The Biggest Problem with “The Biggest Loser”

I went on my first diet when I was 16. I remember being with my family in my grandparent’s living room, asking them for permission to use their computer to print off the “Special K” diet plan. When my family looked at the printout and started giving me their opinions, I was very confused. I was asking for permission to use the computer, not to begin a diet. 

I really didn’t see what the big deal was. My whole life, I remember watching my mother try out different diets and hearing my grandma tell me, “A moment on the lips, forever on the hips.” Feeling like an adult in the way that 16 year olds tend to, it seemed only natural that I begin to take on this adult thing that seemed to be such a big part of my mother and grandmother’s lives. 

That diet was short lived, as a diet that limits you to under 1,000 calories per day typically is. But my obsession with undereating continued. To this day, my grandma will joke about the way I used to count out a certain number of individual Cheerios before eating them. 

The obsession followed me until my mid-20’s, when I made a life-changing discovery. I had been weight lifting since I was 14, but at 26, I still wasn’t much stronger. In fact, not only was I weak, but also injury prone. And the reason was likely because I wasn’t eating enough. 

As a professional who now dedicates her time to helping women unlearn a similar lifetime of food obsession and misinformation, I can now confidently admit that I was once wrong, and that there is a much, much better way to lead a healthy lifestyle. 

Watching “Fit for TV,” a Netflix documentary about the weight loss competition show “The Biggest Loser,” it was very disheartening to see that the show’s lead trainer, Bob Harper (Jillian Harris was the other lead but declined the interview) couldn’t do the same. 

“The Biggest Loser” became a household favorite, bringing on overweight men and women and watching them diet and exercise their way to extreme weight loss. Each week, they would stand on a scale half naked for a public weigh-in, and whoever lost the most weight by the end of the season was declared the winner.

The idea of giving obese people the support they need to lose weight seems like a good one. But the implementation of the show was far from supportive. Show clips display trainers screaming in the contestant’s faces things like, “Shut the **** up and just do it!” and “Unless you faint, puke, or die, you keep walking!” Contestants are shown being tempted by tables and tables of baked goods and fried foods, and exercising to the point of vomiting or collapsing. 

A contestant admitted he was consuming about 800 calories but burning 6,000-8,000 per day. Another said he hadn’t consumed any food in the two weeks prior to his season’s final weigh-in. His required urine sample had blood in it because he was so dehydrated. 

I’m assuming urine samples were required to ensure that the contestants weren’t cheating by taking drugs to aid their weight loss progress. Yet, multiple contestants have come forward and said Jillian Harris (who, again, declined to be interviewed hmm I wonder why) gave them caffeine pills.

Absolutely nothing about “The Biggest Loser” was healthy, but the contestants were celebrated anyway because they lost weight. 

And therein lies the biggest problem with “The Biggest Loser”: it taught us that thinness equates to health. 

But then, the documentary goes on to prove that isn’t true, as Bob Harper describes his experience with a very serious heart attack that left him dead for nine minutes and unconscious for two whole days. If being thin equates to being healthy, then why did he have a heart attack? 

“I know what it’s like to look at everything that I eat and have to change how I live and what I do. I understand more than I ever knew before,” Harper said.  

I don’t want to take away the trauma that a heart attack, let alone such a serious heart attack, can bring. But while he might understand more, I don’t believe that Harper has, or ever will have the same level of understanding that someone who is overweight does. 

I didn’t follow the story, but I assume reporters and Harper’s celebrity clients all shared thoughts like, “I can’t believe this happened to such a healthy person.” 

Meanwhile, he spent this chapter of his life - that he says made him the well-known professional he is - quite literally bringing contestants to a level of stress that could result in a heart attack. And if a contestant were to have a heart attack, I know the narrative would have been that it was because they were fat. 

I don’t believe Harper will ever understand what he claims to understand, because he will never understand what it’s like to be blamed for your circumstances. To be constantly told to eat a salad but glared at by the server at the restaurant. To be constantly told to exercise more but unable to find workout clothes that fit. To walk into a workout class that claims to be “for all levels” but is far from beginner friendly. To hear your doctor ignore all of your symptoms and pain and simply tell you to try losing weight. 

Yes, obesity is a huge problem. And it’s one that we aren’t going to solve as long as we refuse to see, hear, and accommodate obese people. “The Biggest Loser” quite literally modeled for society that it’s okay to demean and disrespect people, and that respect is earned by losing weight. 

Unfortunately, the majority of the show’s contestants gained all the weight back, and in some cases, exceeded their original weight after leaving the show. Because the show valued thinness over health, I assume that many of them still don’t know the proper, healthy, sustainable way to lose weight. I assume that many of them and their observers think that eating as little as possible and moving as much as possible is the only way to achieve better health. I assume that the majority of them have jobs and families and other obligations that make hours and hours of exercise a day impossible. 

And I assume many of them are afraid to try to become healthier because they’re afraid of failing again and being judged even more than they already are. 

As a professional, I now know that healthy can look different on everyone. I know that being thin doesn’t automatically mean you’re healthy, and that being in a larger body doesn’t automatically mean you’re unhealthy. I also know that everyone is worthy of respect and deserves to be celebrated for who they are and what they do, not for how they look. I know that I have helped my clients see sustainable change for the first time by offering equal amounts of education and empathy. And I know that is what has made the biggest difference for them. 

“The Biggest Loser” followed the same relentless script for 17 seasons before finally being canceled, and has a laundry list of contestants at or above their starting weight, in a society with an obesity rate that has only gotten higher each year. 

With all of that being well-known and on a hard-to-watch level of display, the producer and trainer will still sit there on camera and tell you that they made a sizable impact on people and society. 

Kind of makes you rethink who the biggest losers really are.