14 DAY TRIAL // On the most recent episode of The Biggest Loser, one of the longtime trainers on the show got really personal and came out as gay. However, Bob Harper didn’t make the revelation for personal reasons but because he was trying to help out contestant Bobby Saleem.
You can see a video of Harper’s coming out embedded below, at the end of the article.
Saleem was anxious about his father’s coming to visit because he still had no idea that he was gay and he was having doubts about whether coming out to him was a good idea or not. Eventually, Harper convinced Bobby to do it by using his own example.
“I’m gay. I knew a very long time ago that I was gay. When I ‘came out’ I was 17 years old, it was one of those kind of things, where I realized there was going to be so many obstacles. But being gay doesn’t mean that you are less than anybody else. It’s just who you are,” Harper told Bobby.
Bobby found encouragement in these words and he eventually came out to his father, and it all ended well. The trainer got his happy ending, when he saw how fans at home reacted to the news on Twitter, for which he thanked them later.
“THANK YOU to everyone that supported my decision to talk about being gay w/ Bobby. I felt like it was appropriate & necessary. LOVE Y'ALL!!” Bob wrote on the same social networking website.
Harper’s coming out and the beautiful way in which he did it comes as a nice change from the controversy The Biggest Loser caused with the episode before that, when it emerged that another trainer, this time Jillian Michaels, had “cheated” by giving members of her team caffeine supplements that hadn’t been pre-approved by the show’s doctor.
She later hinted on social media that she’d been set up so that another team could get a booted contestant, former American Idol Ruben Studdard, back.
