Shut Up And Choose - STOP DIETING. START CHOOSING.

The Biggest Lie From The Biggest Loser- Why Exercise Is Not The Answer

• Jonathan Ressler • Episode 229

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Shock value makes great TV, but it makes terrible health. We dig into the Netflix documentary on The Biggest Loser and trace the fallout of extreme weight loss: starvation-level calories, dehydration before weigh-ins, and punishing workouts that tanked metabolism and broke trust. The headline the show never printed is simple: you can’t out-train bad choices, and you can’t bully biology. When intensity replaces consistency, the body fights back with slower burn, louder hunger, and a rebound that feels like failure.

I share why my philosophy—stop dieting, start choosing—lands differently. Instead of humiliation and quick fixes, we focus on small, smart choices that respect physiology and psychology. Think exercise as a tool, not a cure; food as a partner, not an enemy. We break down the NIH findings on metabolic adaptation, why cortisol makes fat loss harder, and how identity-based habits beat hype. This is about autonomy over external control: building simple systems that work when no one’s watching—anchored meals, enjoyable movement, better sleep, and friction against impulse.

We also talk about the hidden price: the emotional whiplash of tying worth to a number. Shame isn’t a plan; it’s a trap. Real transformation starts in your head, then shows up on your plate and in your calendar. The wins we celebrate aren’t just pounds—they’re energy, peace, and follow-through. If you’ve tried the spectacle and burned out, you’re not broken; the method was. Trade punishment for partnership and let your choices compound into a life you can actually live in.

If this hit home, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs a saner path, and leave a review. Ready to take the next step? Grab my free weekly tips at jonathanwrestler.com and get the book Shut Up and Choose on Amazon. Then tell me: what’s one small choice you’ll make today?

Stop Dieting. Start Choosing.


I’m Jonathan Ressler, Transformation Guide and author of Shut Up and Choose. I lost 140 pounds and built a movement the diet industry hopes you never find. No starvation. No obsession. No gym marathons. Real transformation starts when you stop outsourcing discipline and start leading yourself.

The truth is simple: weight loss isn’t about willpower—it’s about integrity. Every time you keep a promise to yourself, you rebuild confidence. Every smart choice strengthens self-trust. That’s the foundation of lasting change. My mission is to help busy, high-performing people take back control of their health, energy, and mindset—without diets, shots, or shame.

Each episode of the Shut Up and Choose Podcast cuts through the noise with real talk, proven strategies, and small, smart steps that actually last. No gimmicks. No hype. Just truth that works in real life.

Get free weekly tips at JonathanRessler.com/weekly-tips.
Grab my book Shut Up and Choose on Amazon.
Follow me on Instagram @JonathanResslerFatLoss.
Leave a review—it helps real people find real answers.
Connect directly: Jonathan.Ressler@gmail.com
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Annoucer:

If you're a whiny snowflake that can't handle the truth, is offended by the word fuck and about 37 uses of it in different forms, gets ass hurt when you hear someone speak the absolute real and raw truth, you should leave. Like right now. This is Shut Up and Shoes. The podcast where we cut through the shit and get real about weight loss, life, and everything in between, we get into the nitty-gritty of making small, smart choices that add up to big results. From what's on your plate and how you approach life's challenges, we'll explore how the simple act of choosing differently can transform your health, your mindset, and your entire freaking life. So, if you're ready to cut through the bullshit and start making some real changes, then buckle up and shut it up, because we're about to choose our way to a healthier, happier life. This is Shut Up and Choose. Let's do this. Now your host, Jonathan Ressler.

