Former “Biggest Loser” Contestant Kai Hibbard Says The Show Is A Never-Ending Emotionally-Abusive Nightmare

Because I’m an emotional wreck who cries at dog food commercials, I can’t watch inspirational makeover porn like The Biggest Loser or Extreme Makeover: Home Edition without weeping like a Kardashian at a Free Botox Giveaway. And according to former Biggest Loser contestant Kai Hibbard, I’m not the only one who’s crying; the contestants are weeping too. The only thing is, I’m crying melodramatic tears of happiness at home, whereas the contestants are crying hot calorie-free tears of constant terror.

Kai, who was the Season 3 runner-up by losing 118lbs, admits to the New York Post that she’s “embarrassed” to have ever appeared on The Biggest Loser, adding that “The whole fucking show is a fat-shaming disaster.” Damn Kai, tell us how you REALLY feel. Kai’s complimentary Subway Gold Card must have been recently cancelled or something, because she goes on to drag The Biggest Loser harder than an eliminated contestant drags their ass to the nearest all-you-can-eat buffet 2 seconds after they leave the ranch.

According to Kai, the nightmare starts the second you arrive and a production assistant locks you in a hotel room and cuts you off from the outside world for five days:

“The hotel will report to them if you leave your room. They assume you’re going to talk to other contestants. The camera light on my MacBook would sometimes come on when I hadn’t checked in. It was like Big Brother was always watching you.”

Once you move from the hotel to the ranch, you can say goodbye to your family. Actually, that’s not true – according to Kai, you can’t say shit to your family, because they take away your cellphones. But you don’t have time to talk to your family, because Kai says you’re too busy working out till your feet bleed:

“There was no easing into it. That doesn’t make for good TV. My feet were bleeding through my shoes for the first three weeks. My first workout was four hours long. I thought I was going to die. I couldn’t take any more.” Her trainer yelled, “Get up!” then made a comment about a sick and overweight relative. “I got up. You’re just in shock. Your body’s in shock. All the contestants would say to each other, ‘What the fuck just happened?'”

But that’s nothing compared to the motivational mental abuse they’d receive courtesy of their trainers, and no, I’m not talking about that unsettling feeling you get from looking directly into Jillian Michaels’ sadistic steroid stare:

“They’d say, ‘It’s because you’re fat. Look at all the fat you have on you.’ They would say things to contestants like, ‘You’re going die before your children grow up.’ ‘You’re going to die, just like your mother.’ ‘We’ve picked out your fat-person coffin’ — that was in a text message. One production assistant told a contestant to take up smoking because it would cut her appetite in half.”

Excuse me, but I believe the correct term is fat-person casket. Kai also says that once you start losing weight, lots of not-right stuff starts to happen to your body, but the producers don’t really care, because TELEVISION:

“One contestant had a torn calf muscle and bursitis in her knees. The doctor told her, ‘You need to rest.’ She said, ‘Production told me I can’t rest.’ At one point after that, production ordered her to run, and she said, ‘I can’t.’ She was seriously injured. But they edited her to make her look lazy and bitchy and combative.”

“My hair was falling out. My period stopped. I was only sleeping three hours a night. One of the other losers and I started taking showers together, because we couldn’t lift our arms over our heads. We’d duck down so we could shampoo each other.”

Kai goes on to say that her period is still irregular, her hair is still falling out, and her knees “sound like Saran Wrap” when she goes up and down stairs. She also says it was “humiliating” to participate in challenges, like lining up in horse stalls at a race track and racing each other like animals, and says it’s her “responsibility [to tell the truth]” about The Biggest Loser.

Well, there goes Kai’s invitation to the Subway Presents NBC’s The Biggest Loser 10 Year Reunion Extravaganza (which doesn’t actually exist, but it’s only a matter of time). Of course, NBC has responded to Kai’s claims, saying:

“Our contestants are closely monitored and medically supervised. The consistent Biggest Loser health transformations of over 300 contestants through 16 seasons of the program speak for themselves.”

Ugh, NBC sounds like my asshole personal trainer during my one and only personal training session 5 years ago: “Get up. Stop whining. I know you just barfed all over yourself and it appears you might have shit your pants, but you’re fine. Did you just faint? You are SO difficult.“