed people's
lives the way The Biggest Lizer has?

Speaker 3 (05:56):
I'd love to hear it.

Speaker 8 (05:58):
The Sopranos, Spuffy, the Vampire Slayer. Like I can name
I can name hundreds that changed people's lives for the
better without exploiting them and making them feel like crap.

Speaker 17 (06:09):
Did you watch The Biggest Loser?

Speaker 8 (06:11):
I got really into it one year. It was the
year I had like the most fluctuations in my own weight.
I was trying to get like my meds in check
was going to NYU, and when school was finished, I
moved to Portland. I moved in with my boyfriend and
I gained all this weight. So I went from like
one hundred and thirty pounds to my highest I was

(06:33):
like one hundred and eighty nine pounds, and then within
that year I went down to one hundred and like
six pounds, so wreaking complete havoc on my body. I
lost the weight through changing meds and then also like
extreme low car low calorie dieting plus Tracy Anderson method.

(06:58):
Don't recommend this to a Now I maintain a healthy weight,
but even just doing that to myself in my twenties,
the damage I did to my body with that yo
yo weight loss, weight gain, basically gaining and losing one
hundred pounds in a year, it's just hell on your

(07:20):
body and it's all consuming for your mind. But the
Biggest Loser was like kind of a gateway for me.
It wasn't when I was at my most extreme, but
it was when I hated myself the most, when I
felt like I had the least amount of control that
I started watching that and that was in the fall
of twenty ten. So the show had already been on

(07:41):
for six years. I had seen some episodes, though. This
is when I became like an appointment television viewer where
I'd watch every episode. I got all of these Jillian
Anderson Bob Green workout DVDs. I bought their like diet
shakes and stuff, and it was just kind of, like

(08:02):
I said, like a gateway for me into other more
extreme things. And I felt really motivated by watching people
lose so much weight in a week. I knew it
was unhealthy, I knew it was morally wrong. By this time,
I knew that these things were not good. I was
twenty five. I knew better, but it didn't matter. I

(08:25):
kind of craved it. It made me really sad, but
it was something I kind of couldn't stop tuning into.
Bob Green appears in the new Netflix documentary. But Jillian Michaels,
who I think was the worst, Like I would have
dreams about her. She's suing because of stuff that wasn't it.

(08:46):
This is from Entertainment Tonight.

Speaker 12 (08:50):
Honestly, it's just filled with so many lies.

Speaker 16 (08:54):
Jillian ted no practical knowledge of medicine.

Speaker 3 (08:58):
People will do a lot of things to.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
Please please What.

Speaker 6 (09:05):
Two words for Gillian's reaction to the doc Scorched Earth.
She's lawyered up hiring the attorney. Justin Baldoni is using
and it ends with US lawsuit. Brian Friedman telling TMZ
she's taking aim at Netflix, former friend Bob Harper and
doctor Robert Heisinger. Can she's bringing receipts.

Speaker 3 (09:24):
Do we pursue this legally?

Speaker 11 (09:26):
Do I just do a data dom be At no
point was caffeine banned from the show.

Speaker 6 (09:31):
Jillian claims this email with Bob and doctor heizeng A's
assistant shows they were aware caffeine pills would be distributed
to contestants, which they denied in the doc, and with e.

Speaker 2 (09:42):
T her contestants were using the caffeine pills. You had
no idea that that was going on.

Speaker 3 (09:47):
No, I had no idea.

Speaker 16 (09:48):
No caffeine pills were allowed.

Speaker 18 (09:50):
As for this claim, they said, Ryan, there's blood in
your urine, which is obviously means you're so dehydrated. She
gives me a big hug and she says, Ryan, and
you just made me a millionaire.

Speaker 5 (10:03):
Sounds like Jillian Michaels.

Speaker 6 (10:06):
Horrible, stating they were both micd and quote, no one
is aware of any recording capturing such a comment. But
what about Jillian and Bob's falling out.

Speaker 5 (10:17):
After I had my heart attack?

Speaker 12 (10:19):
She's the one person I never heard from.

Speaker 11 (10:21):
I've talked to her in many, many years.

Speaker 2 (10:24):
Oh well, so you guys have not spoken in years?

Speaker 19 (10:26):
How long?

Speaker 12 (10:27):
I mean, it's been got more than more than ten years,
I guess.

Speaker 6 (10:31):
Jillian shared one of their last text exchanges, claiming he
was the one who stopped replying to her.

Speaker 3 (10:36):
That's all I can tell you.

Speaker 11 (10:38):
Is it's always been like this.

Speaker 5 (10:39):
He'll be saying negative things about.

Speaker 11 (10:40):
Me, and it was a very long and complex relationship.

Speaker 3 (10:43):
I can't even really honestly tell you why.

Speaker 20 (10:46):
All I can do is show you, like, look at
the documentary, and that is what I lived with the
entire time.

Speaker 11 (10:53):
Just do it, Just stop talking and do it.

Speaker 6 (10:56):
There has been no comment from Netflix, Bob, or doctor
Heisinga about Jillian's claims, but America sure seems to be
hungry for the drama fit for TV. The Reality of
the Biggest Loser is currently number two on Netflix's Top
TV shows.

Speaker 9 (11:11):
Do you have a message for her if she happens
to see this.

Speaker 3 (11:13):
Have fun watching it.

Speaker 8 (11:18):
I personally think the documentary gave them a really, really
good at it. I think it made the show look
much more moral and ethical than it was in reality.
It did show a lot of the horrors. I'm going
to try and find some clips for it for those
of you who haven't seen it, and we'll read the

(11:39):
New York Times article that came out a few years
ago and also exposed the show a lot. But I
think they had so many people who worked on the shows,
producers and creators that it gave the show a really
good atit. Jillian didn't appear in the documentary, so she
got not as good of an edit because she obviously
wasn't there too lie and make shuit up and defend

(12:01):
herself like other people. So we'll hear some interviews with
people who were in the documentary.

Speaker 21 (12:08):
The Biggest Loser contestant Tracy Yukitch is speaking out about
the time she claimed she died on the weight loss
competition series. In the first challenge of season eight, contestants
ran a mile to determine if they were qualified for
the show or not. But speaking in Netflix's new documentary
Fit for TV, The Reality of.

Speaker 2 (12:27):
The Biggest Loser, Tracy says.

Speaker 22 (12:29):
I'm running and my legs feel really heavy like lead.

Speaker 2 (12:34):
My legs were so weak.

Speaker 11 (12:36):
Stand up.

Speaker 22 (12:37):
What's happening right then is my body's starting to shut down.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
But I told myself, I'm like, I'm gonna do it
because I want.

Speaker 23 (12:44):
To change my life. Well getting it, I'm gonna I'm going.

Speaker 2 (12:48):
I'm here now, but I physically could not get up.

Speaker 21 (12:51):
The other contestants ultimately carried Tracy to the finish line,
but as soon as she crossed, she collapsed.

