Hey, there are folks. It is the Netflix documentary. Folks just can't seem to stop talking about And yes, everybody seems to be talking about it, and so are we now because that hit TV show Biggest Loser, what was happening behind the scenes is quite frankly shocking and sad. Welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ. Rose. We all remember the show. You said you were absolutely a huge fan of this show. Do you remember what your impressions of were of it then before you ever saw this as a documentary.
Yes, so when I mean, I loved this show because it was watching people push past their fears and make a change for the better, or at least that's what it felt like. You watched people getting healthy. Now, yes, there was some extreme conditions where you had trainers getting tough with these I guess they were contestants, but people who were fighting for their health, fighting for their life.
It wasn't just about what they looked like, but they were actually fighting to live longer and to live better. And so it was exciting to me to watch because you were watching people, at least I thought I was watching people improve their lives, make better choices, learn how to work, not that they didn't know how to work hard, but putting themselves in a position where they were putting in the work and getting the results, and that felt satisfactory.
Way. But you're talking about the show as an inspiration, which parts of it can be, But this is also a show that put on and clearly and admittedly were making fun of overweight people, putting them in positions to be scarfing down food, to be committing, to be playing little games in which they're having to carry food in their mouths, or do all kinds of stuff humiliating things. Now,
your point is well taken. That's absolutely the case. But did you not remember because I don't remember watching it that closely, but back at the time, did the inspiration always come through or did it often feel like a spectacle?
No? I can so. I worked for NBC News while this show was on, so we actually had so many of the contestants and the trainers coming on the Today Show and we would interview them and do segments with them. So it was actually part of my work assignment to watch it. But I enjoyed watching it, and I will be honest, I never looked at it through a lens of humiliation or parody, or that any of these people were being made fun of. Now, watching the documentary, I
saw it from a completely different perspective. But I just have to say, watching it, when I watched it the times we were in it didn't really cross my mind that these folks were being made fun of. I saw them working their asses off. I was cheering them on like That's how I felt. I was rooting for them. I didn't want anyone to fail or to flub, or to feel discouraged to the point where, yes, there was drama, I mean, and that was that made the show entertaining
and interesting. But I didn't look at it through that lens. But watching the documentary, it was it was cringe. Isn't even perhaps a strong enough forward. I felt sad. I felt I felt actually even bad for having enjoyed the show as much as I did. I felt, I just I saw it from a completely different perspective, and.
We both felt like that show wouldn't beyond for seventeen eighteen seasons, like it was if it were trying to start today.
And it's yes, and it was too. It was only two decades ago that it started, but so much has changed in the world for the better, where we have a better understanding of the CRUL, Like think about the even the movies from the nineties, like things that were said and scripts that were written and storylines that were given would never be allowed in today's world because they are offensive and they are stereotypical, and all of those things can be said about this show now looking back
at it through a better way of understanding people.
So that's what they've done now with this docu series. It's three episodes, pretty digestible when you say, what was it? Three episodes about an hour each, so they don't really go that long, and they flow and they move and it's really interesting. So it's good watching. I mean, it's very interesting. Even if you didn't watch the show or we're a fan of it, it catches you up pretty
quickly and it's fascinating. So I guess some of the major headlines that so many people are debating about having to do with the extreme measures that some of these contestants went through. We're getting more detail about that. It was a contestant that almost died. I think she might even describe herself as having died for a few minutes. Also, this idea of these illegal pills caffeine pills that were given to the contestants. Also many of them, we learn
just about all of them actually gained weight back. We also learned the sum encouraged to gain weight before they even went on the show. These there are just some of the wow headlines robes coming out of this thing and another thing coming out and looks a lot of ire criticisms. Is director Towards is the one person who wasn't in this documentary speaking for herself, one of the trainers, of course, Jillian Michaels.
And Jillian Michaels has been very outspoken since this series came on to Netflix, mainly to defend herself. She says she hasn't ruled out taking legal action, but she knows that legal action is expensive. She did acknowledge that, so it appears for now she's just going on her own campaign defending herself. And she has, you know, receipts, she has emails, she has texts, and she's putting them up on her social media accounts to say what they're saying
about me isn't true. So she's extremely upset and folks who love Jillian Michaels are upset on her behalf. Some of the former contestants who weren't featured in this documentary have also come along and spoken up in defense of Jillian Michaels because she does get a little bit of the bad guy rap here it. So you had Bob Harper,
who was the other trainer on the show. He participates in the documentary, as does a show producer, and the show's medical doctor also went on, so she was really and the host of the show, so she was really kind of the missing person in this documentary that would have fully legitimized it. And she said, having watched it now, she has zero regrets for not going on because she says they're selling a pack of lies.
