First ‘Biggest Loser’ winner Ryan Benson claims show set contestants ‘up to fail’ with ‘food out everywhere’ to tempt them into cheating on diets: ‘We were exploited’

nypost.com:

told People.Benson, a 56-year-old SVP of Global Content Delivery at Lionsgate, believed that producers exploited the 12 contestants to catch them on camera in a desperate moment. “In the first season, they had food out everywhere,” he said, noting the large platters consisted of fast food and desserts. “There was a part of me that thinks that they wanted to catch people on camera, just gorging themselves on this food and kind of almost making it funny…I don’t know what they expected, but there were times that I felt like, ‘Yeah, they want us to fail.’ We were definitely exploited,” Benson claimed.Benson noted that the show’s trainers Bob Harper and Jillian Michaels weren’t household names during the first season.

Harper worked as a celebrity fitness trainer while Michaels operated a sports medicine facility before they were brought onto the show. “They were there every day working out with us,” Benson said.However, Benson blamed the production and the contestant’s lifestyle for the drastic turnaround in his weight. “I think since I was in the first season the producers and the trainers and everyone involved with the show were kind of learning as they went,” he told the outlet.“We would do an hour of cardio before breakfast after a good weight workout and then maybe go for a long hike followed by more cardio and then maybe more weights… anywhere from six to eight hours a day,” Benson compared his training to that of a “professional athlete.”“It hurt to do anything when you’d wake up in the morning.

It was definitely tough for me. I was lucky I never got hurt or injured myself,” he added.Before the weigh-ins, Benson said he would take drastic measures to cut weight under the urgings of either the show or himself.“For the.