The winner of the first season is Ryan Benson Biggest Loserclaimed in a bombshell new interview that she felt the weight-loss reality series “exploited” her and “set her up to fail” her and the other contestants.
In 2005, Benson earned $250,000 after winning the series’ inaugural season with a staggering 122-pound loss. Benson entered the show at 330 pounds and left at 208 pounds. But the 56-year-old actress recently revealed that her weight loss wasn’t the triumph it first seemed.
“Within three days of the show I gained back 25 to 30 pounds just in water weight,” Benson said. People.
When she entered the series, the then-36-year-old actress was, by her own admission, “ultra-competitive” and willing to succeed at all costs. Benson took extreme measures, both at her own discretion and at the producers' urging.
“That competitive side really got to me,” she admitted. “I did a master cleanse where you just mix freshly squeezed lemon juice, cayenne pepper and maple syrup and you don't eat anything, you do a lot of exercise for 10 days.”
Benson's tactics have become even harsher in the final week of the show, where contestants are sent home to continue their weight loss journeys independently before the finale. [of filming]”I didn't put anything on my body and just went to the gym and wore a rubber suit to sweat and then went to the sauna.”
“They were trying to make us fail. I just wanted to win,” Benson noted.
Benson explained about these efforts that even on days when contestants were working out for “six to eight hours” “working out like professional athletes,” incredible amounts of food were constantly left on set.
She recalled that producers would leave plates of calorie-dense, overly processed food all over the set. “There was a part of me that thought people wanted to be caught on camera gorging on this food and make it almost funny,” Benson suggested. “I don’t know what they were expecting, but there were times when I thought, ‘Yeah, they want us to fail.’ We were definitely exploited.”
Benson worked so hard that by the end of the series he had blood in his urine. “The doctors tested my urine on the day of the last weigh-in and told me I had blood in my urine because I was so dehydrated,” he recalls. “My wife was furious with me, she said, ‘Nothing is worth it.’”
Within three days of leaving the series, Benson gained back 25 pounds. In a short time, he was once again over 300 pounds. Since then, Benson has lost about 35 pounds.
“You feel guilty that you can't live that down and do justice to what you did on the show, even 20 years later,” she admitted. “I mean, anyone who's overweight and has struggled with weight in their life, you have issues that you carry with you. But then to confront that so publicly and feel what I felt there… it just kind of magnified the issues that I already had in terms of weight and health issues.”
Benson is certainly not the first Biggest Loser alum has sounded the alarm about the show’s tactics. In 2021, Jillian Michaels, who served as a trainer on the series for 12 seasons, took issue with how “the producers gamified weight loss.”
“Nobody should have been eliminated. This was a ticking clock weight loss,” Michaels said. People” .Biggest Loser they needed a mental health professional. I guess there was a random guy they could talk to if they needed it, but these [contestants] “It takes deep work. When you have someone who weighs 400 pounds, it's not just an individual who loves pizza. There's a lot going on there emotionally.”
In 2016, New York Times reported that season eight winner Danny Cahill gained more than 100 pounds in the seven years following his victory. Cahill lost 240 pounds, dropping from 430 to 190. “In fact, most of that season's 16 contestants gained back most or even all of the weight they had so hard to lose,” the news outlet noted. “Some are even heavier now.”
When asked if he would do anything today, Benson said he would continue to do the show but only on the condition that the format would be very different.
“If I were in my position at the time, I would probably do it again. It would have to have a completely different perspective,” she said. “They would have to take a more holistic approach, focusing on both mental and physical health, not just the number on the scale.”