The biggest lie of 'The Biggest Loser'

It was billed as inspiration. What it really sold was spectacle, shame, and the myth of willpower.

Aug 21, 2025

I never watched “The Biggest Loser.” It ran for 18 seasons, beginning in 2004, but I managed to avoid it entirely, even though I had spent several years working part-time as a personal trainer while also working full-time as a newspaper editor. Mostly, I was just thumbing my nose at reality TV, but the theme hit close to home.

I had my own struggles with weight and body image. To be clear, I was not as overweight as the contestants on the show, but I wasn’t built like other trainers either.

My first client told me she chose me because I was more “relatable,” which I translated as I have more fat on my body. But I made my own judgments about her too, those I now know were steeped in bias. This client was heavier than me, and for some reason wouldn’t wear a sports bra, or any bra, when she showed up for our workouts. I never asked why; I assumed it was because she believed she would magically get fit just by paying for my services. Now, I can imagine a bunch of reasons why she wouldn’t have worn a bra, including just not being able to find one that fit.

That’s hard to admit now, but it’s part of my evolution. I thought I was different from her, and from people on shows like “The Biggest Loser.” What I didn’t realize then was that I had internalized the same fatphobic beliefs the show was selling to millions of viewers.

The willpower myth

“The Biggest Loser” pushed the lie that weight loss was simply willpower and that people in larger bodies just weren’t trying hard enough. I believed it too. I thought if I just found the right diet or workout, I’d unlock the weight loss I deserved. But I never kept it off. For decades, I blamed myself.

Three years ago, I stopped pursuing intentional weight loss and took up intuitive eating with the hope of changing my messed-up relationship with food and my body. It’s been a journey, one that I’m still learning from. And it would have been a lot easier if I hadn’t gained weight, but the truth is we’re not all meant to live in thin bodies.

For the first time, I found myself straddling the line of thin privilege. Now, I don’t always fit comfortably in an airplane seat. Clothes are harder to find. When I visit the doctor, I worry I’ll be prescribed weight loss instead of treatment. When I travel abroad, I pack everything, knowing I won’t find my size easily.

All of this to say that I see the world through different eyes now. And it’s through these different eyes that I watched Netflix’s new documentary series “Fit for TV: The Reality of The Biggest Loser,” which debuted last week.

‘Nothing you do in your life will be celebrated as much as getting thin’

The documentary explores the cultural impact of this first-of-its-kind reality show—focused on physical transformation—and its more complicated legacy, told largely from the perspective of those who lived it. The central question the documentary tries to answer is whether the show did more harm than good. Was it really trying to help people or just turning fat shaming into entertainment?

“I’ll tell you what I think the show thinks it’s about, which is a lot like the messages that a lot of fat people get from their friends and family, which is ‘Nothing you do in your life will be celebrated as much as getting thin,’” says fat activist Aubrey Gordon, the only person appearing in the documentary who wasn’t originally part of the show, early in the first episode.

And the means of getting thin were extreme, degrading, and dangerous. Contestants were assigned trainers and forced into punishing regimens, reportedly consuming as little as 800 calories a day while being pushed to burn 6,000 through strenuous exercise, while competing for a $250,000 prize over the course of 30 weeks. It was supposed to be inspirational, but in finding its footing as entertainment on national television, it veered into dehumanization. It became a game, not about health, but about winning.

‘Salvation’ through suffering

What struck me most in watching the documentary was how many contestants—and the thousands who auditioned—really saw the show as their last hope for losing weight and changing their stars. After years of failed diets, they thought this would be their salvation.

Contestant Tracey Yukich, featured in the documentary, was one of them. “My weight and everything about it was something that constantly was bringing me down,” she shared.

Ironically, being on the show nearly cost her life when she collapsed during the first challenge and had to be airlifted to the hospital and treated for rhabdomyolysis, which was causing systemic organ failure. But her belief in the show’s power to change her future was so strong, she returned to compete, until she was eliminated in Week 8.

