"The Biggest Loser" fans listen! Former contestant Kai Hibbard has aired out the reality series's dirty laundry and even want as far as slamming the show's weight management tactics.
On Sunday, Hibbard spoke candidly to New York Post about her time on the television show and revealed the emotional abuse she had to face apart from the physical ones.
"The whole f- -king show is a fat-shaming disaster that I'm embarrassed to have participated in," she said.
Hubbard gushed the emotional torture all the contestants experienced because they were sent evil texts, telling them that they are going to die very soon and that the show has already prepared "fat-person" coffins for their cadavers.
"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," she revealed.
She also claimed that the emotional torture didn't stop there. They were imprisoned in hotel rooms and on the ranch, unable to speak to their family and friends for support, Us Weekly has learned.
"I know that one of the contestants' children became very ill and was in the ICU," Hibbard said. "He was allowed to talk to his family, but he didn't want to leave, because the show would have been done with him."
Not only that Hibbard also admitted that she noticed how the trainers delighted over instances when contestants would collapse on the show.
They'd get a sick pleasure out of it," she said. "They'd say, 'It's because you're fat. Look at all the fat you have on you.' And that was our fault, so this was our punishment."
So what are the ill effects of these tactics according to Hibbard?
My hair was falling out," she said. "My period stopped. I was only sleeping three hours a night. My thyroid, which I never had problems with, is now crap."
"There's a moral and ethical question here when you take people who are morbidly obese and work them out to the point where they vomit, all because it makes for good TV," she finally quipped, according to In Touch Weekly.
However, NBC was quick to dispel Kai's accusations by releasing a statement, insisting that all of the show's contenders are always safe.
"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," the statement read.
Additionally, Dr. Joanna Dolgoff - a childhood obesity expert and a former pediatrician for the series - defended the things the people behind the show do to the contenders.
"I found everyone who worked on the show to be so positive, to really be very caring," she told Huffington Post. "What I saw was not what this contestant is claiming to see."
