In 2005, at the live finale of the first season of The Biggest Loser, Ryan Benson got on the scale, and he was overjoyed. He had been successful in losing weight. He weighed in at 208 pounds, which meant that he had shed an astounding 122 pounds in only twenty-four weeks, making him the contender who had lost the most weight during that season.
Benson, who began the first season of the popular program weighing 330 pounds, was voted the winner of the competition and received a prize money reward of $250,000. He was also referred to as the “biggest loser” of the season.
Unfortunately, the fame and the dramatic weight reduction did not persist.
Benson tells PEOPLE in an exclusive interview that examines his experience on the program, the controversial strategy he chose to losing weight at the time, and the perspective he’s learned over the years that “within three days after the show, I had gained 25 to 30 pounds back just in water weight alone.” Benson’s statement was made in reference to his weight gain.
He was an aspiring actor in Los Angeles seeking for his next big opportunity when a buddy informed him about the new weight reduction reality program twenty years ago. Benson, who is now 56 years old and serves as the Senior Vice President of Global Content Delivery at Lionsgate, described the show.
“It was appealing to think, ‘I get to take two or three months off work and just focus on losing weight,'” he adds. “I don’t have to worry about anything else.”
Benson confesses that he was nervous about the first day of shooting since he had no idea what to anticipate doing. He adds, “I believe that the producers, the trainers, and everyone else involved with the show were kind of learning as they went.” He was a part of the first season of the show. “[Trainers] Bob Harper and Jillian Michaels were not well-known figures; they were not well-known celebrities with widespread recognition. They worked out with us every single day and were always there.
Benson, who was thirty-six years old and obviously hyper-competitive at the time, remembers adopting extreme steps, both due to the encouragement of the show and on his own initiative, in order to achieve the level of success that was necessary to win.
“For the last twenty-four hours, I didn’t put anything in my body and just went to the gym and had a rubber suit on to sweat and then went to the sauna,” Benson says, referring to a period of time when contestants were sent home to finish up the final weeks of weight loss on their own before weighing in at the live finale. Benson is referring to the time when contestants were sent home to finish themselves off. In other words, they were preparing us to fail. Just to win was all I wanted.”
Benson claims that he and the other eleven participants experienced a rigorous routine while they were still on the Biggest Loser campus. Furthermore, he claims that they were “working out like professional athletes.”
Once we had finished a decent exercise with weights, we would perform an hour of cardio before breakfast. After that, we would maybe go on a long trek, followed by further cardio, and then possibly some additional weights. His memory remembers that he worked ranging from six to eight hours every day. “When you would wake up in the morning, it was painful to do anything,” she said. Without a doubt, it was challenging for me. It was a stroke of good luck that I never damaged or wounded myself.
Despite the fact that the physical procedure required a great deal of stamina and that the participants’ willpower was put to the test by the high weight-loss expectations, Benson remembers that the experience might seem particularly harsh due to the “temptations” that the program implemented.
“During the first season, they had food out everywhere,” he adds, referring to the platters of calorie-dense fast food or sweets that were left out for the competitors to sample in order to encourage them to deviate from their diets. “There was a part of me that believes that they wanted to capture people on video, just gorging themselves on this stuff and sort of nearly making it as comical as possible…Despite the fact that I am not aware of what they anticipated, there were instances when I had the impression that they wanted us to succeed. Our situation was undeniably exploitative.
Benson admits that while he first entered the program with the intention of losing weight, he realized very early that it was more about winning for him. On the other hand, he admits, “That competitive side really got into me.” As Benson continued to lose weight and took pleasure in the audience’s surprised “oohs and ahhs” at the weigh-ins, he made the decision to accelerate his weight reduction efforts in preparation for the final episode.
According to Benson, “I did a master cleanse,” which consists of drinking fresh squeezed lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and maple syrup mixed together, and without eating anything for a period of ten days while engaging in a lot of cardiovascular exercise.
It was during the course of the performance that he noticed that blood was present in his pee. “On the day of our most recent weigh-in, the doctors tested our urine, and they informed me that there was blood in mine because I was so dehydrated,” Benson recalled how the doctors informed him. “My wife was so upset with me that she told me, ‘Nothing worthwhile is worth this.'”
Although he was able to win thanks to his radical strategy, it was not a strategy that could be maintained. Within a span of three days, he regained around 25 pounds, and by the end of the day, he had returned to his previous weight, which was well over 300 pounds. According to Benson, who has now shed around 35 pounds, “It is not a secret that I gained back all of the weight because I did.”
When Benson thinks back on the aftermath of the program, he says that the aspect that he has “struggled with the most” is the sense of shame that he has had as a result of his failure to maintain his weight loss following his victory on television.
“Even after twenty years, you still feel guilty for going through this and not living up to what you did on the show,” he adds. “You feel like you fell short.” When I say that, I mean that everybody who is overweight and has ever struggled with their weight has problems that they carry with them throughout their lives. However, when I confronted it in a very public manner and experienced the emotions that I did there, it kind of amplified the problems that I had been experiencing with regard to my weight and my health.
In spite of the fact that The Biggest Loser was discontinued in 2016, Benson acknowledges that the show has developed throughout the course of its ensuing sixteen seasons. (The program continued to air for a total of eighteen seasons in the year 2020). At the height of its popularity, the program regularly attracted at least eight million people each night and was a major success for NBC.
The strategy of providing “temptations” of food on a consistent basis was eventually abandoned, and he believes that the program ultimately succeeded in motivating viewers. “I can see why the program was treated with a lot of criticism in the beginning; they were pretty much simply trying to do something that would attract viewers. After that, to their good fortune, it did turn out to be motivational,” he has said.
In addition, the play is representative of a different era, not just in the globe but also in Benson’s own life on a personal level. Benson, who is now a father to three adolescents who are being brought up with a more holistic approach to body image, derives a sense of relief from the realization that his children are growing up in an era of body acceptance.
The generation that my children belong to is one that is far more welcoming of people of all different body types and the whole of the human experience, he writes. “When I was younger, my generation was much less accepting of people who were different from them,”
Benson has even included his children in the viewing of his season. “Experiencing it through their eyes is a very enjoyable experience,” he adds with a chuckle.
To what extent would his 36-year-old self participate in another weight-loss show? According to him, it is possible, supposing that the production used a more sophisticated approach. The statement that Benson makes is that “if I were in the same position as I was then, I would probably do it again.” “It would have to be reorganized in a very new way. Instead of concentrating just on the number that appears on the scale, they would need to adopt a more holistic approach, putting equal emphasis on both mental and physical wellness.