Jonathan Ressler | Transformation Guide:

Hey, welcome back to Shut Up and Choose, the podcast that's the noise. Instagram, internet, feeling your way, it's all a bunch of garbage. You know that. It's all built on lies. That's why my philosophy is stop dieting, start choosing, because as soon as you stop dieting and you start making choices for yourself, you'll be amazed at how much easier the whole weight loss thing is. But today I want to talk about something that I actually saw this on TV. Netflix just recently dropped a documentary a few months ago, I think it was in August, but I just watched it the other night that basically approves my entire philosophy. It's called Fit for Life, the Reality of the Biggest Loser. So look, if you've ever believed that extreme exercise, boot camp diets, or just sheer willpower were the keys to weight loss, you need to hear this. You need to watch this documentary. Because what the film exposes isn't just the truth about the one show. It's a truth about an entire industry built on lies, shame, and short-term spectacle. But let's rewind for a second, because back in the mid-2000s, the biggest loser became a cultural phenomenon, is the only word for it. Millions of people tuned in every week to watch the contestants, who, as we know, were real overweight men and women. They watched them cry and sweat and suffer their weight toward dramatic weight loss. It had everything a network executive could dream of. It had transformation, competitional, and of course the obligatory emotional breakdowns. The show made stars out of trainers, both idiots, but that's beside the point. That's not what this is about. It made household names out of diet products, and it gave America the illusion that anyone could lose hundreds of pounds if they just worked hard enough. You know I think that's bullshit, but I'm gonna I'm gonna take you deeper. So you remember the scenes of trainers like screaming, that Gillian Michael screaming in people's faces, contestants collapsing on the treadmill, giant wands that felt like gladiator battles. It was marketed as inspiration, but it wasn't about health. It never was. It was about humiliation packaged as hope. And here's the thing the cameras didn't show. Behind those sweaty montages were starvation diets, dehydration tactics, and sometimes even drugs being handed out like protein bars. Contestants weren't just training hard, they were surviving on as little as 800 calories a day. 800. And that's less than what a toddler should eat. And guess what? Of course, it worked, but only for a minute. The pounds flew off, they melted off, the before and after photos went viral, and the show raked in millions of dollars. But as this new Netflix documentary shows, almost every single one of those contestants regained the weight, and a lot of them, and more. Many ended up heavier and slower and even more metabolically damaged than when they started. They didn't just break bodies. That show didn't break bodies, it broke spirits. Think about that for a second. These were people who already struggled with weight and shame their whole lives. They were desperate for change. I know because honestly, at that time I kind of thought about like, hey, maybe I'll go on the biggest loser because I wasn't 411 pounds, but I was in the mid-threes and I was thinking, man, am I fat? And the people on the show were only three in the beginning were, you know, 300, 305. I was a 350. I was like, fuck, I'm a contestant. But anyway, these people were so desperate for change and they were handed an opportunity that looked like salvation. But instead of being taught how to live differently, they were taught how to perform thinness for television. That's what I said, perform thinness. They were taught that suffering equals success, and that's the exact reason that it all fell apart. And don't get me wrong, they went for a lot of seasons, but it all fell apart, and there was a lot of shit behind the scenes. So the show exposes it all. The manipulation, the weigh-in tricks, the complete lack of aftercare. When the show was over, they were fucking done. They didn't want to speak to him ever again. One former contestant said that the producers told her to drink uh as little water as possible before the weigh-ins so the number would drop. Others admitted to taking diuretics and diapills and all kinds of shit just to hit their goal. Trainers pushed workouts so extreme that hospitalizations became almost fucking normal. There's even an account of one contestant collapsing with some disease. I can't say it, but I don't only because I don't know the name of it, but it was a potentially fatal condition caused by overexertion during filming. And that's fucking insane. They had to take this woman out with a helicopter, an airlifter to the hospital. And then, of course, there's the biggest shocker of all, this guy who is the winner of season eight, I can't remember his name, but he lost 239 pounds in six months on national television. But that guy's today, he's heavier than he's ever been. And he's, of course, in the documentary. That's not failure, though. That's the body fighting back. That's biology doing exactly what it's supposed to do after being starved, punished, and betrayed, abused. You picked the word. So yeah, Netflix just made my