Speaker 11 (12:57):
She was really not responding.

Speaker 2 (12:59):
Tray, I don't remember a lot.

Speaker 23 (13:02):
I just felt like I was floating, and then my
grandpa was there and that I saw darkness, but then
I saw light, so I knew.

Speaker 5 (13:15):
I knew if I died that day.

Speaker 21 (13:19):
The Biggest Loser contestant then explains her diagnosis and the
scary news doctors told her.

Speaker 22 (13:24):
I didn't realize that I had wrapped owt my losis
and rapped O. My Losis is your body's way of
saying I'm going to shut down on you. The story
with my liver, then it went to my kidneys, and
then it goes to your heart, and that's where I
almost died. Doctor's telling me, if these legs don't drain.
We are going to cut your legs open so that

(13:46):
they can drain.

Speaker 21 (13:47):
Despite the life threatening scare, Tracy was determined to stay
on the show and turned her life.

Speaker 2 (13:51):
You know, I'm like, I'm gonna go I'm gonna go
on the show.

Speaker 5 (13:54):
I have no idea that's what I'm gonna do. I'm
gonna go on the show.

Speaker 2 (13:57):
I still want to lose weight.

Speaker 4 (13:59):
That was my drive.

Speaker 8 (14:03):
Another contention point with the Biggest Loser was this one girl, woman,
Rachel Frederickson, who.

Speaker 17 (14:10):
Lost like half her body.

Speaker 6 (14:12):
Get out here, Rachel. The Eleven years after winning the
Biggest Loser, Rachel Frederickson is back.

Speaker 2 (14:27):
In the headlines.

Speaker 6 (14:36):
Thanks to a new Netflix documentary that has the Internet
asking where is Rachel now.

Speaker 12 (14:42):
Rachel came out and she had lost so much weight.
It was it was shocking. Jilie and I were just
in horror. I had never seen anything like that before
on our show.

Speaker 5 (14:53):
She was there incentive.

Speaker 3 (14:54):
It was kind of startling. People's jaws dropped.

Speaker 6 (15:00):
Yeah, it was one of the most memorable Biggest Loser
finales ever.

Speaker 19 (15:04):
I won.

Speaker 6 (15:04):
Rachel taking the grand prize after shedding one hundred and
fifty five pounds during her run on.

Speaker 2 (15:09):
Season fifteen to the NC Competition Series.

Speaker 24 (15:12):
It's that moment where I had to say, I'm going
to embrace being me and being different and just choosing
to own my path and to move forward in this
life and know that I can take control and do anything.

Speaker 5 (15:26):
That I want.

Speaker 6 (15:27):
But Rachel's extreme weight loss drew mixed reactions, many viewers
at the time expressing concern over her new appearance. Trainer
Gillian Michaels later saying she quit the show over Rachel's
fifty nine percent drop in weight, which seemed impossible to
pull off during the show's shooting schedule.

Speaker 20 (15:44):
We had a contestant to was not my contestant, and
I still profited off of the Biggest Loser. I take
responsibility for being a part of a show that.

Speaker 11 (15:55):
Allowed this to happen.

Speaker 20 (15:58):
Personally, I wouldn't have allowed it to happen, but I
profited off of a platform that did.

Speaker 5 (16:03):
And this is when I was like, Okay.

Speaker 8 (16:05):
I don't understand how she can say that, because she
was so horrible to these people. She would just scream
at them and belittle them, and it was just so terrible.

Speaker 5 (16:17):
I'm complicit and I have to leave now.

Speaker 6 (16:20):
All the backlash prompted Rachel to write an essay for
Today dot Com shortly after her win.

Speaker 24 (16:25):
It's okay to ask for help, It's okay to follow.

Speaker 2 (16:28):
Your own path.

Speaker 6 (16:30):
Rachel recalled all the hurtful comments, writing my self esteem
once again was affected by other people's voices, this time
the kind that lived forever, and Facebook posts are written
in the pages of magazines. People tried to bring me
down and privately succeeded.

Speaker 8 (16:46):
That's the thing about eating disorders. We are so protective
of our disordered eating. My whole social life used to
revolve around my disordered eating. I remember one time and
January of twenty eleven, we were out for dinner at
Casatina and dun Eden for my friend Toni's birthday, and

(17:07):
everyone ordered normal food and I ordered like a salad
with pumpkin seeds, and I just remember judging everyone. This
is when I realized I was like, shit, I have
a problem, because I remember just no. This was January
twenty twenty twelve.

Speaker 17 (17:21):
So it's still like a year.

Speaker 8 (17:23):
A year later this has been going on. So I've
been like deep in an eating disorder for all of
twenty eleven, and I thought I looked so good so
I was like so protective and wanted to hold on
to it even though it controlled like every aspect of
my life. I was twenty seven, and I was looking
at everyone else eating and I was still like not

(17:45):
going to change my order. But I do remember thinking, like, shit,
now I know I have a problem.

Speaker 17 (17:52):
I know that.

Speaker 8 (17:53):
Like the way that I'm thinking is so terrible at
this point.

Speaker 17 (17:58):
But once you're in.

Speaker 8 (17:58):
It, you were so protective of your own disordered eating,
it's like it feels like anyone is just trying to
come between you.

Speaker 16 (18:07):
And that She was a world class athlete, a swimmer,
as I recall, and so her body change was actually
very very good, with the exception of again, based on
the rules, she lost a little bit of muscle that
I wouldn't want her to, but.

Speaker 17 (18:22):
She very quickly see you one hundred and kind of
write it the shift.

Speaker 6 (18:26):
There's According to her LinkedIn profile, at the time of
Rachel's twenty fourteen win, she was working as a voiceover actor,
but by twenty seventeen she'd made a change to cake decorating,
and since twenty twenty she does customer insights and analytics
for a food and beverage company based in Minnesota, her
home state.

Speaker 16 (18:43):
I don't really think she was quite as far off
as the Internet would have you believe. That's number one,
and mentally and emotionally she did quite well.

Speaker 12 (18:51):
It was just so shocking, and it was just that
moment when I remember.

Speaker 25 (18:55):
Thinking, Wow, these contestants.

Speaker 13 (18:58):
Especially like you have to look at those athletes or
ex athletes.

Speaker 12 (19:02):
That came onto our show, because they came in and
they were like, I want to win the prize.

Speaker 13 (19:07):
I want to I want to be first place in this.

Speaker 3 (19:10):
And that's when I was just.

Speaker 8 (19:12):
Like, whoa.

Speaker 17 (19:16):
Gracula plez?

Speaker 8 (19:19):
Is it really congratulations? Because these people have permanently messed
up their metabolisms. Myself included like, you don't do this
kind of stuff to your body without it having long
term consequences. And this was greatly exposed in a New
York Times article. Is from the New York Times nine
years ago. And then we'll take a look at the

(19:39):
article itself was twenty eighteen, nine years ago. No, it
was like seven years ago, six year.

