'Biggest Loser' Contestant SLAMS Show's Creator — He's A 'Fat Shaming Worthless Hack'
May 8 2017, Published 11:05 a.m. ET
The Biggest Loser contestants who left the show and gained the weight back are getting another chance at redemption on TV, but a former star reached out to RadarOnline.com to claim that the man behind the series is a "worthless hack!"
J.D. Roth, who created TBL, now has a new show that brings back old contestants who packed on the pounds after leaving The Biggest Loser. He's calling the spinoff The Big Fat Truth.
Rulon Gardner, an Olympic wrestling champion who abruptly left Season 11 of The Biggest Loser, spoke exclusively with RadarOnline.com about his fears for the returning TBL contestants who are going to try to lose weight on camera again.
Roth "preys on overweight and vulnerable people to make millions of dollars and to get lots of corporate sponsors,” Gardner railed to RadarOnline.com.
“So it makes sense that he would come back and recreate that."
He claimed, "J.D. is just making money off the weak and frail."
For his part, Roth insists his new show is an attempt to make things right for Biggest Loser contestants who saw the weight creep back on after the show needed.
“They started The Biggest Loser unfit, unhealthy and unhappy. Then, they finished The Biggest Loser hopeful, skinny, fit and ready to take on the world," he explained in a preview clip for The Big Fat Truth. "But somewhere along the way, their old habits crept back in. And unfortunately, so did the pounds."
But Gardner says that the practices of The Biggest Loser set him and his co-contestants up to fail.
“All the show did was teach people to starve themselves to get weight off," he claimed. “I was wondering when the first contestant would die at the first weigh in because they’d lost so much weight."
“Contestants were really negatively affected," he claimed. "It hurt their metabolism. They put themselves and their lives on the line for the show.
But in return, he said, “The show and J.D. took advantage of people. Instead of helping people, they use them for entertainment value and make a fortune off them.”
“The show is about fat shaming," he claimed. "That is all that it is.”
And with a whole new Loser series on the air, he said he felt compelled to speak out.
Gardner insisted, "I want to protect the people J.D. is going to hurt in the future."
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Roth and reps for The Big Fat Truth did not respond to RadarOnline.com's request for comment.
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