Echoes of the Minnesota Starvation Experiment

Watching the documentary, I was struck by how closely the methods of “The Biggest Loser” echoed the famed Minnesota Starvation Experiment. In the 1940s, scientists studied the effects of prolonged calorie restriction by putting what were healthy young men—conscientious objectors during the war—on extreme diets of about 1,560 calories a day (nearly twice the amount some Biggest Loser contestants reported eating).

The Minnesota men weren’t exercising at the show’s level, yet the toll on their bodies and minds was devastating: depression, obsessive thoughts about food, and, in one case, self-mutilation when one of the participants chopped off three fingers with an axe. Scientists later described it as “semi-starvation neurosis.”

The Minnesota Starvation Experiment has long been held up as something that could never be repeated because of the physiological and psychological harm it caused. And yet, “The Biggest Loser” came close. Contestants were effectively subjected to the same kind of experiment. The only difference was they were fat. Let’s let that sink in.

Aftermath and denial

A big part of the documentary focused on where the contestants are now, what they think of the show, and of course, whether they’ve kept off the weight. It spent a good chunk of airtime talking about the bombshell findings and fallout from the Biggest Loser study published in the journal Obesity in 2016. The study followed 14 former contestants for six years and found that nearly all had regained some, if not all, of the weight they lost. More alarmingly, though, the study showed contestants’ metabolisms never fully recovered after the severe restriction they underwent for the show.

The sickest part for me, though, was learning about the “temptation challenges,” something I had never heard about before watching the documentary. In one challenge, contestants were given five minutes to consume as many calories as they could from a junk food buffet for a chance to go home and “win” a visit with their family. Billed as tests of “willpower,” co-creator David Broome defended them by likening them to real-world temptations. To me, they were nothing more than cruel entertainment—perverted, inhumane, and purely at the contestants’ expense.

“The idea is that fat people cannot be trusted around food. It’s designed to make you draw conclusions about the contestants’ character based on what you see them eat on camera in a five-minute period. The goal here is to make a television show, and the more spectacle, the better.” —Aubrey Gordon

While former host Alison Sweeney and trainer Bob Harper now denounce the challenges, they’ve taken no responsibility—placing the blame squarely on producers. In truth, no one associated with “The Biggest Loser” who was interviewed for the documentary fully owned the harm it caused; everything was defended in the name of making good television.

The biggest lie

The most bizarre part of the documentary was the final episode, which played like an advertisement for Ozempic. Several former contestants admitted they’re now using GLP-1s to lose weight. The irony was sharp: one of the show’s biggest controversies was Jillian Michaels handing out caffeine pills to her contestants, something she now claims producers and the show’s doctor knew about.

Watching the documentary, I couldn’t shake the thought that “The Biggest Loser” should have been called “The Biggest Lie.” Contestants genuinely believed that punishing, hard-earned workouts would save their lives and guarantee lasting weight loss. In old footage, trainers shout, “Trust the progress,” and the contestants echo in unison, “Change forever. Amen.”

What struck me most is how little has changed since the show went off the air. Yes, body positivity has made some cultural inroads. But the ease of injecting a weekly jab has only reinforced the idea that weight loss is a choice. And despite the fact that we’re a heavier population than when the show debuted, we’re just as fatphobic, and maybe even more so.

The saddest part was hearing contestants, even now, insist it was their fault they couldn’t keep the weight off. That’s the real legacy of “The Biggest Loser”: a culture that still treats fatness as failure, weight loss as salvation, and willpower as the ultimate proof of worth.

💬 I’d love to hear from you.

Did you watch “The Biggest Loser” when it aired—or maybe avoid it like I did? How did it shape the way you think about weight, health, and willpower? Have your views shifted over time?

What did you think of the new documentary? How well do you think “The Biggest Loser” has aged? I’d love to hear your thoughts.