The long-awaited Revenge Body with Khloé Kardashian pilot, aired January 13 on E! Network after its announcement in 2015, has had an audience split ever since its premier.

Revenge Body features two struggling individuals looking to lose weight to attain revenge over a sore individual in their life. While many were starstruck by the contestants’ results in the pilot episode, others failed to overlook certain details and took to social media to express their dismay at the methods employed by Kardashian and her, proclaimed, ‘glam squad’.

Here are six things, shows like Revenge Body teach us.

It’s OK to crash diet

Time and time again, nutritionists have instructed us that yo-yo dieting does not deliver permanent results and yet, weight loss shows have never bothered teaching their contestants any better.

The pilot episode featured Will and Stephanie, two young individuals looking to lose the stubborn weight and get revenge on their ex-boyfriend and ex-best friend respectively.

Khloé Kardashian kicks off her pilot episode reassuring the hopeful individuals that they’d be hooked up with a nutritionist and yet Will explicitly says: “All I eat, all day, is broccoli, almonds and chicken.” Calorie restriction might be the key to losing 13 kilos in 12 weeks, but is it ideal for long-term weight loss? Not really.

Numbers are everything

Here’s the thing. Although the term ‘losing weight’ implies the reduction of the number on the scale, decreasing in kilos won’t necessarily make you healthier. Unfortunately, although Revenge Body seems to have good intentions in mind, the show fails to portray this.

What irked my soul the most while watching Revenge Body is the number of times being skinny was associated to being pretty

At the beginning of the pilot episode, Stephanie weighs 78 kilos. We’re told that her goal weight, starting out, was 67 kilos. Although she beat her goal by the end of the 12 weeks and dropped to a whopping 65 kilos, the show fails to take fat loss into account when it comes to the female contestant. This might not be the perfect example of a healthy weight loss for all young women viewers at home.

Skinny is pretty

What irked my soul the most while watching Revenge Body is the number of times being skinny was associated to being pretty. At the beginning of the pilot episode, we get a preview of all future episodes. Two minutes into the sneak peeks, a professional is spotted telling a contestant “pretty doesn’t come easy”.

Although we need to take previews with a pinch of salt in today’s clickbait world, this is not the first time skinny is correlated to beauty in the first episode. Will attributes his break-up with his boyfriend to his weight gain, saying: “I knew I gained weight but I didn’t know it was that bad, like, I was unattractive.”

You should lose weight for people

The pretence of the show follows that the contestants lose weight ‘to get back at a life they once had’.

In fact, Kardashian asks her contestants who their revenge is aimed at at the beginning of the pilot episode. Although this thought can be seen as motivation for the contestants to work hard, the show from the get-go has its contestants losing weight to please others.

Although Kardashian does says that she wants the contestants to lose weight for themselves, the damage inflicted at the beginning of the process is irreversible. In fact, by the end of the episode Will is still hoping his ex-boyfriend will turn up and have him back.

Your life needs to be completely dedicated to working out

Who has time to work for hours at a time every single day? No one, you said? Well, you might just be wrong. Teenage Stephanie Perez confided that she was working out twice a day, daily, throughout the show.

Revenge Body isn’t the only one to blame for this misconception though. Shows like The Biggest Loser have also portrayed exercise as being extremely time-consuming.

Season 3 runner-up Kai Hibbard admitted to working out from five to eight hours a day in her tell-all. Is that the extent to which everyone should push themselves to lose weight? Certainly not, and weight-loss shows shouldn’t be pushing this ideology.

What a DUFF is

At the end of the day, we cannot say Revenge Body has taught us nothing useful. Through the pilot episode, contestants Will and Stephanie have taught us what a DUFF and a Muscle Cub are. We might just keep watching the show to learn more of this lingo...

Lindsey Muscat is a University student following a degree in Communications.