Biggest Loser contestants still fat (or gained it all back)

[PTB]

‘We’re all fat again': More ‘Biggest Loser’ contestants reveal secrets

By Maureen Callahan

January 25, 2015 | 12:37pm

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Suzanne Mendonca says she suffered stress fractures and starved herself while she was on "The Biggest Loser."

As “The Biggest Loser” heads toward its live finale Jan. 29, two more ex-contestants approached The Postalleging abuse by the NBC show.
“I suffered multiple stress fractures in my feet,” says Season 2’s Suzanne Mendonca. “I was diagnosed during filming, and the producers and trainers said, ‘You still need to work out. Do the elliptical, do the bike.’ They made me reshoot a running scene.”
Mendonca began the show at 229 pounds and lost 90. “I was eating baby food,” she says. “I’d wrap myself in garbage bags to sweat. We’d use the sauna for six hours a day. We stopped eating and drinking and would work out for four hours a day. People were passing out in the doctor’s office.”
Today, she takes blood-pressure pills and is prediabetic. “A lot of the Losers probably won’t say this — they all drank the Kool-Aid — but we have all suffered.”
Rulon Gardner, who won gold in wrestling at the 2000 Olympics, walked off the show in Season 11. “They said to me, ‘You mess with “The Biggest Loser,” and we’ll destroy your name,’ ” he recalls.



Rulon Gardner says that the show is both physical and mental torture.
Photo: Trae Patton/NBC

Like Mendonca, he says the challenges are rigged and the weigh-ins fake. He says he suffered neck and shoulder injuries. “I couldn’t get out of bed,” he says. “They said, ‘If you don’t work out, you’ll lose, so you need to get up or go home.’ ”
Producers told The Post, “We stand behind the integrity and safety of the show. Our contestants are closely monitored and medically supervised.”
But both ex-Losers are in contact with other contestants — there’s a private alumni site on Facebook — and the most scandalous secret, Mendonca says, is that just about everyone’s gained the weight back, herself included.
“NBC never does a reunion,” she says. “Why? Because we’re all fat again!”

[Granite-Dawg]

not to shocking at all. It's like going to boot camp.

[Professor X]

That's like no surprise at all.

If you present exercise as torture instead of pleasure, the fat people sure as hell won't keep it up at home.

[Professor X]

not to shocking at all. It's like going to boot camp.

Yeah, only without the 4-20 years of re-enforcement we actually get in the military...

[Jaxweaze]

I would take a couple stress fractures compared to a heart attack and diabetes! Suck it up, buttercup

[Professor X]

I would take a couple stress fractures compared to a heart attack and diabetes! Suck it up, buttercup

That's not how they think at all.

Fat people have a different mindset.

Fat people brains say, "stress fracture....or entire plate of cupcakes and a nap....Gee, I know who's having icing tonight!"

[Professor X]

The serious negative here is super fat people actually thinking this is how they should approach training....or just don't try at all since it doesn't work.

That show will do more to keep people from ever trying than motivation...


I predict a bleak future where starving humans look back at an entire world of fat people with so much food around they eat themselves to death....

[carrie ann simmons]

None of them are taught how to maintain or even be remotely healthy when they leave. I have a love/hate relationship with morbidly obese people. I feel that there is some underlying mental issue that causes you to give up caring about yourself and often want to help, but get really upset when they don't put forth the effort or resent you for trying to help.

[Jaxweaze]

I agree with what everybody is saying but at some point you have to quit being the victim.

[warthog]

None of them are taught how to maintain or even be remotely healthy when they leave. I have a love/hate relationship with morbidly obese people. I feel that there is some underlying mental issue that causes you to give up caring about yourself and often want to help, but get really upset when they don't put forth the effort or resent you for trying to help.

I think it's called LOVE. You love someone so much you're willing to give up everything for them. They love pigging out on food so much they're willing to give up everything for it.

[the mighty stu]

Even without the regain, there have been multiple articles written about how the contestants are told to ignore the advice given by the show's doctors, as well as all the little tricks they use to chase their scale #s down each week.

IMagine a show where people actually received supportive encouragement with an education in how to take better care of themselves. Probably wouldn't kill in the ratings though.

S

[Curt James]

“NBC never does a reunion,” she says. “Why? Because we’re all fat again!”
Suzanne Mendonca

D'OH!

[warthog]

“NBC never does a reunion,” she says. “Why? Because we’re all fat again!”
Suzanne Mendonca

D'OH!

The 'Dennis Rodmans' of weight loss tv shows, i.e. best rebounders.

[The Solution]

Anytime you put someone on a starvation diet, kill their metabolism, and then when they go back to eating normal again of course they are going to put it all back on.

What they do on that show is not healthy, and why when they dont eat more than 700 calories they get a meatbolism back and put on a boat tun of weight again. If they ate like that for much longer periods of time they would suffer drastic health problems from undereating over long periods of time.

[sassy69]

Anytime you put someone on a starvation diet, kill their metabolism, and then when they go back to eating normal again of course they are going to put it all back on.

What they do on that show is not healthy, and why when they dont eat more than 700 calories they get a meatbolism back and put on a boat tun of weight again. If they ate like that for much longer periods of time they would suffer drastic health problems from undereating over long periods of time.

It's sad - for all that crazy work they do --- I recall one season I bothered to watch an episode on, they were left to come up w/ their own "nutritional meal" and the bunch of them produced an ultra low, nutritionally void dinner - obviously they completely missed the point and were most likely not actually educated at all about what they should be trying to do.

Ironically, if the network invested a little bit more of post-show mentoring to help them maintain, they might have some material for a regular reunion show.

It's just really sad.