Speaker 5 (19:45):
I have no idea. Three two, thanks so good job.

Speaker 26 (19:52):
Rebecca Wright, a personal trainer, and her husband Daniel, first
met on season eight of the Biggest Loser. They together
lost almost two hundred and fifty pound, but in the
last six years they've gained almost all the weight back.

Speaker 5 (20:07):
Daniel and I have never given up since loser.

Speaker 8 (20:10):
We've seen some pretty big downfalls, we've put weight back on,
but we never stop being healthy.

Speaker 26 (20:18):
Right participated in a recent study that helps explain why
she and many other contestants have regained most of their weight.

Speaker 25 (20:25):
Sure, the more successful you are at losing weight, the
slower your metabolism will be, and the more hungry you'll be.

Speaker 5 (20:33):
Doctor Kevin Hall led the study.

Speaker 26 (20:35):
He's a senior investigator at the National Institutes of Health
in Washington, and he says the findings show how hard
the body fights back against weight loss.

Speaker 25 (20:43):
These biggest weight did they cover the calories, but they
increase the amount of exercise that they're doing by an
enormous amount. Hi However, despite that, their metabolic rate slow
dramatically press On the metabolism side of things, your body
is trying to slow down and to resist further weight
loss and actually promote weight regain, and you're fighting against

(21:05):
that at the same time as you're fighting against an
increased appetite.

Speaker 11 (21:08):
Yes, so it's a little bit of a double.

Speaker 25 (21:10):
Whammy, And what happens to most people is that they
can't keep up the fight against the slowing of metabolism,
and they increased appetite, and so they slip backwards. It's
like asking someone to hold their breath. You can do
it for a little while, but it's very difficult to
do it for much longer than a minute or two.

Speaker 27 (21:29):
Okay, So I think when you hear that you have
a slow metabolism, you're a little disheartened.

Speaker 11 (21:35):
We're reminding my messages that say.

Speaker 27 (21:37):
Here are seven things you can do to boost your metabolism.
I saw on the program at four pm today that
if I eat this, I'll your metabolism.

Speaker 16 (21:44):
It's just war.

Speaker 11 (21:44):
It's going to turn around. Since I'm as young as
I can.

Speaker 2 (21:47):
Remember, I have just stop and get wrapped for radoms.

Speaker 11 (21:51):
So when you first you have a slow metabolism, you're
a little distartner.

Speaker 28 (21:53):
Check well, does that mean I'm what does this mean?

Speaker 2 (21:56):
Like, I'm just doomed.

Speaker 11 (21:57):
I'm never going to be able to lose weight.

Speaker 8 (21:58):
Does that mean the person's metabolism I don't feel it.

Speaker 27 (22:04):
So now we know why this happens to us and
why it's hard. So now it's like, oh, because someone
medically is saying, hey, it is hard, but the other
answer isn't saying it's not impossible. There are people from
the study who have maintained weight losses, so I think
the point half power.

Speaker 29 (22:18):
With that Biggest Loser bombshell research is revealing that a
majority of Season eight's contestants regain some of that weight
they work so hard to lose. It's all part of
a new diet study first reported in the New York Times.
The winner of that season is going to join us in.

Speaker 11 (22:31):
Just a moment. Danny K.

Speaker 29 (22:32):
Hill and doctor Ashton is here as well, but first
ABC's Lindsay Davis is here with the story. Good morning Lindsay,
Good morning Robin.

Speaker 30 (22:38):
Even bigger than the big reveals we've come to expect
on extreme weight loss shows is this new research that
takes a look at what happens after the after pictures
and how biology you may actually play a bigger role
than willpower when it comes to keeping a weight off.
We are inundated with weight loss before and after pictures
at reality TV shows, where overweight contestants and their seasons

(22:58):
quite literally half the man or woman.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
They used to be.

Speaker 30 (23:02):
But now a new study says if you're one of
the many who regains weight after losing it, your body
may be to blame. In a recent study, a group
of scientists followed fourteen of the sixteen contestants from one
season of The Biggest Loser, monitoring them for the six
years after the show. They found that all but one
of them gained the weight back. According to the study,
while the contestants all had normal metabolisms for their size

(23:24):
at the start of filming, years after it was over,
their metabolisms continued to slow down, a mechanism the body
uses to return to its original weight. Further compounding the problem,
researchers found the contestants had plummeting levels of leptin, a
hormone thought to help control hunger, which left them constantly
feeling hungry.

Speaker 28 (23:41):
After you lose weight, your body's metabolic rate will slow down.
The number of calories that your body requires is going
to decrease, and that's going to make it difficult for
you to keep the weight off.

Speaker 3 (23:52):
I've gotten my life.

Speaker 11 (23:53):
Back, I mean I feel like a million bugs.

Speaker 30 (23:54):
Difficult for people like season eight's winner Danny Cahill. Four
hundred and thirty pounds before the show ninety one pounds
after but gaining nearly one hundred pounds back after he
returned to work, and Dina Mercado two hundred and forty
eight pounds before the show down to one hundred seventy
three and a half pounds, now back to almost two
hundred and six pounds. The study found her metabolic rate

(24:16):
now burns almost four hundred and thirty eight fewer calories
per day than would be expected for a woman her size.

Speaker 2 (24:22):
Had I known what I knowed today.

Speaker 4 (24:24):
I probably would have not a ball at gree I
didn't want anybody's no I was on The Biggest Loser
because obviously I don't look like that anymore.

Speaker 3 (24:30):
But JD.

Speaker 30 (24:31):
Roth, co creator and producer of The Biggest Loser defends
his show.

Speaker 14 (24:35):
When the people leave our show, they are better off
than being four hundred pounds. I do think the study
could have done things a little bit differently. I would
have also liked them to take fourteen people who kept
the weight off.

Speaker 3 (24:47):
We need to use both to come up with the best.

Speaker 14 (24:48):
Way to be healthy, because we all know we're still
trying to figure it out.

Speaker 30 (24:53):
In response to the study, producers of The Biggest Loser
released this statement to ABC News, saying, the lead medical
doctor on the show has been made aware of this
most recent study and is in the process of evaluating
its findings. And for those dieters who do blame themselves,
this science may actually lift the biggest weight of all
off of their shoulders.

Speaker 16 (25:09):
Sure does.

Speaker 29 (25:09):
Let's go over, Robin now, all right, George joining us
now The Biggest Loser season eight winner Daddy Cahill and
ABC News Senior medical conservator, doctor Jennifer Ashton, thank you both.
Danny's so good to me too. We heard in Lindsay's
Peace after you won and you said that you got
your light back and you felt like a million bucks.
What happened after that?

Speaker 4 (25:26):
You know?

Speaker 19 (25:26):
I did feel like a million bucks after that. For
a couple of years, I kept the weight off completely,
but I I wondered why others were gaining it back.
What I didn't realize was I was working out two
hours a day, riding my bike all over town to
go where I was going. I was exercising three or
four times as much as a normal person. And once
that stopped, the way started creeping back along.