point for me. For years, I've been saying the same thing. You don't need another diet or another trainer or another gym membership or any of that shit. You need to start choosing because weight loss isn't about punishment. It's about participation in your own life. It's not about willpower, it's about awareness. And it's sure as shit not about hours in the gym. It's about the decisions you make when nobody else is watching. So the biggest loser was built on the fantasy that if you work hard enough, scream loud enough, and hate yourself enough, you can fix everything. But here's the truth of the show certainly didn't tell, but the documentary did. You can't out-exercise your bad choices. You can't outrun an unhealthy relationship with food, and you sure as shit can't bully your body into long-term change. The contestants didn't fail because they were weak, because obviously they spent hours in the gym and they worked themselves to exhaustion. They failed because the system they trusted was designed for television and not transformation. And the documentary finally shows that. So when I say stop dieting, start choosing, I'm not giving you just a cute slogan. I'm giving the antidote to decades of damage, the opposite of what the biggest loser stood for, because lasting change isn't created by starving yourself or sprinting or working out until you puke. It's created by making one small, smart choice today and another one tomorrow and each day after that. That's what this show proves. That's what this documentary proves. That's what my entire philosophy has been about. So buck up because in this episode, we're going to break down exactly what Netflix revealed and how everything they expose about the biggest loser confirms that the only thing that truly changes your life is choice. This is the uncomfortable truth that no one of the biggest loser ever told you. You can't out-train bad choices. That's it. That's the whole secret they have buried under hours of screaming workouts and sweat-drenched bullshit drama. You can spend six hours a day in the gym. You can run until your shoes fucking melt. You push your body past the point of exhaustion. But if the choices behind those actions are rooted in punishment and desperation or manipulation, you're just spinning your wheels. Documentary makes that crystal clear. It shows contestants spending entire days in the gym working out until they literally fucking collapse on the floor. We're talking six, seven, sometimes eight-hour sessions designed not for health, but for spectacle. They weren't learning sustainable movement, they were learning survival. And the reason they lost weight so fast wasn't because of the magical training techniques, it was because they were fucking starving, plain and simple. I told you, people admitted to eating 800 calories a day. 800 calories. That's not discipline, that's deprivation. For reference, just so you know, the average adult burns twice that, twice the 18, 1,600 calories just sitting on the couch and breathing. So imagine pushing through marathon-level workouts on a toddler's diet. That's not commitment, it's metabolic suicide. And the kicker of this whole thing, they weren't doing it alone. Trainers and producers were complicit. Contestants were encouraged to dehydrate before weigh-ins, to skip water for 24 hours and to take diuretics and pills that would strip the scale of another pound or two. Because on TV, results are everything. Ratings don't care about your thyroid or your hormones or your mental health. They care about the number that flashes on the giant digital scale. When you see that, it's easy to believe weight loss is purely about the grind. Work harder, sweat more, and your fat will melt away. But here's what the documentary actually exposes, and what I've been preaching for years. Exercise is just a tool. It's not the cure. Think about it like this. If your car is leaking oil, you don't just keep driving faster hoping the leak stops, you fix the leak. Exercise without fixing the choices behind it is the same insanity. Sure, of course, you'll get somewhere, but it won't be where you think you're going. The contestants, I have to say, they got immediate results, and massive drops on the scale, all the accolades and applause and confetti and all that shit. But their bodies were actually in crisis. The documentary even cites the National Institute of Health Study that followed them years later. Nearly every single one gained back the weight, and many gained back more. Their metabolism slowed dramatically, some burning hundreds of fewer calories in the day than before they started the show. Their bodies literally learn to resist weight loss. That's biology's defense mechanism. When you starve it, it fights back. When you punish it, it protects itself. And when you finally stop the madness, it rebounds hard. So let's call that what it is. The biggest loser didn't create winners. It created metabolic chaos for the contestants. It proved that suffering can produce results, but not the kind that lasts because transformation doesn't come from violence against your body. It comes from partnership with it. That's why my approach looks so different. I don't tell people to kill themselves in the gym. You know, I don't even go to the gym. I tell them to make one