How The Biggest Loser Imprinted Problematic Diet Programming on an Entire Generation.

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The eat.simple Podcast

Erin Power

52 episodes

2 days ago

Erin Power helps you understand how to lose weight AND live peacefully with your food and your body... perhaps for the first time in your life.

Self-Improvement

Education

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Erin Power helps you understand how to lose weight AND live peacefully with your food and your body... perhaps for the first time in your life.

Self-Improvement

Education

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How The Biggest Loser Imprinted Problematic Diet Programming on an Entire Generation.

The eat.simple Podcast

16 minutes 33 seconds

2 months ago

How The Biggest Loser Imprinted Problematic Diet Programming on an Entire Generation.

Nobody asked for me to recap this. And by the time I got this recap published, the wellness cultural zeitgeist had already moved on: from the horrors of The Biggest Loser exposed in a (pretty mild) Netflix doc... to Serena Williams promoting a GLP-1.

Nevertheless, I recorded this episode and it feels like a waste to NOT post it...

Remember the early 2000s, when millions of us were glued to The Biggest Loser? Watching people drop jaw-dropping amounts of weight each week, puking on treadmills, collapsing in tears, “motivated” by screaming trainers. It felt inspiring at the time—until you realize the whole thing was a metabolic train wreck.

In this episode, I take you inside Netflix’s new three-part documentary and unpack:

🔥 Why the show was more spectacle than science.

🔥 The hidden damage it did to contestants, and to us watching at home.

🔥 How diet culture still markets the exact same lie today, just with shinier packaging.

🔥 A recognition that, while this was considered extreme 20 years ago, there are actually many more MORE extreme practices pushed nowadays.

🔥 How personal trainers -- unregulated health pros -- overstep their scope of practice.

🔥 What actually works: sustainable, boring, basic, sane, metabolism-supportive weight loss that doesn’t wreck your body or your life.

🔥 My personal reflections: why I once adored this show, how it connected to my own mom’s health struggles, and what I see differently now after 15 years in the weight loss field.

If you’ve ever felt pressured to lose weight fast, bought into punishing “eat less, move more” programs, or wondered why nothing ever sticks, it’s time to chat about everything that was wrong with this show, and with diet programming in general.

👉 Watch this breakdown before you fall for another flashy “quick fix.”

Timestamps:

00:00 – Intro & Why The Biggest Loser Still Matters
00:29 – The Show’s Format & Early Reality TV
01:42 – Personal Reflections: Family, Body Image, and Inspiration
03:59 – The Real Problems: Diet, Exercise, and Industry Myths
06:30 – Why Fast Weight Loss Fails (and What Works Instead)
10:47 – If I Ran The Biggest Loser: A Nutritionist’s Approach
13:47 – The Weight Loss Industry Today & Final Takeaways