Speaker 29 (25:46):
And so when you hear this study, how do you
process that information.

Speaker 19 (25:49):
Well, Number one, it's great because a lot of the
shame that is on our shoulders. I mean, when you
gain weight back, even when you're in school, it's shameful.
When you were in front of America then it's even
ten times is shameful. And so many people that I've
talked to, including myself, when we found this out, we
were like, all right, some of it's not our fault.
I mean, we can't be victim to it, but it
is our responsibility. But some of it has to do

(26:11):
with this science.

Speaker 29 (26:12):
Yeah, and sitting here with you as somebody you were
just recently jen Board certified and BASTE medicine. It's not
just about contestants like Danny on the Biggest Loser. This
study affects everyone trying to lose.

Speaker 4 (26:22):
Weight, especially in the obesity medicine world. So this is
something that has been known in the medical and scientific
community for almost twenty years, Robin, and it's a concept
called metabolic adaptation, or some people call it the defense
of fadness. Let me show you what I mean. If
you take two individuals, both weighing two hundred pounds, one
is at their ideal weight, one has lost twenty pounds
to get to two hundred, which is an incredible success

(26:43):
in the weight loss world. The person who's lost weight
at two hundred pounds has a slower metabolism, they earn
fewer calories, they are hungrier and less full than a
person at the same weight. Now, to be clear, there
are some successes, but the majority of people who have
lost significant way at the two year mark fail to
keep it off. They regain that weight, and this does

(27:04):
not mean that they are failures. As Danny said, this
is medical and scientific reality.

Speaker 29 (27:10):
But how do you hear this information, Jit and not
get discourage.

Speaker 4 (27:13):
Well, I think by turning it into a positive because
we know that there are multiple factors that goes into
the conditions of overweight and obesity. This is a complex problem.
The gold standard now in the world of obesity medicine
is kind of a pyramid, and if you look at
the bottom, no question, behavioral modification, diet, exercise, then you
go to FDA approved weight loss medications because we need
to treat this as a chronic illness. And then at

(27:34):
the top of that is bariatric surgery. And it's about
using all these tools in your arsenal and incorporating the cycle.

Speaker 8 (27:41):
They're like ignoring anything psychological though, bariatric surgery, like people
eat through that, they push through that, because like this
is a lot of this is like an addiction and
a mental thing versus just physical. Like it's insane to
just address all of this is just being physical.

Speaker 4 (27:58):
Logical and emotional factors as well.

Speaker 29 (28:00):
And it's very important that you saw in there still
about about exercise at that that's a foundation and that
is something that you're continuing to do.

Speaker 19 (28:05):
Danny, Yes, and not as much as I used to.
And that's part of why I've gained back, this gain
most of my way back in the last.

Speaker 11 (28:11):
Year and a half when I got a job, because I.

Speaker 19 (28:12):
Sit at a desk now and I had to reach
retrain myself and have a whole new.

Speaker 11 (28:16):
Schedule, you know.

Speaker 19 (28:17):
But but the numbers don't define me, you know, And
I'm not going to be victim to it, and we
don't have to be we can we can. I mean,
I know that I'm gonna do what David did when
he when he tackled Goliath. I know that there's there's
a bigger there's a bigger.

Speaker 11 (28:30):
God out there that wants me to be well.

Speaker 19 (28:31):
And I am going to do everything I can, but
I can't do it all.

Speaker 11 (28:34):
That's the that's the whole trick is is.

Speaker 19 (28:36):
If I keep trying to do it all, then that's
it's just not gonna work.

Speaker 29 (28:40):
I love how you talk about your family and you
and you know why you want to keep your weight
down because of your family, And I always.

Speaker 8 (28:47):
Say And there was no psychological support offered to people,
let alone like gym memberships or anything. There was just
no support to contestants after they left the show. I'm
oh my bics from the documentary.

Speaker 29 (29:03):
On this shoe the Biggest Leaser.

Speaker 2 (29:09):
How do you all agree?

Speaker 3 (29:10):
It's from Texas?

Speaker 2 (29:12):
I want if you have the biggest loser, puse I
haven't got as big as a cow begin.

Speaker 5 (29:16):
Oh my lie?

Speaker 2 (29:18):
What so being the biggest Loser work.

Speaker 5 (29:25):
They've changed their lives and.

Speaker 21 (29:26):
Now the Biggest Loser is challenging you.

Speaker 5 (29:28):
America to change your own life.

Speaker 2 (29:29):
Being a big losers, just like putting the letter.

Speaker 11 (29:34):
Wherever losers the most weight? When it was two hundred
and fifty thousand dollars.

Speaker 12 (29:37):
The show was a massive hit.

Speaker 11 (29:39):
They would work you out until you felt like you
were going to die.

Speaker 2 (29:42):
Yeah, so I'll let your faith cut or die cape walking.

Speaker 3 (29:46):
Was it extreme? Absolutely? But were they getting healthier? Yeah,
they were getting healthier.

Speaker 16 (29:51):
The wait was coming off, like I don't know, no
one had.

Speaker 3 (29:53):
Ever seemed like would be getting us show help.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
The producers needed to make a great TV show.

Speaker 3 (29:59):
We were trying.

Speaker 12 (30:00):
I had to turn weight loss into something that people
would want to sit down in front of their television
and watch.

Speaker 2 (30:05):
I didn't love it.

Speaker 8 (30:06):
Oh my god, people would watch weight loss no matter what,
even if it was potato.

Speaker 12 (30:13):
Clark Rachel came out and she had lost so much weight.

Speaker 3 (30:17):
Jillie and I were just in horror.

Speaker 29 (30:18):
The Biggest Loser and bomb shout More were contestants are
now claiming they were encouraged to use drugs to drop
the pounds.

Speaker 3 (30:24):
This is what America thinks is healthy and ZEA now shut.

Speaker 8 (30:30):
Just do it.

Speaker 15 (30:31):
Achieving a dramatic weight loss transformation was so valuable to
people that they were.

Speaker 8 (30:35):
Willing to do.

Speaker 2 (30:36):
Anything that they had to to achieve it.

Speaker 11 (30:39):
I have lost so much weight. I do not even
look the same.

Speaker 10 (30:41):
My son had never seen me not overweight, and he goes,
nobody can lose weight like this, and I said, your
dad can.

Speaker 5 (30:51):
Sound different?

Speaker 3 (30:52):
Crazy? It was huge.

Speaker 19 (30:55):
I lost two hundred and thirty nine pounds in six months,
three weeks at five days, I won the Biggest Loser.

Speaker 11 (30:59):
I was the world champion a weight loss.

Speaker 19 (31:01):
I knew everything, apparently not because here I am.

Speaker 8 (31:10):
Bit for TV the Reality of the Biggest Loser.

Speaker 3 (31:15):
I'm Danny Babiel and I was on season eight of
The Biggest Loser.

