Did ‘The Biggest Loser’ winner Rachel Frederickson lose too much weight?

Short answer, yes! Long answer? It still ends in yes, but I’ve got a few things to say about it.

I don’t watch much reality tv, but as someone who has lost over 100 pounds, I watch The Biggest Loser pretty religiously because it is a show that hits close to home for me. I also watch it because as a trainer and gym owner I want to make sure I know what’s going on because a lot of my clients watch it.

When my clients talk to me about this show and how they want to do what the contestants are doing, the most important thing I tell them is that the numbers these people are losing, in such short periods of time, aren’t realistic for most people. They’re working out 8 hours a day, they have all of their meals planned for them and they are on a limited caloric intake. I’m not saying that it’s not possible with hard work and a clean/perfect diet, I just tell them that losing 12 pounds in one week for a female is not the norm.

Even though I was almost 300 pounds at one point in my life, I don’t usually relate to the contestants on the show because I wasn’t that way all of my life. I was a “fluffy” kid (but not fat) until I was 15 years old and then I grew 7” in one summer at which point I was then a lean, skinny kid.  I didn’t put on my extra 120 pounds until I was 20 and I was only overweight for about 6 years before I made the change.

This season, for the first time, I could 100% relate to contestant on the TV show, Rachel and I understood where she was mentally at both the beginning and during her journey. After being a high-level athlete for so long and then losing it is terrible, especially if it was your whole life for so long.  But when you finally get to feel like an athlete again for the first time after being away from it for so long, it makes you feel unstoppable!

Fast forward to the finale and how Rachel looked;  She’s 5’4” and weighed in at the finale at 105 pounds, and to not hold back at all, she looked terrible. She honestly looked like a skeleton with skin on it and nothing else.  For the first time ever on this show I thought to myself, that is not healthy! However, before I start getting all preachy, I’ll tell you something, I did the exact same thing.

When I first lost all my weight, I dropped down to about 150 pounds and at 5’10 1/2”, that’s pretty skinny, too skinny. If you’re one of those people who goes by BMI, that put me right at a “healthy” 21.5 which is foolish. I was not healthy, I was skinny and sickly.

Once I started to lose the weight and see results, I got competitive with myself. I loved losing weight and how I was feeling and I loved that people were noticing and making comments about how much weight I lost and I LOVED that no one was calling me fat anymore.  I felt like I got my swagger back. In my eyes it was great.

However, I was wrong.

I was cutting calories, skipping meals, taking a lot of fat burners, doing too much cardio, working out too much and not sleeping enough. I went from an unhealthy 275 pounds to unhealthy 150 pounds. It was not good. I was working so hard at losing weight because of the results, how I felt, and the attention I was getting, that I did it in the wrong way. I wanted to do it faster each week and I wanted it all now. So, with all that being said, imagine what you would do to lose weight if you were competing for $250,000.00.  I’m not saying that what Rachel did is excusable because of the end prize of cash, but I can completely understand where she’s coming from because she was a competitive athlete and that’s just her nature and she finally had her swagger back.

I don’t know how the last few months of The Biggest Loser go, but I feel like the show needs to be accountable for what goes on after they leave the ranch. There’s no way they should have “let” Rachel get down to 105 pounds and to look like that. It’s just the opposite end of the unhealthy spectrum from where she was before.

Do you guys watch The Biggest Loser? Have you heard about Rachel’s story? What are your thoughts on this?