Hello, I'm Monica Reinagel, and you're listening to the Nutrition Diva

podcast Welcome. So the biggest loser reality show returned to primetime television last week after a three-year hiatus.

The show had suspended production after their 2016 season amidst a storm of negative publicity.

If you're not familiar with the original franchise,

it was a reality show in which contestants with severe obesity

competed to see who could lose the most weight over the course of a few months.

They followed very strict diets.

They spent hours a day working out.

I mean, they literally had to quit their jobs in order to participate.

And if they faltered in their efforts they were screamed at by coaches and trainers,

they were forced to sit in a room with a table full of junk food,

just to test to see whether they would

succumb to temptation. They were weighed on giant scales on national TV and

those who lost the least were kicked off the show, all with the cameras and of course the

tears rolling. Personally, I found it absolutely barbaric, as well as medically and

nutritionally irresponsible, but apparently it made for great entertainment

because it was wildly popular for 12 years.

At the end of each season, the person who had lost the largest percentage of their weight won a big cash prize.

But for winners and losers alike, the weight loss came at a steep price.

The end of the season supposedly marked the beginning of a wonderful new life and a newly thin body.

For most of the contestants, however, it marked the beginning of a lifelong nightmare. A study published in May 2016 in the journal

Obesity found that the vast majority of contestants on the biggest loser show

...