small, smart choice, then another, and another, because the small choices compound and chaos collapses. So let's get something straight though, right now. I'm not anti-exercise. I try to move my body every single day, but I do it because it feels good, not because I hate myself. Movement should support your life, not dominate it. The people on that show weren't building lives. They were fighting for survival under the fucking lights and all the makeup of the camera and the camera lenses themselves. And here's the part that nobody wants to say out loud. A lot of those contestants came home broken. Physically, yes, broken injuries, exhaustion, hormonal imbalances, but emotionally too. They were conditioned to believe that thinness equals worth. And when the weight crept back, so did the shame. They didn't fail because they were weak, they failed because they were taught the wrong lesson. The real lesson should have been change comes from choosing differently, not suffering more. That documentary unintentionally delivers that message on a silver platter. Every frame shows the cost of confusing movement with meaning and effort with effectiveness. You can force your body to obey for a season, but unless your mindset changes, it will always find its way back to where it feels safe, even if that means fat and slow. And that brings us right back to choice. The people who maintain their results long term aren't the ones who trained the hardest or sweated the most. They're the ones who changed their daily decisions, the ones who stopped eating out of guilt, the ones who redefined what success looked like, and the ones who understood that you can love food and still love yourself. Exercise can definitely help you, absolutely, but it's not the magic pill that you've been sold that everybody's trying to sell you on the internet. The magic pill doesn't fucking exist. Just by the way, neither does the magic shot, but that's a conversation for another day. What exists is the truth. Every decision you make, every bite, every thought, every step adds up to either chaos or control. The biggest loser taught people to chase control through punishment. My mission is to teach you to reclaim control through choice. Because when you choose differently, your body doesn't need to fight you anymore. It finally gets to work with you. That's the difference between losing weight and losing yourself. And that's exactly what the next part of this documentary revealed. The science they ignored and how their quest for quick results destroyed their ability to maintain them. This part really got to me. For a show that claimed to be about health, the biggest loser ignored almost every bit of actual science about how the human body works. In this documentary, you have doctors and former contestants, and they describe what happened once the camera stopped rolling, and it's fucking brutal. Their bodies didn't just go back to normal. They rebelled. Every system that had been pushed to its breaking point decided never again. Metabolism tanked, hunger hormones went haywire, and their energy vanished. Why? Because biology isn't a fan of extremes. Your body's number one job is to keep you alive, not to make you look good on a scale. When you starve it, it interprets that as danger. When you force it through eight hours of cardio on 800 fucking calories, it doesn't clap for you. It fucking panics. In the documentary, they talk about that. I discussed this before, but they talked about the 2016 National Institute of Health study that followed the biggest loser contestants for six years after the show. Every single one of them regained weight. Not most, every one. The resting metabolic rates plummeted and never recovered. That means even sitting still, their bodies burn hundreds of calories less every single day than they did before the show. Imagine that. You lose a couple hundred pounds, think that you fixed your life, and now your body is working against you 24-7 just to get back what it lost. That's not failure. That's physiology. And that's exactly what I've been telling you all along. You can't bully your biology. You have to work with it. But TV doesn't give a shit about hormones or adaptation, it cares about drama. The producers wanted tears, not truth. They wanted the sound of a treadmill belt squealing, not some nutritionist explaining metabolic slowdown. The science is so simple, but nobody on that show wanted to hear it. When you crash your calories, your metabolism slows to survive. When you exercise to absolute exhaustion, your body releases cortisol. That's the stress hormone that literally tells your body to hold on to fat. You put those two together and you built the perfect recipe for burnout, rebound, and ultimately shame. The show has footage of contestants gaining the way back and feeling like shit. But the real failure wasn't theirs, it was the systems. They were set up to fail from day one because no one explained that the key to sustainable change isn't force, it's feedback. When you treat your body like an enemy, it defends itself. When you treat it like a partner, it cooperates. That's the entire foundation of my philosophy. I lost 140 pounds and kept it off because I stopped fighting my biology and I started listening to it. I learned how to choose foods that work for