Revisiting The Biggest Loser: What the Documentary Didn’t Address About Weight Stigma
From the moment it aired in 2004, The Biggest Loser captured our transformation obsessed culture. It quickly infiltrated our daily lives, inspiring spontaneous “biggest loser” contests among friends, coworkers, and entire families. For Millennials and Gen X, it was appointment viewing, a weekly spectacle of physical makeovers that felt equal parts inspiring and brutal. For those of us who came of age with this show, its impact is deeply ingrained. It shaped our understanding of health, morality, and beauty during our formative years. It taught us that drastic actions are justified in the quest for thinness. It made us fear ever looking like the “before” pictures. We watched people push their bodies to the limit, celebrated their dramatic weight loss, and absorbed the underlying message: with enough willpower, thinness is achievable. It aired during a time when the “war on obesity” was at its peak, and its messaging seeped into our collective consciousness. It reinforced every harmful idea we’d already soaked up, that thinness was synonymous with goodness, that fatness was a moral failing, and that extreme measures were not only acceptable but admirable. It shaped dinner table conversations, gym routines, and our own internal dialogues about our bodies and mental health. Not to mention, The Biggest Loser spawned a colossally profitable weight loss brand with cookbooks and fitness DVDs, food storage options, and protein powder. One of the last scales I ever owned was a biggest loser scale that came with a free three month subscription to The Biggest Loser Club online diet and fitness program. We were all drinking the koolaid. Few shows from that era of television are as culturally loaded as The Biggest Loser.
Fast forward to 2025, and Netflix released the documentary Fit for TV: The Reality of The Biggest Loser. The documentary promised to pull back the curtain and expose the harms of a show that treated weight loss like a blood sport. In minimal ways, it succeeded. Contestants spoke about lasting physical and psychological injuries, disordered eating patterns, and the grim reality of being reduced to a number on a scale in front of an audience of millions. Aubrey Gordon, co-host of the Maintenance Phase podcast and author of What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat, lent her brilliant voice throughout, grounding the documentary in some much needed context about diet culture and anti-fat bias. In episode one of the documentary, Aubrey states, “I’ll tell you what I think the show thinks its about, which is a lot like the messages that many fat people get from their friends and family, “nothing you ever do in your entire life will be celebrated as much as getting thin.”
Beyond the Scale: What the Documentary Missed
The documentary framed the show’s harm as primarily about extreme tactics and individual suffering, rather than about the broader system of anti-fat bias and weight stigma that made The Biggest Loser possible in the first place. When the documentary stopped at “the methods were too harsh” or “the weight loss wasn’t sustainable,” it inadvertently reinforced the same old narrative: weight loss is good, but not like that. The documentary rightly points out the unsustainable methods, but it often lingers in a space of pity or surprise that the “fix” didn’t stick. This surprise itself is rooted in bias as the belief remains that permanent weight loss is always possible and always desirable, if only we find the right method. This framing is dangerous because it sidesteps the more important, necessary conversation, that the pursuit of intentional weight loss itself, no matter how it’s packaged, is almost always unsustainable, and it often harms people physically, mentally, and emotionally. This mindset ignores a vast body of scientific evidence that tells us body weight is far more complex than a simple equation of calories in and calories out. Social determinants of health such as economic stability, education access and quality, health care access, neighborhood and built environment, and social and community context play profound roles in determining a person’s weight and overall health. The show, and to a large extent the documentary’s reaction to its failure, treats weight as the primary indicator of health, a metric that can be willed into submission. This is a medical inaccuracy that does real and lasting harm. Many people turn to therapy to begin unlearning these harmful beliefs and reconnecting with a healthier sense of self-worth.
The Psychological Impact
The true tragedy of The Biggest Loser, which the documentary acknowledges only briefly, is the profound psychological trauma inflicted on the contestants. These were human beings stripped of their autonomy, publicly shamed, and pushed to the brink of physical and mental collapse for our viewing pleasure. They were taught to see their own bodies as the enemy, something to be conquered. The legacy of that is a slower metabolism, deep seated body hatred, disordered eating patterns, and a fractured sense of self. Seriously, what about emotional abuse and a massive amount of stress on the body and mind says, “This person will definitely be healthier after this.” When the weight returns, as it statistically does for the majority of people who lose weight rapidly, it comes with the crushing weight of public failure and the internalized belief that they, themselves, are failures. The show created the problem and then profited from the fallout. The show weaponized health concerns to legitimize cruelty, creating a world that is less safe and less healthy for people in larger bodies. I felt deeply sad for Danny at the end of the documentary because even after everything he’s endured, he still believes that “putting himself first” means trying once again to make himself smaller. He openly shared that he has a full, meaningful life: a great job, a loving wife, children he adores, yet our culture insists that none of that is truly enough unless it comes in a thinner body.
What a More Honest Documentary Could Have Done
Imagine if the documentary had brought in fat activists who have been critiquing The Biggest Loser since its early days. Imagine if it had explored the explosion of diet culture programming in the 2000s and connected it to today’s wellness industry. Imagine if it had challenged viewers to reject the show’s cruelty and question their own internalized anti-fat bias. The documentary could have explored how the show was never ethical to begin with. It would have questioned why we so easily accept the exploitation of fat bodies for entertainment. It would have centered the voices of fat people talking about their lives and their health without the prerequisite goal of shrinkage. It would have discussed the weight-inclusive model of health, known as the Health at Every Size® movement, and featured experts who could dismantle the myth of weight-based health from a scientific and ethical standpoint. The biggest loser in this scenario was never the contestants. It was us, the audience. We lost empathy as we learned to judge others and ourselves based on size. We lost the opportunity to have a more nuanced, compassionate, and truly health focused conversation about our bodies.
Why This Matters Now
It would be easy to dismiss The Biggest Loser as a relic of a more openly cruel era. After all, the show went off the air in 2016. Fat bias hasn’t disappeared though, it simply rebrands itself over and over. Today, we see it in Tik Tok wellness challenges like 75 hard and in the surge of GLP-1 medications marketed as miracle drugs that “get rid of food noise for good.” Toward the end of the documentary, Joelle mentioned this idea of food noise. Why does this noise exist in the first place? For many, what we call “food noise” isn’t a natural flaw in the body, but the byproduct of a culture that has trained us to view food with suspicion, guilt, and constant self-monitoring. When food has been framed as a battleground for so long, it makes sense that our thoughts about it feel relentless and intrusive.
Unfortunately, the cultural script remains the same: smaller bodies are better, more important bodies, and anyone who doesn’t conform must be willing to fight, suffer, and change. These are reasons why it matters that Fit for TV: The Reality of the Biggest Loser fell short. Without explicitly naming and challenging anti-fat bias, the door remains open for the next flashy weight loss trend to sneak in and call itself progress. The real conversation we need to have isn’t about how to make weight loss last. It’s about why we’re so obsessed with it in the first place, and how we can divest from a system that profits from our self hatred and calls it health. It’s about moving beyond the scale to define well-being, and building a world where every body is treated with dignity and respect, no matter its size.
If you’re ready to explore a weight-inclusive approach to health and well-being, contact The Therapy Hub to connect with a HAES®-aligned therapist.