NEED TO KNOW
- Tracey Yukich is opening up about her experience on season 8 of The Biggest Loser in Netflix’s new show Fit for TV: The Reality of The Biggest Loser, available to stream now
- In the docuseries, Yukich recalls collapsing during the first challenge and having to be transported to the hospital by helicopter
- “I knew I died that day,” she says of her medical emergency on the NBC show
When Tracey Yukich decided to attend a The Biggest Loser casting call, she had no idea just how much her life was about to change.
The season 8 contestant, who is featured in Netflix’s new documentary Fit for TV: The Reality of The Biggest Loser, remembers feeling like the show could “fix” her.
“The idea of being on The Biggest Loser, I felt like … maybe it would fix my marriage, maybe it would fix me,” she says in episode one of the three-part series that premiered on Friday, Aug. 15. “Maybe it would make me a better mom, a better friend.”
“I felt like my weight and everything about it was something that constantly was bringing me down,” she says. “I wanted to change my life and I do feel like at that time that it was, like, my only hope”
However, the odds appeared to be stacked against her from the start when during the first challenge, which would determine her spot on the show, she faced a frightening medical emergency.
The contestants, who had been held at a hotel “for days,” were picked up in a bus and driven to a beach where they were told they had to run a mile. Those who crossed the finish line would officially be on the show.
“In my head, I’m like, ‘I can run, I’ve got four kids, I’m running after them all the time,’ ” she recalls. “But it was the longest mile, ever.”
Danny Cahill, who went on to win the season, remembers noticing how determined she was, noting that she “didn’t pace anything.” And while she started off strong, Yukich says her body started “to shut down” and her legs felt “like lead.”
Footage shared in the documentary shows her collapsing on the beach and being assisted by someone on staff.
“But I told myself ‘I’m gonna do it,’ because I wanted to change my life,” she says in the documentary.
The other contestants helped her complete the race as she “physically could not get up,” though as soon as she crossed the finish line, she collapsed onto the beach and became unresponsive. A helicopter was called in to medevac her to the hospital.
“When the helicopter came we were all scared to death” Cahill remembers.
“I just felt like I was floating,” Yukich says while admitting she doesn’t “remember a lot” from the incident. “And then my grandpa was there and then I saw darkness but then I saw light, so I knew I died that day.”
Yukich later found out that she had rhabdomyolysis which she described as “your body’s way of saying ‘I’m going to shut down on you.’ ”
The show’s doctor, Robert Huizenga, met her at the hospital. More than a decade later, he was moved to tears recalling what she went through.
“It’s kind of like my kids I guess, you know, the show could have done a better job,” he says. “They didn’t alert me of the challenge. I mean, I should be at every one of the challenges.”
PEOPLE has reached out to NBC for comment on the claims made by Yukich and Huizenga in Fit for TV: The Reality of The Biggest Loser.
Huizenga said that when discussions started to suggest that Yukich would be going home, “she was really angry.”
“She didn’t want to go home,” he says, before telling the interviewer, “But I’ll let you ask her why she so desperately wanted to stay on the show.”
In the emotional interview, Yukich opens about what was going on in her marriage, saying that infidelity was “just a snippet.”
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“I thought it was my fault because I was fat,” she says, later adding, “I don’t want to be disrespected, I don’t want to be yelled at, I don’t want to be harmed, I don’t want you to tell me what I can do and can’t do.”
Yukich says that after opening up to Huizenga, she remembers him telling her: “This is exactly what you need. You need to go on the show, Tracey. He’s like, ‘You don’t need to go back to your life, you need to create a new one and start right here.’ ”
Looking back at a photo of the two completing the Boston Marathon together, Huizenga remarks, “What an attitude by this person, like, this is a role model to me.”
Reflecting on her time on the show, Yukich says knowing if she’d do it all over again is “impossible to answer,” but the experience undoubtedly changed her life.
“I definitely think that if I hadn’t have gone on the show and experienced everything that I did experience I would have never had the strength to make some serious changes in my life,” she said.
Since she was on The Biggest Loser, Yukich has remarried and now shares a blended family with her new husband.
Fit for TV: The Reality of the Biggest Loser is streaming now on Netflix.
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