Speaker 11 (31:19):
The first time I.

Speaker 10 (31:19):
Remember having any knowledge that I was getting overweight was
the third grade. I started getting teased a little bit
for being chubby and started seeing myself in the mirror.
Of course, I realized I'm getting fat, and it's been
with me ever since. Ever since the third grade, it's
been a monkey on my back. I was born in
Midwest City, Oklahoma. I was in a band that was

(31:39):
doing really well. Something inside me was always saying, you
need to get out and say something, show your face
to somebody, do something.

Speaker 11 (31:45):
Hey here I am. You know I'm over here.

Speaker 10 (31:49):
I think I might have lost a thousand pounds over
the last twenty years.

Speaker 8 (31:52):
When you hear from the pretty area, sers that money
go daddy?

Speaker 7 (31:57):
Oh man, it was double d fine as clouding sixteen
hour Holy shit, I mean, look at that.

Speaker 9 (32:08):
We knew we had it.

Speaker 3 (32:09):
You get on a scale. You want to be a loser.

Speaker 9 (32:11):
People thought that the title biggest Loser was going to
be a completely disrespectful.

Speaker 8 (32:15):
I mean, it was exactly you were the biggest loser
team of the week.

Speaker 2 (32:18):
You are the biggest loser on the Blue team tonight.

Speaker 9 (32:19):
I wanted them to actually think that, because I would
tune them in and I want to surprise them and
chuck the shit out of it when they saw that
these were actual guys, inspirational stories about this is the
first reality show where people make a physical change.

Speaker 3 (32:32):
That weight that we were losing was real. You can't
fake that.

Speaker 18 (32:37):
The show went on and it's down to eight people,
six people, five people.

Speaker 17 (32:42):
Yeah, but I eliminated. It was height of eliminate.

Speaker 18 (32:46):
I went for an hour and a half in the morning.
I'd work out at lunch for forty five minutes or
an hour. The final episode was a live episode.

Speaker 15 (32:57):
We are here live in Hollywood, California.

Speaker 18 (32:59):
They were doing it in the same studio where they
film American Idol, Like is.

Speaker 3 (33:03):
That that guy from that show?

Speaker 9 (33:09):
All of a sudden, there was that feeling of oh, well,
people know who I am.

Speaker 12 (33:13):
Now do you know something as simple as this keeping
your apps.

Speaker 8 (33:15):
They were on the cover of Like every Manaday.

Speaker 3 (33:20):
Big Red Part. You can see he's the Biggest Loser.
Here's this NBC The Biggest Loser at work.

Speaker 31 (33:25):
I thought it was going to be a moment, but
it turned into a movement, and that's when you know.

Speaker 3 (33:29):
You have something special.

Speaker 9 (33:30):
From season one, we had five hundred people who came
out to apply. The next season thousands and thousands and thousands.

Speaker 3 (33:39):
It became a lifestyle.

Speaker 13 (33:40):
It's a very human desire to want to be seen.
It's a very human desire to want to be around
people who understand you. This was one of the only
vehicles at the time for fat people to have a
space to connect.

Speaker 3 (33:50):
We were not looking for it.

Speaker 17 (33:51):
I disagree with that. I'm sorry.

Speaker 5 (33:54):
In two thousand and four, we had the Internet overweight.

Speaker 31 (33:57):
I'm unhappy, and once we tapped in to find those contestants,
we realized there were literally millions. Finding the right contestant
started with a great story.

Speaker 7 (34:13):
I've always been a pretty face, but it was always the.

Speaker 5 (34:18):
Face, not the bible.

Speaker 7 (34:20):
When I am a former contestant on NBC's Biggest Loser
Season seven, I've always been what do they call it, thick, pudgy, extra.
We're talking the seventies when everyone was like, like really skinny.
One day I was spelling sick. So I went to
the emergency room and they were like, you weren't sugar level.

(34:43):
It was like three four hundred, and they were yelling, men,
you're sick, You're sick.

Speaker 4 (34:47):
What are you talking about?

Speaker 3 (34:48):
I'm sick.

Speaker 7 (34:49):
I was diagnosed with type two diabetes. I never thought
it would happen to me. I thought I would get
it together before I got sick, and so here it was.

Speaker 3 (34:57):
Receiving that diagnosis was the wake up Paul.

Speaker 5 (35:00):
And then I was.

Speaker 7 (35:01):
Sitting watching television, eating a double fileet, a fish sandwich
combo with French fries and orange dreng And I was
watching the Biggest Loser finale, and there's one African American
gentleman looked familiar, and I kept steaming at him. It
was a gentleman I knew from college. He looked younger, healthier, leaner.
Biggest Loser was indeed a television show, but I looked
at it differently. It wasn't entertainment but inspiration. Watching the show,

(35:25):
I saw people do miraculous things that I've never seen before,
people being able to change, make radical change.

Speaker 2 (35:33):
I was like, I want that if your day's resolution.

Speaker 8 (35:35):
Nick told wait, join us on January for us for
the new season at the Biggest Loser.

Speaker 10 (35:40):
I thought, if I'd get on national TV and a
million people see me saying I'm going to win this
show and be the biggest one.

Speaker 8 (35:47):
I want to show you some of like the what
they felt and faced when they had to go back home.

Speaker 17 (35:54):
This episode two hunger games.

Speaker 3 (35:57):
Hopefully not sweating through much already. That would be a
bad SI. I could have used you in the O J.

Speaker 32 (36:01):
Sim syndrome for the court's permission. We'd like to call
doctor Robert Heisiger. Now you've told us also that you
were a doctor for the Los Angeles Raiders.

Speaker 3 (36:11):
A football team. Yes, I was from day one.

Speaker 16 (36:14):
I've been a major exerciser when I was in college
as a wrestler and was All American at University of Michigan,
and that had opened the door to.

Speaker 3 (36:23):
Get a job as the youngest doctor in the NFL.

Speaker 16 (36:26):
The Raiders moved to Los Angeles and they were looking
to get a new physician. Al Davis looked at me
at the very end of the interview and he said,
have you ever played heart, so I'm like, hell, yes,
they weren't necessarily interested in the best doctor or the
doctor with the best training, but they wanted somebody that
would understand professional athletes.

Speaker 3 (36:44):
And what they went through.

Speaker 16 (36:46):
I wrote a book which was kind of the summation
of my Raider days. That book then became the inspiration
for the movie Any given Sunday, when we had all
those interests, that's going to make the fucking difference between
when and as Matthewan played me and he followed me
for a few days, which segued right into kind of
me being a relatively well known doctor. Charlie is back

(37:07):
now along with his personal physician, doctor Robert Hazinga.

Speaker 3 (37:13):
One day I got a call from a friend of mine.

Speaker 16 (37:15):
He had an idea to do it reality weight loss show.
He wanted my advice about what would be the maximum
weight loss you feel you could get out of overweight Vieples.

