Biggest Loser Australia: Contestant left 'traumatised' by reality show's challenges

Tracy Moores from The Biggest Loser. Photo / Supplied

A former Biggest Loser Australia contestant has lifted the lid on the "traumatising" challenges she was subjected to on the show.

Tracy Moores appeared on the first season of the program in 2006 and lost 23.8kg. She was one of a handful of former reality contestants who spoke to SBS Viceland's The Feed last night for their investigation into the reality of reality TV.

"It's Big Brother and Survivor for fat people," Moores said about The Biggest Loser.

Going into detail about one of the most jarring moments she experienced on the show, Moores said: "One of the first episodes was this room that we were all in and we were all blindfolded. And they took the curtain down and there was all this food. They basically made us out to look like a bunch of pigs. I was quite distraught about the whole thing. We were quite traumatised to the point where I was crying."

Moores also claimed that producers withheld cold water from the contestants during a particularly gruelling challenge.

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"We were on a tarmac and we had to pull a plane and I think it was like 40-something degrees," she said.

"We looked over and we were all standing in the sun and we were given hot water. The crew were under umbrellas with bottles of water with ice.

"I actually went over and said, 'Can we get some cold water?' And they said, 'No, your water's over there'."

The amount of weight lost by contestants in the first season of The Biggest Loser was staggering. Harry, who finished second, lost 66.2kg. The winner, Adro, 51.3kg, which was 37.58 per cent of his body weight.

So how did they achieve such remarkable results?

"Being on a treadmill for hours on end … three hours sometimes," Moores said about her time on the show. "We all were on 500 calories a day. Some actually chose to be on less."

Moores claimed some of her co-stars fuelled themselves with caffeine pills rather than adequate meals, and they looked for any little advantage they could get to drop more weight.

"Some of the contestants they had enemas, they shaved all the hair off their body, they didn't eat," she said. "They looked like the walking dead.

"When you're doing that kind of exercise it does take its toll. On New Year's Eve I was put on a drip due to dehydration, so that was pretty intense."

The Biggest Loser last aired in Australia in 2017, and Moores is relieved the show is no longer being made.

"I always said that I thought somebody was going to die on the show," she said.

The Feed's investigation into the reality of reality TV also featured an interview with producer Marrion Farrely, who has worked on several high-profile shows.

Ms Farrelly acknowledged that producers may have taken things too far in the early days of reality TV in the 2000s.

"I think we need to be smarter in how we make reality TV shows," she said. "Because I think when we started we were very innocent and none of us really got it. I think the more we make the more we realise, actually, it is life changing."