Nutrition, Fitness, Medical, Wellness MSN Health Fitness. Top workouts to get flat, sexy abs. Say, So long, muffin top with these effective tummy sculpting workouts created just for women. See All Workouts. The brutal secrets behind The Biggest LoserShe had always struggled with her weight, but in January 2. Kai Hibbard was in real trouble At just 2. Her best friend staged a mini intervention. Exercise To Burn Belly Fat At Home Natural Ways To Detox Your System Exercise To Burn Belly Fat At Home Marijuana Detox How Long Detox Plus Colon Cleanse. 75 Startup Secrets Entrepreneur. com. Your Queue is empty. Click on the next to articles to add them to your Queue. At any one time, around a million people are flying in aircraft. This is a total mass of about 65,000 tonnes. Does this make us the most successful aerial animal now. Free URL redirection service. Turns a long URL into a much shorter one. She said, Hey, I love you, but youre super fat right now, Hibbard recalls. The pal encouraged Hibbard to try out for the smash NBC reality show The Biggest Loser. So I made a videotape, Hibbard says, and the next thing I know, Im on a reality TV show. Hibbard had never seen The Biggest Loser. She had no idea what she was in for. The whole f king show, she says today, is a fat shaming disaster that Im embarrassed to have participated in. Since its premiere in 2. The Biggest Loser which pits obese contestants against one another in a race to lose the most weight has been one of the most popular reality shows of all time. The 1. 6th season finale will air live on Jan. Average weekly viewership is 7 million people, and about 2. The show rakes in about 1. DVDs, protein powder, clothing, video games and branded weight loss camps bringing in tens of millions of dollars more per year. Kai Hibbard. Getty Images. In a country where two thirds of the population is overweight or obese, The Biggest Loser has multifaceted appeal Its aspirational and grotesque, punitive and redemptive skinny or fat, its got something for you. Its not uncommon to see contestants worked out to the point of vomiting or collapsing from exhaustion. Contestants, collegially and poignantly, refer to one another as losers. You just think youre so lucky to be there, Hibbard says, that you dont think to question or complain about anything. Contestants are made to sign contracts giving away rights to their own story lines and forbidding them to speak badly about the show. Once selected, Hibbard was flown to LA. When she got to her hotel, she was greeted by a production assistant, who checked her in and took away her key card. When not filming, she was to stay in her room at all times. The hotel will report to them if you leave your room, Hibbard says. They assume youre going to talk to other contestants. Another competitor, who spoke to The Post on the condition of anonymity, says that when she first checked in, a production assistant also took her cellphone and laptop for 2. She suspects her computer was bugged. Kai Hibbard during the live finale of The Biggest Loser Season 3. Getty ImagesThe camera light on my Mac. Book would sometimes come on when I hadnt checked in, she says. It was like Big Brother was always watching you. The sequestration lasts five days. After an initial winnowing process, 1. The remaining 3. 6 are sent home to lose weight on their own, and return later in the season. Those who remain, Hibbard says, are not allowed to call home. You might give away show secrets, she says. After six weeks, contestants get to make a five minute call, monitored by production. I know that one of the contestants children became very ill and was in the ICU, Hibbard says. He was allowed to talk to his family but he didnt want to leave, because the show would have been done with him. Once at the ranch, contestants are given a medical exam, then start working out immediately, for dangerous lengths of time from five to eight hours straight. There was no easing into it, Hibbard says. That doesnt make for good TV. My feet were bleeding through my shoes for the first three weeks. My first workout was four hours long, says the other contestant. She came on the show a few years ago at more than 3. On her first day, she was put through this regimen At one point, she collapsed. I thought I was going to die, she says. I couldnt take any more. Her trainer yelled, Get up, then made a comment about a sick and overweight relative. I got up, she says. Youre just in shock. Your bodys in shock. All the contestants would say to each other, What the f k just happened The trainers, she says, took satisfaction in bringing their charges to physical and mental collapse. Theyd get a sick pleasure out of it, she says. Theyd say, Its because youre fat. Look at all the fat you have on you. And that was our fault, so this was our punishment. Hibbard had the same experience. They would say things to contestants like, Youre going die before your children grow up. Youre going to die, just like your mother. Weve picked out your fat person coffin that was in a text message. One production assistant told a contestant to take up smoking because it would cut her appetite in half. Meanwhile, their calories were severely restricted. The recommended daily intake for a person of average height and weight is 1,2. The contestants were ingesting far less than 1,0. Hibbard says the bulk of food on her season was provided by sponsors and had little to no nutritional value. Kai Hibbard during the live finale of The Biggest Loser Season 3. Getty ImagesYour grocery list is approved by your trainer, she says. My season had a lot of Franken foods I Cant Believe Its Not Butter spray, Kraft fat free cheese, Rockstar Energy Drinks, Jell O. At one point, Hibbard says, production did bloodwork on all the contestants, and the shows doctor prescribed electrolyte drinks. And the trainer said, Dont drink that itll put weight on you. Youll lose your last chance to save your life. Such extreme, daily workouts and calorie restriction result in steep weight losses up to 3. Safe weight loss is one to two pounds per week, and most people find that hard, says Lynn Darby, a professor of exercise science at Bowling Green State University. If you reduce your calories to less than 8. Add five to eight hours of exercise a day thats like running a marathon, in poor shape, five days a week. Im surprised that no ones really been injured on the show. In fact, contestants have been seriously injured, but its not often shown. The first ever Biggest Loser, Ryan Benson, went from 3. Thats a sign of kidney damage, if not failure, Darby says. Benson later gained back all the weight and was disowned by the show. In 2. 00. 9, two contestants were hospitalized one via airlift. And 2. 01. 4s Biggest Loser, Rachel Frederickson, became the first winner to generate concern that she had lost too much weight, dropping 1. She appeared on the cover of People with the headline Too Thin, Too Fast Frederickson 5 feet 4, 1. Rachel Frederickson dropped 1. The Biggest Loser. Getty ImagesJust calorie restriction in and of itself has to be supervised, Darby says. I mean, people die. Then add that exercise load on top of it. The joints of someone who has never exercised absorbing the force of 3. Its just not safe. Frederickson at The Biggest Loser finale. AP Hibbard says she and other contestants sustained major physical damage. One contestant had a torn calf muscle and bursitis in her knees, Hibbard says. The doctor told her, You need to rest. She said, Production told me I cant rest. At one point after that, production ordered her to run, and she said, I cant. She was seriously injured. But they edited her to make her look lazy and bitchy and combative. Hibbards own health declined dramatically. My hair was falling out, she says. My period stopped. I was only sleeping three hours a night. Hibbard says that to this day, her period is irregular, her hair still falls out, and her knees sound like Saran Wrap every time she goes up and down stairs. My thyroid, which I never had problems with, is now crap, she says. One of the other losers and I started taking showers together, because we couldnt lift our arms over our heads, says the other contestant. Wed duck down so we could shampoo each other. The trainers, she says, were unmoved. Theyd say stuff like, Pain is just weakness leaving the body. This contestant says she and most of her castmates came away with bad knees. There was one guy whose back was so bad, he could only exercise in the swimming pool. By the end of the show, I was running on 4. Someone asked me where I was born, and I couldnt remember. My short term memory still sucks. So why do so many contestants stick with the showYoure brainwashed to believe that youre super lucky to be there, Hibbard says. One doctor told a contestant she was exhibiting signs of Stockholm syndrome, and Hibbard herself fell prey to it. I was thinking, Dear God, dont let anybody down.