Speaker 8 (37:25):
These people are so predatory.

Speaker 17 (37:27):
It is so predatory.

Speaker 16 (37:29):
Pounds with a routine diet more, but if you added
an exercise, that's where the excitement was.

Speaker 3 (37:37):
In my role as.

Speaker 16 (37:38):
The physician for the Los Angeles Raiders, we had a
real problem with our four hundred pound line, and they
would come out to our arduous workouts and they would
lose our appetite.

Speaker 3 (37:46):
So we give them three all you could eat meals.

Speaker 16 (37:48):
These individuals were losing weight even in the face of
an overabundance of food, and so that was something that
was percolating in the back of my mind that exercise
might do something that was totally unexpected, which is in
and of its own self, decrease app the type. That's
where the biggest user was totally sculptured after my experience

(38:08):
with the Raiders, and the only question was is it
possible for an overweight sedondary person to work out not
with the ability of a professional athlete, but with the
intensity of a professional athlete.

Speaker 8 (38:18):
And they were like, well, we'll just see if they
die in the process. We'll see if they live live
through this. It seems like season.

Speaker 17 (38:26):
Eight had like a ton ton of damage.

Speaker 8 (38:28):
I feel like this is the one I want.

Speaker 17 (38:32):
This might have been after.

Speaker 8 (38:35):
So she's literally this is where Tracy is like dying and.

Speaker 2 (38:39):
Shutting down. I didn't realize that I had wrapped.

Speaker 22 (38:47):
Oi loosis and rapped loosis is your body's way of
saying I'm going to shut down on you.

Speaker 3 (38:53):
That's why I with my liver.

Speaker 22 (38:54):
Then I went to my kidneys, and then it goes
to your heart, and that's where I must die.

Speaker 16 (38:59):
I get where that she's down and leave my office
det and go see her in the hospital.

Speaker 3 (39:02):
And she was incredibly ill.

Speaker 22 (39:05):
When I was beginning to wake up in the hospital,
I felt dirty.

Speaker 3 (39:08):
I fell sandy.

Speaker 22 (39:09):
I could fill the grit in my fingernails.

Speaker 17 (39:14):
And they're just setting like a pig on a rope.
You do not give me these people, you crazy.

Speaker 3 (39:18):
I don't know why they were teammates. You say.

Speaker 17 (39:24):
There are three episodes.

Speaker 8 (39:26):
Before every episode they have this thing that it's not
medical advice and to consult your doctor on the Netflix documentary,
not on The Biggest Loser itself. But I like that
they just assume we even we even have doctors.

Speaker 3 (39:41):
Hello, back to Julianne.

Speaker 15 (39:43):
Once you go home, you go back to work, you
go back to family responsibilities. I don't think it's realistic
for anyone to maintain that level of activity unless they
happen to be a professional athlete and they're paid to
work out six hours a day, which most Americans are not.

Speaker 19 (39:57):
I did call one of the producers and say, people
need help. And I even brought up could we do
an aftercare program? You know, a lot of money aside
from the show, psychological help, recovery, gym memberships, whatever.

Speaker 11 (40:09):
It took. Pretty much no one was interested in doing
anything like that.

Speaker 3 (40:13):
The Biggest Loser is.

Speaker 16 (40:14):
A big ratings winner.

Speaker 15 (40:15):
The show was actually brought in an estimated one hundred
million dollars in just the last year.

Speaker 11 (40:19):
I think it's really a shame.

Speaker 9 (40:20):
Get out and get moving with the support of the
Biggest Loser team.

Speaker 10 (40:22):
Hundreds of millions of dollars that were made by the show.
If just a little bit of that would have been
laid aside for the three three to four hundred people
that have been on the show, I think they would
have had a lot more successful people, and what a
testimony that would have been.

Speaker 3 (40:36):
Certainly we would love to.

Speaker 9 (40:38):
Have had aftercare, but we're a television show with a
television production, you know, without endless lots of money. You know,
it's not NBC wasn't willing to give it to us.

Speaker 3 (40:48):
And by the way, nor were they wrong in that.

Speaker 7 (40:51):
I tried to sustain a relationship with the producers and
I just didn't get the responsible I.

Speaker 3 (40:58):
Asked Abalba to do. The injury was my back several times.
They didn't care.

Speaker 7 (41:03):
So it was very dark and isolated.

Speaker 3 (41:06):
Do you ever remember Joel reaching out? No, Joel will
never reached out to me.

Speaker 5 (41:11):
If you can now, do you have emails that we're
reaching out?

Speaker 8 (41:15):
Can you? Lie McGuire, I've been stifled.

Speaker 7 (41:17):
I've been muzzled all this time. I haven't had a
chance to speak. So I decided to be bold and
reach out to media. Suzanne myself, we were offered to
speak to The New York Post and we did.

Speaker 3 (41:29):
Is there more to all that weight loss than guide
an exercise?

Speaker 19 (41:31):
ORB contestants are now claiming they were encouraged to use
drugs to drop the patterns.

Speaker 2 (41:35):
Why are we going to continue this and that produces
me billions of dollars?

Speaker 27 (41:38):
Awful us.

Speaker 3 (41:39):
That's when I came forward.

Speaker 11 (41:40):
Susan I broke.

Speaker 8 (41:41):
Down in tears as she watched video of herself on
the Biggest User.

Speaker 7 (41:44):
Being on the Biggest User was hands down the biggest
estate of my life. The article points out that this
was an unhealthy diet.

Speaker 2 (41:52):
I mean, we're in eight hundred calories of day.

Speaker 23 (41:55):
Joel made allegations against Bob and doctor h was certainly
explosive and constole of discussion, min.

Speaker 8 (42:01):
Scenes solace sweet allegations of The New York Post.

Speaker 3 (42:03):
Boy there Where Do I start?

Speaker 16 (42:05):
One of the contestants said that she got given a
weight loss drug by my believers.

Speaker 17 (42:11):
I believe her, don't you believe her?

Speaker 16 (42:13):
I have no knowledge of that. Whether or not she
got a pill, you know, we can argue about. But
saying that she notified anybody in the medical staff or
in the production site was also a complete falsehood.

Speaker 12 (42:24):
I would never put anyone in harm's way giving drugs
or hills to the contestants.

Speaker 3 (42:30):
It's all just madness.

Speaker 12 (42:33):
I mean, I will stand behind everything that I've ever
done on that show.

Speaker 3 (42:38):
I am proud of what I've done.

Speaker 16 (42:40):
The New York Post took advantage of some of the
contestants who were understandably freaked out by what The New
York Times was saying. They took that fear that the
contestants were feeling, and they said things that, very frankly,
were absolutely untrue.

Speaker 7 (42:58):
When I saw the commer it was more salacious. I
absolutely did not expect that it would be me alone
on the cover. The title and the imagery looked like
they drugged me.

Speaker 2 (43:08):
That was taken out of context.