Well, there was a lot of folks who were interviewed, and a lot of contestants who do have the same story, who do tell the same story, and it was there was a doctor that was on I kind of remember which one it was where they said it's impossible you cannot do a show about weight loss that's safe, and so they were talking about this idea, so much of it.
You consider what we're talking about. They want a body altering change in you in a period of time, six months to think that people in six months lost fifty one hundred, two hundred pounds, two hundred plus pounds. How could would any doctor say you could safely do that?
I doubt it? And they, I mean, they did have this doctor on the show to try and make sure that contestants were as healthy as possible, but clearly, look, it's one of the like did you ever watch Probably not, but I'm just gonna throw this out. Did you ever
watch Extreme Makeover? Home Edition? Extreme make So? These extreme makeover shows were really popular during that decade or so, and it's as if they tried to take, you know, someone getting a new haircut and new makeup and new clothing or redesigning a house and take that same basically cookie cutter template and apply it to weight loss because everyone loves it before and after, at least a lot of I can speak for women in magazines back in the day, you'd have a before and after, and everyone
loved to see transformation change for the better. It's inspiring, it's exciting, it makes you feel like you could do it too. But they took that same type of format and tried to put it on weight loss, and it worked. Obviously the show was a huge success. Ten million people tuned into the finale of the latest or at least I think the twenty sixteen finale, So it did get people's attention. And obesity and overweight and America, that's these are all issues. So you could say, Okay, we're trying
to tackle this problem. We're trying to bring awareness or trying to show people that they can conquer their weight problems, not with drugs, not with pills, not with some magic bullet, but through hard work and discipline. And so that the idea of it, I believe was noble to a degree, But the question is was it healthy? Was it fair? Was it like not even physically healthy, but was it mentally healthy for these folks?
And that you I think the transfermation we root for it. We were rooting. I mean we were You're proud of these folks. It's life altering to see that they were pushed to a degree that they got the help they needed. Well, most of these folks don't have the time and don't have the sometimes money and the resources to get a trainer to work with you, to tell you somebody about your diet and have a doctor monitoring you, this is a wonderful opportunity that they all had. I did not know.
And the way they put it, and that came out in this documentary Robes, is that this was not a show about getting healthy. This was a reality television competition, period, and if you apply those rules to it, it means all rules go out the door, because now it's just a cutthroat competition to where people do what anything they have to do to win. So it became that so that principle that we apply to Survivor or even a Love Island or whatever, you apply those reality show rules.
That's fine. You're stabbing people in the back, that's one thing.
Figuratively, of course, yes, But.
Doing it here you might be per damaging your health and you might be putting your life at risk. The way it's going that is just not something I think a lot of people that registers. As you're clapping and cheering as you see them every week losing ten pounds, fifteen pounds, twenty pounds.
Yeah, no, it just it didn't cross my mind at least, and I don't think it crossed a lot of folks minds, but I do think it was. There was an interesting point in this documentary where you have one of the former contestants who it not just gained all his weight back, but and he was one of the winners, excuse me, of one of the seasons. I think it might have been season seven, two.
Hundred and thirty nine pounds. It was the biggest loss they had ever had in the show.
So not only did he gain it back, but and then some. And he went on to the documentary saying there was no aftercare, there was no follow up, There was no resource available to any of us contestants once we went home. So we were in this controlled environment where we were working out, you know, anywhere from four to eight hours a day, with a restricted diet, with
being fully monitored. All of a sudden, now you're let out back into your real world, and if you don't have anyone helping you or at least guiding you in that transition, it's almost as if you're doomed to fail. But the producer said, yeah, that would have been great, but that's not what we were doing. This is a television show, and both sides make sense, Like they the purpose of this show was not to monitor people and their weight loss journey so that they could continue to
live a healthy and wonderful life. No, it was to get ratings. And yes, people had amazing transformations in the process, but the onus was then on them to do with it as they would. But there wasn't an overreaching theme or purpose, or it wasn't the goal to somehow create some healthy living standard that they were going to continue to foster and fuel.