me, not against me. And I learned how to move in ways that felt good, not punishing. I fucking hate the gym. I'm not going there. That's punishment. I'm not doing it. But most importantly, I stopped starving myself to prove a point. The contestants on that show never got that chance. They were given a set of rules, and most of them wrong, by the way, and told to follow them or go home. Eat less, sweat more, push harder, cry for the fucking camera. They weren't being taught health. They were being taught how to perform suffering. The show also reveals that some of the contestants were terrified to eat after the filming ended. They'd been trained to believe the food was their enemy. I'm talking about something that's fucked up. That one wrong bite would undo everything for them. And that's not health, man. That's trauma. One woman said she was so metabolically broken she'd gain weight eating 1,200 calories a day. Her body wasn't broken. It was protecting her from ever starving again. That's what the science says, anyway. This is where I get passionate because it's the heart of what I teach. Real transformation is biological, psychological, and behavioral. All three of those things working together. Diet culture and shows like The Biggest Loser pretend that it's simple math. Calories in, calories out. And of course, that is the most basic thing. You have to burn more calories than you consume, but that's just the tip of it. It's not the math, it's chemistry. It's the hormones, it's sleep and stress and mindset and habit. It's a thousand choices that happen before you ever even pick up a dumbbell or a fork. The science says sustainable weight loss comes from consistency, not extremes, from fueling your body and definitely not starving it. And from lowering your stress and not living in that state of fight or flight, which is what those contestants lived in. And honestly, what most diet influencers and diet doctors tell you. They want you to be in a constant state of fight or flight. If you eat the wrong thing, you're fucked. That's not the truth. And the biggest lesson of all, from training your brain to make better choices automatically, not forcing your body into submission temporarily. That's why every quick fix eventually collapses, because you can't override human biology forever. If the biggest loser had brought in just one endocrinologist instead of a Hollywood producer, and they did have a doctor, but they really didn't listen to them, but if they had brought in an endocrinologist, they might have built something that actually helped people, but they didn't want help. They wanted headlines. And that's why what I do is so different. When I help clients, especially busy executives, I don't give them a diet. I give them a strategy. I teach them how to eat and move and think in a way that their body can sustain for life. No starvation, no fucking cortisol overload, no rebound, just small, smart, science-backed choices that stack up over time. Because science isn't the enemy, but misusing it is. And now, thanks to Netflix, the world finally sees the result of ignoring it. Those contestants didn't just lose weight, they lost trust in themselves. They were taught that effort equals results. But the truth is, aligned effort equals results. Unaligned effort, the kind that fights your biology, leads straight to burnout. So when people tell me, but Jonathan, I just need to work out more, I shake my head. No, no, you don't. You need to work with your body more. You need to understand the data that your body's been giving you all along. Your hunger cues, your energy dips, your stress signals, that's the science that matters. Because here's the headline that the Netflix documentary didn't print. The body always keeps score. Every skip meal, every sleepless night, every punishment workout, it fucking remembers. The good news is that it also remembers the healing. So the moment you start choosing smarter and fueling yourself better, sleeping, lowering your stress, all those things, it responds every single time. That's the real science of transformation. And it's not found in the gym or on a TV stage or on a starvation plan. It's found in your choices. And that kind of brings me to the next part of the story: the emotional fallout. Because when your entire identity is built on a number and then that number comes back, the damage isn't just physical, it's psychological. The physical damage, obviously that was brutal, but the emotional fallout was even worse. This show shows what happens when your entire sense of worth gets tied into a number on the scale. And that number eventually stops cooperating. When the cameras were rolling, the people on the show were fucking heroes. They were America's inspiration, the living proof that anything was possible with enough pain, sweat, and screaming. They were parated around across morning shows and all kinds of shows. They'd given sponsorship deals, celebrated as success stories, got product placement. They were told they'd won their lives back. But then the lights went off. And the applause stopped. And the weight came back. And that's when the real nightmare began. Contestants talk about feeling ashamed, broken, and even worthless because of the same culture that glorified their transformation now mocked their failure. The