14 DAY TRIAL // Rachel Frederickson went from a size 20 to a size 0 / 2 and thus won the big prize on the latest season of The Biggest Loser. She is the only contestant to have lost this much of her initial body weight in the history of the show and, for the first time ever, she admits she might have gone a bit overboard.
When shocked viewers took their outrage online, mostly because they believed the show was sending the wrong message by awarding a woman who had gotten to a very unhealthy weight, Frederickson’s initial reaction was to act as if there was nothing wrong.
Then came reports that, for her height, her new weight placed her under the healthy BMI limit. Producers and trainers stood by the 24-year-old but also slightly distanced themselves from the controversy by saying they had no control over her in the 3 months before the season finale, after she left the ranch.
Frederickson is now telling People magazine that it was in those 3 months that she really pushed herself to lose all the weight she could lose. She was on a 1,600-calorie diet, which is within healthy limits, but she was actually training for 6 hours a day. This obviously means she wasn’t getting proper nutrition.
“Maybe I was a little too enthusiastic in my training to get to the finale,” Frederickson explains. However, she adds, “I am very, very healthy,” brushing aside all talk of a possible eating disorder.
“Rachel passed all the required medical tests ensuring she was healthy,” the show’s executive producer Dave Broome chimes in.
She might have been healthy but her weight loss was definitely too drastic, Frederickson’s trainer, Dolvett Quince, also says, admitting he was “shocked” when he saw how thin she’d gotten. “The first thing that went through my mind was, ‘That’s just too much’,” he says.
Previously, Quince had defended Frederickson, saying people should not rush to judge her without knowing all the details of her weight loss journey.