Like No, and some of them admit it in some of the interviews. Yeah, it was on me when I left the show and Gain the Way back. Can't blame anybody else but me for that. But I didn't realize and rope so much of what they're talking about here is that you're to hear that somebody who is wherever three hundred plus pounds restricting himself to eight hundred calories a day and burning five to six thousand, how can you keep that up?
It's not sustainable.
And you're doing that fighting and calling because you're desperate to get on the scale and let everybody see how much weight you lost. And that's just not healthy.
Even the idea now today, imagine this where we are putting people in a public setting where like millions of people, as many as ten million people are watching you get on a scale. Think about that. How many of us in our regular lives step on a scale maybe once a week whatever. How many people would you even want in the room to see the number when you stand on that scale, No one would want anyone else in the room. There's such a private thing.
And then being your underwear in front of millions.
So I had never really considered, like, I don't want to step on a scale in front of anyone else, Like that's for me and my doctor to know. Period. So the amount of courage and just and yeah, humiliation, it would take it that weight to stand on a big scale in front of the world in your yes underwear, so to speak, or a very little and to do that public that just that in and of itself seems cruel, even if they want to do it. They were fighting
for it. There was a competition. People were lining up, people were begging to be put on the show so that they could change their lives. But they really for them. Yes, it was a competition to your point, but I also believe it was it was a life or death moment. A lot of these people said that they wanted to get on the show because they were they believed it was the only way they could live, that this was their chance at living.
Was it a young lady wanted to have a baby as well. Yes, So these stories are are real, and that's what made the show compelled. Yes, these are real heartfelt stories you had. It's almost a case where, I mean, so many reality shows we see we see the villain here and we're rooting for that person or I like camll like her, and you're rooting for everybody on the show.
You room for everybody to lose weight, everybody has a great background it and you're hearing all these stories and I don't know how much it taints it for me in seeing this, but it doesn't. It doesn't seem like what I thought it was. And when I hear it's one thing. If I saw their stories later and I'm like, yeah, and they're doing great, but to hear them tell their own stories of how this show in a lot of ways and ruin their lives but really really had a negative impact on them.
Yeah, they had the sisters who won I don't remember which season it was. They were one of the few people who were on this documentary who said it saved their lives. It was the best thing they had ever done. Most of the folks who had gained all the weight back said quite the opposite. I have to tell you, as someone who did love this show, it's incredibly sad to think that I was. You know, we were all
rooting for these folks. Look, even when you and I are running right, I'm running a lot the West Side Highway. I see people out there, sweating and pushing it and trying to better their lives. I feel inspired watching them. I think, you know a lot of us were, and I do think that the trainers and the producers, I
think that people were rooting for folks. But to hear and see what happened afterwards, to see that most of like we're talking, what do they say, like twelve out of fourteen from every season regained the weight.
I think it was it's close, but it was fourteen out of sixteen.
Fourteen out of sixteen had.
Gained it all back, or some of them had even gotten worse.
Right, And that is so sad to think that they went through all of this, put themselves out there like this, busted their asses like this, took time off of work to better their lives, and without the proper I guess I don't want to even say education, but guidance without doing it in the right way, it ended up backfiring terribly, and so many people profited and off of this, and I think that's what also makes it feel so icky.
Had an next One analys if you will, during much of it, and she was great and throughout the docu series, but she made that point ropes that they were having people doing very serious clinical work that did not have
the clinical background and the expertise to do it. So you're talking about Gillian Michaels and Bob Harper, the two trainers who were, yes, helping them physically, but then these folks needed a lot of mental support as well, and a lot of emotional support and they weren't getting it. And they had it like a little clip. They little series of clips they ran at one point showing like some of the advice that the trainers were given to people, and it sounded ridiculous. They just they wanted it to
sound ridiculous. I know what's on the inside, but now you've turned that to something on the outside, and just like you're not, these people have trauma. And there was even Evan I'm not sure if they mentioned it here where I'm remembering it. But folks who are obi's more likely than not had some type of childhood trauma. You're dealing with that type of thing in this environment, and you have two trainers who are just saying it's going to be roses and sunshine.
Not just that, though, We've got trainers who are in their face, screaming at them, yelling at them. And look at the time, you're thinking, it's tough love. I grew up, I was a competitive gymnast at a young age. I had coaches yelling in my face all the time, that tough love mentality. So when I watched the show the first time around, to me, that's what it reminded me of. And I thought, you know, sometimes we all need someone to give us that tough love, to say get and
stay on that treadmill and don't get. But now watching it, it feels so different.