very audience that once cried for them on TV was now whispering about how they let themselves go. Some of them were ridiculed online, others isolated themselves entirely. And you know what? It's not really hard to understand why. When your value is measured in pounds lost, what happens when the pounds come back? It should be measured in health and the life that you gain. But you start to believe it when your value is only in pounds lost, you believe that you came back, the old you, the failure, the one that you thought you killed on national television. That's the part no one sees. The psychological whiplash of chasing an external finish line. One former contestant said she couldn't look at herself in the mirror for years after the show. Another one admitted that she was terrified to eat, terrified that food undo everything. Some, and Manny actually, developed eating disorders. Some fell into depression. One even said that the show made her hate herself thin. That line kind of knocked me out, you know. Hate yourself thin. That's the whole problem, right there. You can't hate yourself into health. You can't shame yourself into transformation. And yet, that's exactly what the biggest loser, and honestly, most of the diet culture teaches people to do. It's why I wrote my book, Shut Up and Choose, because the only transformation that lasts comes from respect, not punishment, from awareness and not restriction, and obviously from small, smart choices, not from fear. The emotional cost of that show was enormous. They weren't actors, these were real human beings who believed losing weight on national TV would fix their lives. But instead of being taught how to live differently, they were taught how to perform differently. They were taught that their worth depended on a result. And as you know, results fade. And think about the message that sends. You're only valuable if you're smaller. You're only lovable if you're disciplined, you're only successful if you're suffering. Fuck that noise. No wonder so many of them crumbled when the whole show ended because the system never taught them what to do. There was no mental reset, no emotional rebuild, no support network. When the filler wrapped up, they were sent home, alone, with fucked up metabolisms, broken routines, and zero tools to handle real life. And this long-term weight loss is all about how to learning how to live your life and still eating food. Maybe what they had, that wasn't transformation, that was trauma. And here's the wild thing: the documentary really didn't spin it. It doesn't have to. The paint on the faces of these people pretty much says it all. You can feel the betrayal, not just their bodies, but their belief that this was finally their way out. And it it's not just them. Millions of viewers absorbed that same toxic fucking message. Honestly, I did. They watched these contestants, thought, if I can just work out harder, maybe I'll finally be good enough. They tried the same extreme diets, the same fucking crazy workouts. And when they inevitably burned out, they blame themselves. I'm guilty of that. That's the tragedy. The show didn't break its contestants, it broke its audience. But here's the good news. The documentary also cracks open the door, gives us a moment to say, hey, wait, maybe we've been doing this all wrong. Because the truth is, there's nothing wrong with wanting to lose weight, obviously. There's nothing wrong with wanting to feel better, look better, and live better. The problem is how we've been taught to do it. You don't need to be humiliated into health, and you don't need to be punished into progress. You just need to be empowered into choice. When I lost the 140 pounds, I didn't do it by hating the guy I used to be. I did it by understanding that guy, by forgiving him, by learning what drove the stupid, fucking horrible choices that I made in the first place. That's what real transformation looks like. It starts in your head, not in your abs, not in your stomach. It starts in your head. That's the missing piece. The biggest loser never understood. Mindset. Not motivation, not punishment, mindset. You can change your diet and you can get a new trainer. You can go to the gym, you can take crazy supplements. But if you don't change how you think about food and success and failure and self-worth, nothing sticks. It's not just psychology, that's a neuroscience. Your brain builds habits around emotion. You eat when you're stressed, that's a learned loop. You binge when you feel unworthy. That's not weakness, it's wiring. The only way to rewire it is to choose differently over and over and over again until your brain catches up. And that's why this documentary matters so much, because it exposes the lie that transformation happens through spectacle. It doesn't. It happens through small, quiet, consistent choices that nobody claps for. The contestants on the biggest lose didn't fail because they didn't try hard enough. They failed because they were never given a chance to learn choice. The thing that actually changes everything. So when I say stop dining, start choosing, this is exactly what I mean. Stop chasing external approval. Stop basing your worth on numbers. Stop hating yourself then. Start making choices that you can live with, not just survive. Because health