Speaker 7 (43:10):
I addressed several issues, and they decided to make that a.

Speaker 3 (43:14):
Highlight under no circumstance.

Speaker 9 (43:16):
To the best of my knowledge, had I ever seen
or heard of anyone being drugged on our show. Never seen,
never heard of, not aware of any drugs that were
ever given to any contestants, like any of the trainers
on various list ever underware.

Speaker 8 (43:30):
They literally had a whole episode where they had to
like penalize a team, Gillian's team, because she gave them
caffeine pills, Like it was a plot subject of a show.
So if you didn't know about the caffeine pills, how
would you know about other drugs?

Speaker 3 (43:46):
Sir?

Speaker 16 (43:47):
Then a reporter called the LAPD and they gave the
police a huge tip that illegal drugs are being used
and the police have to follow up on that. So
all of a sudden, in the paper, the police are
examining a drug problem on the show with narcotics. No
one alleges ever a narcotics.

Speaker 12 (44:05):
I had to talk with my team and the executives
over at NBC.

Speaker 3 (44:08):
It was just like, you know, we've got you.

Speaker 12 (44:09):
I was just like, I don't need you to get me,
Like I know who I am. I know what I've
been doing, I know what I've devoted my life doing.

Speaker 3 (44:17):
I don't care what you do. When you get success.

Speaker 32 (44:20):
They're gonna be people that are gonna come for you,
and they're gonna.

Speaker 3 (44:22):
Come for you hard.

Speaker 13 (44:23):
It doesn't feel like an accident that people are getting
the memo that your job is to get as thin
as possible.

Speaker 3 (44:29):
At almost any cost.

Speaker 13 (44:30):
And it surprised me how many people will be surprised.
I just remember Jillian Michaels was found to be giving
caffeine pills to contestants.

Speaker 7 (44:37):
Do you have something you want to say about what's happened?

Speaker 20 (44:39):
I stand by my opinion caffeine supplement is significantly healthier
than unlimited amounts of coffee.

Speaker 2 (44:44):
Oh my gosh, that was terrifying to watch.

Speaker 3 (44:46):
When I came into.

Speaker 7 (44:47):
Work that night and they brought me like this situation
and that I was going to I was like what me?

Speaker 23 (44:52):
I what?

Speaker 22 (44:53):
Because of this rules violation, Jillian has been penalized and
the White team will receive a four pound disadvantage.

Speaker 31 (45:00):
I think that it wasn't handled perfectly, but I left
the biggest loser after season twelve, so I don't really
know what went on behind the scenes.

Speaker 9 (45:09):
One of the things about caffeine, it's not your legal substance.

Speaker 3 (45:13):
It's not steroids, it's not drugs.

Speaker 9 (45:15):
That we banned on the show, but something that doctor
Heisinger ultimately.

Speaker 3 (45:19):
Did not want to have the contestants take.

Speaker 11 (45:22):
Caffeine is probably the most commonly used drug in the world.

Speaker 3 (45:24):
We don't even think about it as a drug, but it.

Speaker 29 (45:25):
Is a drug.

Speaker 8 (45:27):
And then they start giving them Stacker Two's like, people
are taking Stacker twos, which is way more than caffeine.
They're not even legal anymore. He used to take those
like in high school. That's like how far back Stacker
twos go. It was like taking aphedra or something. So
they really are not looking out for these people's best interests.

Speaker 17 (45:43):
They're drugging them.

Speaker 8 (45:44):
I don't want to get in trouble for paying too
much of the documentary, but I think it's worth watching.
It's three parts, you know, if that stuff isn't super
triggering for you, and it really shows how predatory the
producers were. I do think it gives them too good
of an edit. And it also shows like how traumatized
the whole weight loss processes and then doing this in
front of like an audience of millions and millions of people.

(46:07):
Like that just adds this whole other layer to it,
because there's no follow up care. There's no gym memberships
or even anyone accessible to you by email. There's no
psych evaluations. There's like not a lot of stuff that
should be happening in reality TV that isn't. Contestants were

(46:30):
eating as little as eight hundred to one thousand calories
a day. They were working out six to ten hours daily,
often while injured, weighing themselves in front of millions of viewers, monitored,
constantly denied sleep, and emotionally pushed to break down on
camera with the goal to lose the most weight as
fast as possible, while America watched, cheered and kind of

(46:51):
abused to them. There was a point where I would
black out when I stood up. They told me to
drink more water. Former contestant, anonymously mute, interviewed by The Guardian,
said so. In twenty sixteen, we have the New York
Times study which revisited fourteen contestants from season eight, six
years after the show ended. The results not great. Most

(47:13):
had regained the weight and more, but worse their resting,
metabolic rates, those things that I didn't know if they
were real, had plummeted. Their bodies literally fought to maintain
weight because of what the show did to them. The
biggest literas are just didn't just promote disordered eating.

Speaker 17 (47:29):
It promoted shame as motivation.

Speaker 8 (47:33):
Every episode fed us a narrative that fat was lazy,
thinn was redeemed public, humiliation was tough, love, exercise was punishment,
food was the enemy, and pain was proof of growth.

Speaker 17 (47:45):
And this wasn't about health.

Speaker 8 (47:47):
It was about selling an image to viewers and to
contestants stuff that I bought myself, products, books, meal plans, endorsements.
They tried to make the Branch seem like a health retreat,
but it was in a health retreat. It was a
branding boot camp for people who had internalized enough shame.

Speaker 17 (48:04):
To be grateful for abuse.

Speaker 8 (48:06):
I was trained to hate the body I lived in
On camera, I smiled through it. Season three contestant Kai
Hybrid said, where are they now? Most people aren't living
their best lives. Many four ber contestants are traumatized. They've
spoken out about physical pain, psychological trauma, and long term
health issues, sleep problems, chronic injuries, eating disorders, and PTSD.

(48:31):
What did NBC do about this? Mostly nothing, mostly silence
and occasional damage control. They tried to reboot the show
in twenty twenty with a health not weight angle, and
it flopped because by twenty twenty America had moved on
to Ozembic. If the biggest loser was to the two
thousand's version of weight loss Culture, Ozembic is the twenty

(48:52):
twenty sequel, only now we skip the crying the gym
and inject a weekly miracle into our body. But we're
still obsessed with shrinking, still policing each other's appearances, still
selling a fantasy this smaller is better. And this isn't
to shame anyone taking a GLP one. There are a
lot of reasons to take a GLP one. They're showing

(49:15):
to have like many different benefits. I'm gonna do an
episode about GLP ones with my doctor, doctor Wiggins, because
they prescribe a lot of them in her office. This
is something I would I personally would not take. I
just I have so much weight loss medication trauma. But

(49:36):
I don't think it's cheating. I don't think it's necessarily bad.
I do think it can be bad though. I think
that if someone is already very thin, like we see
in Hollywood, and then they start taking Wagov or Munjaro
or whatever, it's just.