There's a different It crosses a line to shaming and embarrassing. So that crosses a line. Yeah, every coach is everybody's competing in athletics, so that a coach in your face yelling and you.
Don't quit, don't quit.
Even some folks out there who have hired a trainer. That trainer will yell at you during your sal sergeants.
Yes, people go to I used to go to a class called Aikin's Army where that's exactly what happens.
Yes, but this went to another level. But there were parts of the docuseries, folks I was surprised by and it led to possibly a deeper conversation and maybe all of us needing to look inward a little bit when it comes to as they say, fat people.
Welcome back to this edition of Amy and TJ where we are talking about Fit for TV. It's the hot, hot, hot Netflix TV series that goes behind the scenes of that juggernaut of a show, The Biggest Loser on NBC, and you start to see what was happening behind the scenes. And there were a lot of allegations that have been
made that have not been proven. But certainly one person in particular who chose not to be a part of the documentary who was a huge face of the show, Jillian Michaels, has now been speaking out.
Whit more so than the host Stephen Right. Wasn't she yes, the breakout star of that show?
Is that fair to say she really was, And yes, I loved her tough Love. I watched her, I thought, go, Jillian go, I mean she was, and it made her who she is today. Bob Harper, yes, also a star from that. But Jillian really did steal the show, so to speak. But I was going to give her exact quote. After having watched the docuseries, she says she has zero regrets about not doing it, because I would have simply
lent credibility to something that is an egregious lie. And she also said she's in talks with the executive producers of The Biggest Loser to do their own type of documentary where she can share her side of the story because she was she took much issue with how they reported what was happening behind the scenes.
Okay, but she in particular with her right, it was this idea that she was giving them caffeine pills to help them lose weight.
Right, and so she does not that. But what she's upset about is that on this documentary, if you watch it, they absolutely discuss that it was illegal, or at least it's not illegal to take caffeine pills, but it was against the show's rules. The show's policies to provide caffeine
pills for contestants. Well, she actually goes on to her Instagram to talk about the fact that that absolutely was not true, that it was sanctioned and that it was allowed, and she actually I'm sure, okay, yes she has she here's an email chain with Bob Harper, the Biggest Losers producers, Uh, doctor Huzenga's guy who is the doctor on the show, who he did participate in the documentary, but his his
I guess his assistance on this. And then Sandy Crumb, who stayed on the set with us and distributed the Fat Burners Slash caffeine pills. And this was an email about where to purchase these caffeine pills to give to the contestants. And so she does have emails here saying we just received the books and we'll be giving them out today. That's I guess her book. Sandy has the electro mix and bycarb do you still want Stacker two or three? Stacker two or three those are the caffeine
pills and they're clearly shown in the documentary. I'll have it for them first thing in the morning, thanks Julie. And this was an email to Jillian, So she's saying tip for them to say that it wasn't known, it wasn't allowed, it wasn't sanctioned. She said, she became the scapegoat for that unfairly.
So well, they scolded her for it in one episode of the show. They did, so they got it. Yeah, she was penalized on the show.
So it by four pounds or something like that.
For her group. But I'm saying, how is she giving us a receipt that shows that it was okay to have caffeine pills when the show publicly came out mid in the middle of the recording, in the middle of the show and said, you are being punnish this so obviously they stated you can't do it. I don't get that part.
I don't get it because I see these emails and she has you know, she's put them on her Instagram so you can read them for what they are. I don't know how that jibe's with. Yes, the public admonishment that she got on the show, Maybe she just agreed to let them do it. I don't know who knows what actually happened behind the scenes on that one. Jillian
also was extremely upset. If you watched the documentary. They talk about how when a contestant won that she whispered in his hear ear, you're going to make me a millionaire. And she got really upset about that. She said, it's on camera. We both were miked, and she had all these emails and all these texts where they went back and forth and said, you did not say that. I can absolutely, irrefutably like say that you never said those things. So she was just frustrated that she was painted the
villain by a few contestants and by others. She even put up her last text to Bob Harper, who didn't say kind things about Jillian. I mean, it's gotten really ugly. I guess bottom. I don't want to like prosecute and litigate back and forth what's going on. But she is certainly in defense mode, and she's putting up the receipts and texts and emails to try and defend her position, and she claims she's been unfairly vilified.