isn't measured in pounds, mostly. But it isn't measured in pounds, it's measured in peace. So here's the bottom line. Fit for TV, the reality of the biggest loser, doesn't just expose a show. It validates an entire truth the weight loss industry has ignored for decades. Everything that went wrong on the biggest loser is exactly why I stopped dieting and start choosing works. The show sold punishment. My method teaches partnership. They built fear. The extreme exercise, the starvation diets, humiliation, the lack of support. All that shit didn't just fail. They backfired. Contestants lost hundreds of pounds. I think the record guy lost 239 pounds. That's fucking insane. But because he never learned sustainable habits or how to make real-world choices, every one of them gained it back. It's the perfect proof that short-term results mean nothing without long-term strategy. And that's what I've been preaching since day one. And I only stumbled on it. I figured it out for myself. And weight loss is not about restriction, it's about direction. It's about choosing every single day to do the next small, smart thing. Not starving yourself for applause, but building momentum through consistency. The show's philosophy was simple push harder, eat less, hurt more, win big. But life doesn't work that way. Not real life. You can't punish your way to peace. You can't shame your body into trusting you, and you sure as shit can't confuse weight loss with wellness. What the biggest loser proved, and what the Netflix documentary made pretty much undeniable, is that change without choices always collapses. The contestants were controlled by the rules, the cameras, and of course the fear of elimination. They were told what to eat, when to move, when to cry, and a whole bunch of other stuff. None of that builds autonomy. And when you remove the external control, the internal structure isn't there to sustain anything. That's why my clients succeed because I don't control. I teach them how to control themselves. I give them the tools to make decisions when no one's watching. I help them understand that transformation doesn't come from following orders. It comes from owning the outcomes. If you look at the footage from that show, it's full of desperation. But real transformation doesn't come from desperation. It comes from direction. And direction starts with choice. You can't change what you don't own. The documentary shows that the second these people stop being told what to do, everything fell apart. That's what happens when you outsource your responsibility. That's what happens when you go on a fad diet with rules. That's what happens when you follow the workout in the gym that someone else gave you. Choice is the antidote to that. Choice is power. When you decide what goes on your plate, when you decide how you move, when you decide how you respond, that's transformation. Because choice means control, and control means freedom. That's why stop dieting, start choosing isn't just a slogan. It's a rebellion against the nonsense that the biggest loser and the whole diet industry represented. Show even includes one former contestant saying, We weren't taught how to live, we were taught how to lose. Exactly. Losing isn't living, and that's where I come in. Teaching people how to live differently so they never have to lose like that again. The show tried to sell a miracle. What I teach is a method, a sustainable, sane, proven path to results at last. If you take one thing from this documentary, it's this stop chasing punishment and start practicing choice. Because the real transformation doesn't happen on a treadmill or in front of TV cameras. It happens in the quiet moments when you decide to choose better. So after everything we've seen, and hopefully you watch this, after everything that you saw, the starvation, the screaming, the rebound, the pain, the question becomes what does real transformation actually look like? Because the biggest loser gave the world a lie wrapped in sweat. It said, suffer enough and you'll be saved. Netflix just showed the truth. Suffering isn't salvation, it's spectacle. Real transformation doesn't happen in the gym, it happens in your fucking head. It starts the moment you stop asking, how fast can I lose this? And start asking, how can I live differently so I never have to lose it again? For me, that moment came when I hit rock bottom at 411 pounds. I had tried every version of what the biggest loser sold, the diets, the detoxes, the boot camps, the shame. I even tried the gym. I hated my body, and I thought hating it harder would make a change. Here's a spoiler alert. It didn't. What changed everything was the day I stopped dieting and started choosing. I made one small decision, not to starve and not to punish myself, certainly not to go to the gym, but just to choose differently. One meal, one step, one thought at a time. And when I did it again the next day, that's it. No camera crew, no train air screaming in my face, and I probably would have knocked them out anyway. No magic supplement, just choice. And I repeated it until it became who I was. That's the part the biggest loser missed, the quiet part. The part that doesn't look good on television, doesn't look good on Instagram, the part where you're alone in your kitchen at 10 