Ruben Studdard will be joining season 15 of NBC’s The Biggest Loser, making him the first celebrity on the weight-loss reality show.
The season 2 American Idol winner is competing on the show to lose weight because his previous attempts did got give him is desired results People reports. One diet Studdard tried was a combination of an intense workout and a 1,200 calories a day.
“I was losing weight, but I was exhausted. It was making me sick. I’m a big man. There was no way to do those workouts on that amount of food, so everything was contradicting itself,” Studdard said to People.
Studdard then tried vegetarianism, which gave him better results. He lost more than 70 lbs. of his 455 lbs. in 2006.
Billboard reports the “Velvet Teddy Bear” lost weight after his marriage to Surata Zuri McCants in 2008 but started gaining weight after their divorce in 2012.
“I’ve never had an issue with my weight. [But] my family has a history of high blood pressure, diabetes, heart-related issues – things I didn’t have to deal with yet because I’m young. But I don’t want to be worried at 40, and if I don’t fix things now, I will be,” he said.
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