I’ve always detested NBC’s The Biggest Loser. I find it to be the most vile, degrading, insensitive and unhealthy show on television. Here’s my deal.

Why I Hate The Biggest Loser

I can’t stand watching the contestants get screamed at to lose weight, demonized for their fatness and praised for their thinness. I especially can’t stand listening to how much they hate themselves and how awful they consider their lives to be as a result of their size. I wish I could give each of them a More of Me to Love attitude adjustment.

As someone who doesn’t consider weight loss a long-term healthy or viable goal, I obviously can’t stand the very essence of the show. That said, some people do choose to lose weight, and all I can hope is that those people refrain from some of the unhealthier forms of weight loss, one of those being rapid weight loss.

The Biggest Loser caters to everything fat-hating in our society, and I find it only perpetuates stereotypes, fat hatred and self hatred. In short, The Biggest Loser helps no one.

Why Rapid Weight Loss Like That Seen on The Biggest Loser is Problematic

Despite having always felt this way about the show, a recent article in the New York Times confirms everything I’ve imagined must be true about the show’s methods.

Apparently, starvation and dehydration dieting have occurred in order to create the crashing weights that viewers watch week to week. Doctors agree that rapid weight loss by such methods has extremely negative health repercussions. The aforementioned New York Times article, which spawned this post, pointed out that “Medical professionals generally advise against losing more than about two pounds a week. Rapid weight loss can cause many medical problems, including a weakening of the heart muscle, irregular heartbeat and dangerous reductions in potassium and electrolytes.”

Now, if someone managed to lose two pounds a week for more than three months (i.e. about 25 pounds), I think that’s all they’d be able to take off before their bodies started naturally fighting back against the weight loss, and if they managed to lose more, then I’ve no doubt that most of the lost weight would come back eventually. Rather than acknowledge this and abandon weight loss as a model for achieving health, many doctors still prescribe weight loss - but at least they advise people to shed the pounds slowly.

The Unhealthful Tactics Used on The Biggest Loser

The Biggest Loser is one of our culture’s most obvious and in your face proponents of rapid weight loss, and finally, proof of how unhealthy the practices must be to induce that kind of rapid weight loss has begun to surface.

In the first place, contestants on the show are forbidden to speak about the show without NBC’s consent. Those who do are subject to damages of between $100,000 and $1,000,000 if they say anything they’re not supposed to.

Additionally, there has been talk from previous contestants (despite the monetary threats made against them) of starvation and dehydration diets, tactics that are incredibly dangerous and have serious health repercussions, both short and long term.

Proof of the dehydration induced - whether by the contestants desperation to win the grand prize or the producers hopes to top the extremity of previous seasons - is that once the show has ended, there have been reports of people gaining between 20 and 35 pounds back right away, mostly due to simple water retention.

Though not too much else has come out at this point, I can only speculate about what contestants go through to drop that kind of poundage on such short notice.

The Near Impossibility of Keeping Off All That Weight

The first season’s winner has not been invited back to a reunion show because, apparently, he regained all of the 100+ pounds that he lost during the show.

It’s no wonder that he did, as weight loss in those amounts is notoriously impossible to retain, and more than 90% of people who lose over about 20 pounds gain their weight back (Glenn Gaesser, “Is ‘Permanent Weight Loss’ an Oxymoron? The Statistic on Weight Loss and The National Weight Control Registry,” in The Fat Studies Reader, ed. Esther Rothblum and Sondra Solovay, 2009, 37-41).

Not that I have proof, of course, but I have little doubt that the same thing has occurred to many other contestants. Unfortunately, I don’t know that yet because of the contestants’ ban on talking to the media. Indeed, the New York Times had a lot of trouble gathering the information that it did, but it’s my understanding that this case is being pursued, especially since recent hospitalizations on the show when fat contestants were practically forced to run a mile that their bodies were ill equipped to do have attracted a lot of attention.

My Hopes for The Biggest Loser

I hope that the show continues to get investigated by journalists, medical professionals and eventually government agencies that can put a stop to the harmful practices that are no doubt occurring. Sure, people can do what they want to themselves (though I don’t approve of it), but it’s debatable whether or not what some contestants are subjected to is abuse. Maybe it’s irrelevant if it’s abuse because contestants have agreed to take it, and they’ve signed waivers allowing said abuse to be administered to them. Maybe we’ve no right to want the show to be shut down, and my frustration is getting the better of me.

But either way, the show is deplorable.

I could complain that The Biggest Loser is merely exploitative, but what reality show isn’t?

I don’t think that there’s another show out there, though, whose tactics - whether adopted by the contestants or the producers or those shown freely on network television verse those that surely occur behind the scenes - are so unhealthy. At the very least, no show captures so well the fat-hatred inherent in our current cultural climate. Perhaps that’s why it does so well, with an estimated weekly viewership of more than 10 million people.

Though I don’t wish harm to anyone on the show, it’s weird to want something unfortunate to happen in view of the public that raises our awareness of the show’s deleterious consequences. For now, if you know anyone with a Neilson Box in his/her home, please tell that person to tune into something else when The Biggest Loser is on.

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