o'clock at night, staring at the fridge, and you make a better decision than you made yesterday. That's transformation. Real transformation, I say it all the time, it's not sexy, but it is steady. It's not about the applause, it's about getting aligned, and it's not about the finish line. It's about a foundation. The finish line will come. You'll know when you get there. Or you may never get there. But it's about building a foundation, and the documentary proves that. The contestants changed everything except the thing that mattered the most, the way they made choices. They were told what to eat, what to burn, what to fear. And they never learned how to think for themselves around food and emotion. So when the noise stopped, they didn't have a voice of their own. When I help clients, that's exactly what I fix. I don't hand them a diet, I hand them back their power. I teach them how to navigate real life dinners and stress and travel and kids and chaos, because that's where weight is lost, in the ordinary, not in the extraordinary. The weight doesn't come back when you finally understand that you're in charge. The shame disappears when you realize your choices, not your calories, define you. And the freedom begins when you stop fighting your body and start listening to it. The biggest loser made people believe they had to earn their worth. I'm here to remind you that you already have it. You don't need to get your life back. You just need to stop giving away to the wrong approach. The documentary kind of ends on a bittersweet note. The contestants saying they wish someone had taught them how to live, not just how to lose. That's the mission now. That's the work. That's what I do every single day. I teach people how to live well so the weight part takes care of itself. Because transformation isn't a 12-week contest, it's a lifetime conversation between you and your choices. So here's the truth that I want you to walk away with. You've heard me say it before. You don't need another diet, you don't need another trainer, you don't need another punishment plan, you need a decision. One good choice today, another tomorrow. And the belief that consistency beats intensity every single time. If the biggest loser showed us what happens when you try to force change, this documentary shows what happens when you finally stop. And that right there is the proof that what I've been saying all along is the only thing that works. Stop dieting and start choosing. So if the biggest loser taught you to hate yourself thin, this documentary is your permission to stop. Stop punishing yourself for what you weigh. Stop confusing suffering with success. And sure as shit, stop letting the scale define your value. That showed glorified pain and called it progress. Netflix just confirmed what I've been saying for years. It doesn't work. And it never will. And it never did. Because real transformation doesn't come from starvation or sweat. It comes from awareness and from ownership and from learning how to make better choices every single day. Not for a season, but for life. The contestants on that show didn't fail because they lacked effort. God, they worked their asses off. They failed because they lacked understanding. They were taught rules and not reasons. They were taught control and not choice. And when the cameras turned off, they were left with nothing to sustain them. So here's your chance to do it differently. Your moment is stop dieting, stop outsourcing your willpower, and start building a life you can actually live in. So if you're ready to stop dieting and start choosing, go to my website, jonathanressler.com, and get my free weekly tips. They're free. I'm not going to sell you shit. They take less than a minute to read, but they're real strategies for real life that actually stick. And if you want the complete blueprint for lasting change, get my book, Shut Up and Choose on Amazon. We're an Amazon bestseller sold thousands and thousands of copies. But I warn you, it's not a diet book. It's a transformation plan for your entire life. It's about how to think, eat, move, and live differently so that you never have to diet again. Because you don't need a camera crew. You don't need a crash plan. You just need a decision. One small, smart choice today. So if you want undeniable proof that the diet industry is scamming you and teaching you all the wrong things, then I urge you to watch that documentary. It's called Fit for TV, the reality of the biggest loser. And if you're truly ready to start your transformation, if you're ready to shut off the noise and diet industry nonsense, then the answer is simple. Shut up and choose.

Annoucer:

You've been listening to Shut Up and Choose. Jonathan's passion is to share his journey of shedding 130 pounds in less than a year without any of the usual gimmicks. No diets, no pills, and we'll let you in on a little secret. No fucking gym. And guess what? You can do it too! We hope you enjoyed the show. We had a fucking blast. If you did, make sure to like, rate, and review. We'll be back soon, but in the meantime, find Jonathan on Instagram at JonathanWrestler Boca Ratan. Until next time, shut up and choose.

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Jonathan Ressler

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