Biggest Loser winner Ryan Benson fumes he was ‘exploited’ by show that ‘set him up to fail’ 20 years after appearance

BIGGEST Loser contestant Ryan Benson has spoken out nearly 20 years after winning the show, claiming he was “exploited.”

Ryan dropped 122 pounds on the competition series’ first season, which aired in 2005, but despite his accomplishment, he claims the experience was not one he reflects favorably on.

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In addition to shedding the weight, Ryan left The Biggest Loser with a $250,000 prize.

More than two decades later, he spoke out about appearing on the show, revealing that it did not give him the tools to maintain his weight loss and sharing more criticisms with People .

“Within three days after the show, I had gained 25 to 30 pounds back just in water weight alone,” he confessed.

When he appeared on The Biggest Loser, Ryan was an aspiring actor waiting for his next big role.

He heard about the show from a friend and decided to sign up.

“It was appealing to think, ‘I get to take two or three months off work and just focus on losing weight,” he said.

While he understood the concept of the show – losing as much weight as possible – he wasn’t sure what to expect.

He told People that his competitive nature got the best of him early on and led him to extremes in his weight loss journey.

Not only did no one stop him, Ryan claimed in his interview that he was encouraged to push it to the limit to lose weight .

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“For the last 24 hours, I didn’t put anything in my body and just went to the gym and had a rubber suit on to sweat and then went to the sauna,” he revealed.

“They were setting us up to fail. I just wanted to win.”

He noted that he not only pushed his fitness regimen ahead of the finale, but also his diet.

“I did a master cleanse where you just drink fresh squeezed lemon juice, cayenne pepper and maple syrup mixed together, and eat nothing, for 10 days while working out a lot,” he revealed.

Biggest Loser Winners

The Biggest Loser premiered in October 2004. The show featured a cast of overweight contestants who were challenged with taking on strict diets and workout regimens to lose as much weight as possible. The competitor who shed the most weight would be crowned the winner, taking home a $250,000 prize and a whole new body. The show was cancelled in 2016 and briefly reprised in 2020. Several past winners, contestants, and others linked to the show have spoken out against the show in the years since.

Here are all Biggest Loser winners:

• Ryan Benson
• Matt Hoover
• Erik Chopin
• Ali Vincent
• Michelle Aguilar
• Helen Phillips
• Danny Cahill
• Michael Ventrella
• Patrick House
• Olivia Ward
• John Rhode
• Jeremy Britt
• Dannielle Allen
• Rachel Frederickson
• Toma Dobrasavljevic
• Roberto Hernandez

While living on the Biggest Loser campus for part of the show, Ryan said that he and his competitors were “working out like professional athletes.”

“We would do an hour of cardio before breakfast after a good weight workout and then maybe go for a long hike followed by more cardio and then maybe more weights … anywhere from six to eight hours a day,” he remembered.

“It hurt to do anything when you’d wake up in the morning. It was definitely tough for me. I was lucky I never got hurt or injured myself.”

At one point, he said, he worked himself so hard he nearly did suffer major medical consequences.

“Doctors tested our urine the day of our last weigh-in, and they told me there was blood in mine because I was so dehydrated,” he recalled.

Ryan also said he felt producers were setting them up to “fail” at times, noting temptations on set.

“In the first season, they had food out everywhere,” he said.

“There was a part of me that thinks that they wanted to catch people on camera, just gorging themselves on this food and kind of almost making it funny…I don’t know what they expected, but there were times that I felt like, ‘Yeah, they want us to fail.’ We were definitely exploited.”

Ryan told People that he quickly started putting pounds back on, eventually finding himself back at 300 pounds.

He has since lost 35 pounds, but said he feels a lot of shame after his Biggest Loser experience.

“You feel guilty for going through this and not living up to what you did on the show even 20 years later,” he said.

“I mean, anyone who’s overweight and struggles with weight in their life, you have issues that you carry with you. But then facing it in a very public way and feeling what I did there… it kind of magnified the issues I already had as far as weight and health issues,” Ryan revealed.

NOT HAPPY

In addition to Ryan, former Biggest Loser trainer Jillian Michaels spoke out against the show in 2021.

She claimed in an interview with People that “the producers gamified weight loss.”

“Nobody should have been eliminated. It was weight loss on a ticking clock,” she told the outlet.

“The Biggest Loser needed a mental health professional. I think there was some random guy they could talk to if they needed, but these [contestants] needed deep work.

She went on, “When you have someone that weighs 400 pounds, that’s not just an individual who likes pizza. There’s a whole lot going on there emotionally.”

BIG EVOLUTION

Ryan isn’t the first Biggest Loser contestant to criticize the show.

In fact, several people who have gone through the process have slammed different aspects of it, including the food “temptations.”

The Biggest Loser ran for 16 seasons on NBC before it was cancelled in 2016.

It was picked up again in 2020 but did not last long.

In the subsequent seasons, temptations were dropped from the show and the approach to weight loss changed.

“I can see why the show took grief in the beginning – they were just kind of doing something that would get views. Then to their good luck, it did become inspirational,” Ryan said.

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