The first winner of The Biggest Loser claimed the reality show set contestants up for failure by alleging that producers would organize large plates of unhealthy food to “catch” and embarrass contestants on camera.
Ryan Benson was 36 years old and weighed 330 pounds on the show’s first episode in 2004 before losing 122 pounds over 24 weeks and weighing 208 pounds on the live finale on December 14.
“Within three days of the show, I had gained 25 to 30 pounds in water weight alone,” Benson told People.
Benson, a 56-year-old senior vice president of global content delivery at Lionsgate, believes producers took advantage of the 12 candidates to get them in front of the camera in a desperate moment.
“The first season, there was food everywhere,” he said, noting that the large plates consisted of fast food and desserts.
“Part of me thought they wanted to film people stuffing themselves with this food and make it almost funny… I don’t know what they were expecting, but there were moments where I thought, ‘Yeah, they want us to fail.’ We were definitely taken advantage of,” Benson claimed.
Benson noted that the show’s coaches, Bob Harper and Jillian Michaels, were not household names in the first season.
Harper worked as a fitness trainer for celebrities, while Michaels ran a sports medicine facility before they were brought on the show.
“They were there every day and trained with us,” Benson said.
However, Benson blamed the candidate’s production and lifestyle for the drastic weight change.
“I think since I was there for the first season, the producers, coaches and everyone involved in the show learned as they went along,” he told the outlet.
“We would do an hour of cardio after a good strength workout before breakfast and then maybe go for a long hike, followed by more cardio and then maybe more strength training… between six and eight hours a day,”
Benson compared his training to that of a “professional athlete.”
“When I woke up in the morning, everything hurt. It was definitely hard for me. I was lucky that I never got hurt,” he added.
Before the weigh-in, Benson said he would take drastic measures to lose weight, either at the urging of the show or on his own.
“For the last 24 hours, I haven’t eaten anything and have just gone to the gym where I wore a rubber suit to sweat and then I went to the sauna,” Benson said, recalling how he had stepped it up a gear before the last live show.
“I did a master cleanse where you drink only freshly squeezed lemon juice, a mixture of cayenne pepper and maple syrup for ten days and don’t eat anything while doing a lot of training,” he added.
Benson cited his competitive spirit as one of the main reasons for his win on the show, as he originally joined to lose weight but soon realized he wanted to win.
“The thought of taking two or three months off and focusing on losing weight was appealing,” he said. “That competitive spirit really grabbed me.”
After being named the “Biggest Loser,” Benson gained 25 pounds in three days and eventually weighed over 300 pounds again.
“You feel guilty going through that and not achieving what you did on the show 20 years later,” he said.
Benson claimed he was so malnourished that he urinated blood after the show.
The father of three said he has appreciated watching the show evolve as it has become an inspiration for more people to start their own weight loss journey as the production does away with the temptations of food and other aspects designed to “get viewers”.
“My children belong to a generation that is much more accepting of all body types and the entire world of humanity,” he added. “They are so much more tolerant than my generation was when I was young.”
The show was canceled in 2016 after 17 seasons, but got another in 2020.
At its peak, the NBC hit averaged at least eight million viewers per night.