Speaker 17 (49:54):
It's the same cycle.

Speaker 8 (49:55):
It's the same eating disorder cycle we've been going through
for one hundred years.

Speaker 17 (50:01):
And I think it.

Speaker 8 (50:02):
Shows that we really didn't heal as much as we
should have from the Biggest Loser days, that there's just
always going to be this constant obsession with weight. And
I mean, I do stuff for my body all the time.
I work out all the time. I have a vibration plate.
I'm going right now at Sante PEDIAX at Doctor Wiggins

(50:22):
and doing this thing called m sculpt where they basically
it's like doing twenty thousand crunches in thirty minutes with
radio frequency. I'm doing that, and that's like for me,
it's to get stronger, it's to get toned up. It's
because I hate doing cardio.

Speaker 17 (50:43):
Is it a healthy thing? I think so.

Speaker 8 (50:46):
But all of these things are slippery slope. They can
become obsessive really quickly. And I feel like we're not
in the post weight loss era. We're just in a
different weight life era. For a few years, it seemed
like body positivity had really come back in a way,
or come in for the first time. And then you

(51:11):
see all of these people like the Kardashians leading the way.
Everybody's shrinking, everybody getting their bbl's removed, like the loss
of curves happening, which I will never subscribe to because
I will always choose curves over extreme thinness. But I mean,
maybe that's just because that's my esthetic preference and my

(51:31):
brain is permanently broken from all the dieting I did
in my teens and twenties. It literally took me all
of my thirties to be okay with my body. And
even now that I'm okay with my body, I'm still
tweaking it constantly. I'm making little in what I call
improvements here and there.

Speaker 17 (51:48):
So that's what I'm saying.

Speaker 8 (51:50):
This is a hard episode for me because I don't
even think I'm like the best person to be discussing it,
because I have so much trauma around it myself and
with yo yo dieting and just feeling like I kind
of there's only a certain box I can fit in
before things aren't good. So that's what I mean that

(52:10):
so much of it is psychological. So much of it
has little to do with what I actually look like
and so much to do with what's happening in my head.
And I don't feel like I'm alone with that. I
think anyone who was a chronic dieter in their youth
it kind of just lingers with you. Is that the

(52:33):
same as turning it into a reality TV show and
exploiting people? I don't think so, but you know, the
ways we exploit ourselves within ourselves aren't always great either.

Speaker 17 (52:46):
There's a lot of layers to this.

Speaker 8 (52:48):
There's a lot of it's deeply, deeply psychological, only so
much a bit is about what you actually look like,
and then eventually you have body dysmorphine and don't even
understand what you look like anymore. I don't think that
this would fly on television today, but maybe it would.
We still watch a lot of things where people are

(53:10):
kind of doing this to themselves without it being considered,
like literally in our Face weight loss competition show. But
it's interesting that when they tried to change the angle
to health, this show was a flop. I do remember
vaguely the biggest loser coming back. Then the pandemic started

(53:30):
to so I mean there were other shows like this,
like I've done an episode on The Swan and Extreme Makeover,
and that was around the same time. I think that
was two thousand and four, two thousand and five. Really
just this obsession of watching people and their appearances, and
I think part of it makes people feel better about themselves.

(53:52):
I think part of it makes people feel worse. I
think all of it is extremely, extremely unhealthy and not
good any of us, but it's something just so permeated
into society. Even like now this show's like My six
hundred Pound Life that's been on forever where people watch
that and people get gastric bypass surgery. Mama June from

(54:14):
Hot to Not. There's still like this makeover subset of
television shows, and it may be considered more trash TV
than NBC, but there's definitely still the urge to watch that.
Like I've been watching a show on Peacock where people

(54:36):
undo their plastic surgery, but it's still like this thing
of watching people go through transformations and deeming them how
we think they look better, like thinking, Okay, these people
look better without their surgeries, so let's see them reverse them.
And I don't know why we're like this. I don't
know why I'm like this. Do you watch this kind

(54:57):
of stuff? Did you ever watch this kind of stuff?

Speaker 11 (55:01):
Were you?

Speaker 17 (55:02):
Could you always just tell you.

Speaker 8 (55:03):
Shouldn't watch this kind of stuff.

Speaker 17 (55:06):
I don't know. I think it's.

Speaker 8 (55:07):
Different from person to person. But let me know your thoughts.
I know this is super dark stuff. It's just so
loaded emotionally, it's something that physically messes us up. I mean,
there's just a lot of layers to it.

Speaker 17 (55:27):
So let me know your.

Speaker 5 (55:27):
Thoughts on this.

Speaker 8 (55:28):
If you watched The Biggest Loser, if you watched Fit
for TV on Netflix, if you were ever bought any
of the Biggest Loser workout stuff, or if you were
just always grossed out by all of it. Because I
get that too. I wish I was. I wish I was,
but I'm not there yet. Even even now, even with

(55:51):
years of therapy and being able to love myself and
all of that, there's still like this kind of hesitation.
But you let me know what you thought. Thank you
so much for listening to another episode of Broad's Next Door.
We're sticking to a little reality theme for Mondays, so
next Monday we will have Last week we had the Osborne's.

(56:15):
Next Monday, we will have America's Next Top Model. Let
me know what other show is like reality old shows
of your that you'd like to hear episodes on. For
the rest of this week, have an episode coming out
with Kristen Behar from Creative Sobriety where we talk witchcraft, herbs,

(56:35):
and staying sober. So that should should be interesting recording
that with her later later today Monday. For you when
this comes out, it's Friday.

Speaker 5 (56:46):
For me, I'm trying to.

Speaker 8 (56:47):
Bulk record because we have a heat wave coming and
then it's really hard for me to record without air conditioning.
But this episode had a lot of clips from Fit
for TV from net as as well as the New
York Times piece from twenty sixteen, which I can't believe
was nine years ago.

Speaker 5 (57:07):
I couldn't even figure it out.

Speaker 8 (57:08):
While we're recording, I was like, was twenty eighteen, nine
years ago?

Speaker 5 (57:12):
So that's how my brain is doing.

Speaker 8 (57:16):
But the rest of the episode was written, recorded and
edited by me.

Speaker 5 (57:20):
When I say we, I mean you and I.

Speaker 8 (57:22):
So if you enjoyed this episode, rate it five stars.
Let me know your biggest loser experiences your weight loss trauma.
All of your feelings. I'm always always here to listen.

Speaker 5 (57:35):
I love hearing from you. I will talk to you
very soon.

Speaker 4 (57:39):
Bye.

Speaker 8 (57:41):
Oh. You can find me online at Daniellscrima at Broad's
next Door.

Speaker 5 (57:44):
You could email me at.

Speaker 8 (57:46):
Broadbsnextdore dot com or Broad's next Door at gmail. You
can send me a DM. You can do all the
things I do. Love hearing from you.

Speaker 5 (57:55):
Okay, no for real.

Speaker 7 (57:56):
Bye