What Happened to Make Some ‘Biggest Loser’ Winners Regain Weight?
The truth hit Ryan Benson when he couldn’t fit into a seat on his son’s favorite roller coaster: He’d regained the weight he’d fought so hard to lose as a contestant on “The Biggest Loser.”
In 2005, Benson was crowned the first winner of the popular TV show, which ran for 12 years and has since ballooned into a multi-million-dollar franchise. Benson lost 122 pounds and won $250,000, but he’s since returned to his pre-show weight.
That problem wasn’t unique to Benson — a 2016 study from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) followed more than a dozen former “Biggest Losers” and found that of the 14 people studied, 13 regained a significant portion of the weight they lost on the show. Four were heavier in 2016 than they were before they set foot on the set.
Excerpted from businessinsider.com
