Shaming and scaring overweight people about their weight has been shown to exacerbate issues like overeating and depression, not resolve them.
The show also reinforces weight bias. In one small but well-publicized study , viewers who watched only a single episode of The Biggest Loser came away with increased negative opinions about large people. In , scientists at Harvard published research that looked at public attitudes toward six social factors—age, disability, body weight, race, skin tone, and sexuality—and how they changed over time.
However, explicit or relatively controllable biases improved in all six categories. Because lower body weight also tends to correlate to higher levels of socioeconomic privilege in the United States, fat shaming functions as a kind of classism. Still, there have been noticeable changes in some public opinions, thanks to influencers, models, athletes, and brands that have taken a more weight-neutral position.
During my second visit to The Biggest Loser set, I watched the contestants grunt through a Last Chance Workout—the final fat-blasting gym session before the weekly weigh-in. The high-intensity circuit involved treadmills, rowing machines, battle ropes, free weights, and other torture-chamber accoutrements.
The trainers barked. The contestants slogged away. Who wants to watch people eat a salad or sleep really well when you can watch them doing box jumps until they crumple?
If dieting has fallen out of favor in recent years, so, too, has our frustrating and often fruitless attempts to sweat our way to thinness. Physical activity has many extraordinary benefits and is arguably the first line of defense when it comes to personal health.
But research has taught us that working out is a weak strategy for sustainable weight loss. Part of the problem is that many people understand weight loss to be a thermodynamic issue. This may be fundamentally true—the only way to lose weight is to burn more calories than you consume—but the biological reality is more complex. Researchers have shown that the more aggressively we take weight off, the more fiercely our body fights to put it back on.
One of the insights provided by the NIH metabolism study is that such metabolic effects persist for years after the initial weight loss; the body lowers the resting metabolic rate by as much as calories a day in some cases and reduces the production of leptin, a hormone that helps us feel full.
The more weight you lose, the more tension there is, pulling you back. A popular theory suggests that we have a body-weight set point that works like a thermostat: your brain recognizes a certain weight, or weight range, and adjusts other physiological systems to push you there. How, when, and how permanently that weight is set is a matter of much debate.
One of the thorniest problems in obesity research may be that we live in bodies engineered for a very different world than the one we inhabit now.
For many years, the weight-loss industry has convinced us that, by disciplining ourselves to embrace the right diet and exercise, we could whittle ourselves back down to a more socially acceptable weight. But it has failed to produce the kind of health outcomes we might expect. The reality is that the twin forces of genetics and environment quickly overwhelm willpower. Our weight may be intractable because the issues are so much bigger than we realize. I want people to know that, and I want everyone to feel accepted.
A few weeks later, while I was watching early episodes, something surprising happened. While I fully understood how the show can manipulate my emotions, I still found myself caught up in the stories. By episode seven of ten , the show hits its emotional peak when the five remaining contestants get video messages from home.
How many of them, when faced with unrelenting negativity about their weight, yearned for inspiration and motivation, for agency, for the belief that they could reclaim ownership of their bodies?
TV also adjusted to the times. Dietland and Shrill premiered, deftly dissecting fatphobia and the self-hatred that products like The Biggest Loser subliminally encourage. And yet, despite everything, The Biggest Loser has shuffled, zombielike, back to prime time, with a new season debuting this week.
Which is both a funny comment about a series whose final 20 minutes still revolve around mass weigh-ins optimized for peak drama in a TV studio, and, it turns out, completely untrue. A striking thing about The Biggest Loser —then and now—is how many of its ugliest, most misguided moments have actually made it to air. At the beginning of Season 8, competitors were immediately given a challenge: to run a mile.
During the ensuing footrace, two collapsed and were hospitalized. Some things have changed in the new iteration of the show, most of them aesthetic.
After the weigh-in, contestants are no longer taken to a room containing fridges bearing their names, filled with their favorite junk foods. At least in the first three episodes made available for review, they no longer have to vote to eliminate team members by writing their names on slips of paper that they hide inside silver platters.
Asked if any formal evaluation of the complaints and criticisms levied against the original was undertaken before the decision to move forward with the revival, a spokesperson for Endemol Shine North America, which produces the series in association with Universal Television Alternative Studio, provided a statement to the L.
Together with the team at USA Network, we have added a number of new elements this season, but our goal remains the same — to provide our contestants with the tools, knowledge and confidence to enjoy long-term success. Trainers still yell at contestants to work harder, contestants still throw up, and trainers and contestants alike lament their failure to lose more pounds to save their teammates from elimination. According to trainer Steve Cook, there are doctors on staff behind the scenes to monitor contestants, and urinalysis testing is conducted to ensure contestants are properly hydrated before weigh-ins.
Where: USA When: 9 p. After the show, Bill started teaching spin classes in his free time, according to E! Still, he regained some of the weight. He now works as a motivational speaker, and says the Biggest Loser experience "changed my life. Ali made history by becoming the first woman to win The Biggest Loser in during season 5, after she lost pounds. Ali later regained the weight she lost.
I feel ashamed. I feel embarrassed. I feel overwhelmed. I feel like failure. Michelle weighed pounds at the beginning of the show and ended up at pounds. That was enough to help her clinch the season 6 The Biggest Loser title.
Michelle recently shared an Instagram collage looking back at her weight loss success. It seems that Michelle has kept off the weight, if her recent Instagrams are any indication. Helen nabbed The Biggest Loser title in season 7 after she went from pounds to Helen hasn't said much about her weight after the show. However, she recently appeared in a promotional video for the portable elliptical Street Strider. Danny lost a whopping pounds in seven months on the show.
It was enough to make him the winner of season 8. Danny kept the weight off for a couple years after the show. But he eventually ended up gaining back more than pounds "despite his best efforts," according to The New York Times. Doctors discovered that Danny now burns fewer calories a day than would be expected for a man his size.
When Michael started on the show, he weighed pounds—the show's heaviest contestant ever. He ended up finishing at pounds to win season 9. Michael became a trainer and a motivational speaker. He also said in an interview with Chicago magazine that he was "basically broke" immediately after doing the show. Patrick, an out-of-work salesman, lost a whopping pounds to nail the title in season Overall, he lost 45 percent of his body weight.
Patrick is one of the few former contestants who has kept the weight off. He defended the show after research found that the extreme weight loss tactics used caused metabolic issues for former contestants.
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