Well, no, she does not come off well at certain points of this documentary. And she didn't get a chance to speak for herself in that documentary, which I think it would have made a difference I think it would have been nice to have her voice as a part of it, but she didn't trust that process and I get it, But yeah, I would have loved as much attention as this one is getting now to have had her voice a part of it would have been nice,
I thought. But as much as we're talking about the back of I mean the back and forth, what the show was and who did what? I mean, this was a conversation about how we view overweight folks in this country. This really wasn't as much a conversation about health and getting people healthy as much as how do we view and just what it feels like to walk around all
the time over again. I don't have the young lady's name in front of me, but this expert, this author they were using was who admitted and she kept saying, I've been a fat person all my life? Right, and she used that term, she used it, and even that part of it, I was thinking to myself, what is that one of the things where they can say that and no one else can even what's the proper thing
to say? What's the respectful thing to say? And just it sparked more of a more questions in conversation with us about how do you view folks who are overweight, because they certainly have a feeling that you view them poorly.
You know what. And she made that point to say, these folks who were contestants were so desperate to be thin, were so desperate to not be fat anymore, that they put themselves in a position to be humiliated by some of these temptations. I don't even remember that part of the show, to be honest, but putting these contestants in tempting situations and almost goating them to stuff their faces with donuts and pizza and cookies, I mean, really, does it get worse than that? Like that was so hard
to rewatch in the context of this documentary. And she was saying, think about how those contestants must have felt, but they did it anyway because that's how badly they wanted to lose weight. And that really hit home for me. She said, people like making fun of fat people. It's just what they do. Are you trying to make me look like a loser? I mean, even the name of the show, I get it. It's cute, it's catchy in a way, but on the other hand, it also is cutting and mean and cruel and humiliating.
Oh god, I said again, I really wonder if somebody even would attempt a show like this these days. I think again, the you know what the the producer said, he was the executive producer right his suggestion that if we did this show, if we did it all over, I wouldn't offer the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars cash prize, he said, I would be absolutely adamantly against it. Why don't we just help people. You shouldn't have to be incentivized by money, just your health.
Yeah, he said, the victory the prize, money is your life, is your health, better way of living? And he also explained how the whole concept for the show began, which I did not know this story that he was in La he saw at a gym someone had posted a sign that basically said, I'm obese, I need help. Can can you help me? And it just sparked an idea, Wait, we could help people on a show, people who don't have access or financing for trainers and gyms and all that.
Let's let's do this. And that's what got him thinking as a TV producer. He saw this genuine cry for help. Yes, so I did think that it was you know, there was some nobility in the idea behind it, the reasons for coming up with the show idea, but even he and everyone involved acknowledged that they made some major missteps and the way the show was constructed. Specifically, they talked about those temptations that that was not that was not an okay thing to do.
You know, if nothing else, like a doctor they said at the end of the documentary, is that if nothing else, this is a cautionary tale about the dangers of extreme diet. That we just don't have shortcuts. And he joked actually that if we did a show like this today, it would just be people sitting around injecting themselves right exactly.
And look, and I do appreciate it or applaud the fact that they were trying to potentially show folks that if you if you it's not a diet, it can't be a diet. If you change the way you eat, if you change the way you move, you can live a healthier life.
These folks are doing the work they were, but extremely so because they needed it to be on a timeline.
You know, if you took your time, you did it slowly, you did it in a way that could be. If you're going to be losing weight, any expert will tell you have to do it in a way that can be maintained. If you're doing anything extreme, you're never going to stay with it. You're never going to keep up with it. It's just not possible. But it was was, you know what, I it was educational. I think to watch it just it was strange for me, having loved the show and watched the show, to then see it
through this other lens. It it just reminds us all to be kind and to be empathetic and to give people a break.
And this docu series is entertaining, but it's a it's a good one. It's actually a good one, and you learn something and there's some hard in there, and there's a conversation that gets sparked, and even you'll ask yourself some questions. So, yeah, we're not here too for all of a sudden, we're giving a documentary recommendation.
Well, if you have some time, we would definitely give it our samp of approval. It's I think it's a good thing to watch.
I was gonna say, what's our thing gonna be? It's that thumbs up and thumbs down. That's taken so stamp of approval.
That sounds really clinical. We'll have to come up with something better than
Right, folks, We'll talk to Y also