First U.S. Biggest Loser winner reveals she was sexually assaulted during a massage
Ali Vincent, who was the first female to take the crown in 2008, lost almost eight stone on the reality TV show
A WOMAN who was the first female winner of the U.S. version of The Biggest Loser has revealed the shocking reason she’s piled the pounds back on in just 12 months.
Ali Vincent took the title after losing nearly EIGHT STONE (50.8kg) while on the reality television show.
The 41-year-old spent the following seven years maintaining her healthy weight, but she has now confessed a horrifying sexual assault in 2015 led her to put all her weight back on.
Ali opened up on Oprah: Where Are They Now, where she revealed a painful secret she had been hiding for the past year.
“I was getting a massage, and I fell asleep as I often do in massages. I felt so safe in this place. I had no guards up,” she said.
“And I woke up to — I woke up to someone feeling in my vagina.
“I was just like in shock, like what’s going on, what’s happening?”
Ali explained how she then jumped up from the table where she was getting her massage, and ran out of the room.
“I just jumped up and I ran out and just hid. And I was sitting there in a ball and I was just shaking, and I don’t know how to explain it. But I just was so afraid. I was scared.”
Ali, who won the fifth season of the Biggest Loser in 2008, told how when she called the manager of the massage therapist who assaulted her, she was shocked by his response.
She recalled: “The manager came, and he was like, ‘Well, it’s not like he raped you’.”
Ali admitted the trauma led her to completely shut down and use her wedding planning as a distraction.
“I was very, very busy. I was making my own colour of glitter ― that’s how busy I kept myself,” she said.
“I didn’t want to deal with what was coming up for me.”
Post wedding, Ali said she started an uncontrollable cycle of eating and weight gain — reaching her original pre-Biggest Loser weight of 16.5 stone (106kg) in just 12 months.
“I haven’t talked about it because it’s not something you just talk about,” she explained.
“I don’t share the story of me being assaulted because it’s an excuse or something I’m dwelling on.
“It’s something that I’m working through.
“For far too long, by not wanting to deal with it, I just let it unconsciously, subconsciously affect me and take too much power.
“It doesn’t get power.”
Ali has now turned to Weight Watchers to lose the weight she has gained, which she says is slowly but surely working for her.
“With each success moment I feel empowered,” she said.
“I feel like I’m getting my strength back.”