“Biggest Loser” Leads To Contestant’s Eating Disorder

Kai Hibbard, 31, was one of the final four contestants on NBC’s “The Biggest Loser” in 2006, when the show was in its third season. While Hibbard appeared to be a poster child for the show, losing 118 pounds in just 12 weeks, she now says that she nearly died.

“I had no idea I had a problem,” Hibbard told ABCNews.com. “When you spend four months surrounded by people who are all doing this to themselves, even if intellectually it seems wrong, you don’t realize. You just think if they’re doing it, I’m doing it.”

And what she was doing was trying a number of techniques to shed weight at an alarming rate — from fasting from dressing head to toe in multiple layers of clothing and working out in 100-degree temperatures.
Hibbard says she overcame the pressure to keep off the weight only after her family staged an intervention.

“My family was worried I was going to drop dead,” she said. “They babysat me for weeks on end as I went through therapy and met with a nutritionist.”

Hibbard said she struggled with the eating disorder even while she was pregnant, forcing herself to go on runs even as she bled.