Abandon hope all ye who are still attempting to shed kilos (or pounds, if you’re so inclined): A New York Times piece covering a study done on contestants who participated in season eight of The Biggest Loser has officially become 2016’s most depressing piece of news. Should you be of the lucky few who haven’t heard of the show, The Biggest Loser is a weight loss competition that has contestants eating very little and exercising very much while simultaneously beingberated and humiliated by trainers. Contestants have lost hundreds of pounds on the show, but have they kept it off? Over the six-year period of the study, only one of the 14 contestants weighs less now than before. The other 13 have all gained some, all, or more weight back. While studies have shown for years that diets don’t work, the reason Kevin Hall, a scientist at a federal research center, discovered is definitely news. Anyone who tries slim down, regardless of the weight they started out at, will end up with a slower metabolism, but what Hall was shocked to discover was that it never actually recovers — it becomes even slower. For contestants to maintain their weight, they would have had to eat several hundred calories less than someone of the same weight who hadn’t been on a diet. “As long as you are below your initial weight, your body is going to try to get you back,” said Dr. Michael Schwartz, an obesity and diabetes researcher who is a professor of medicine at the University of Washington.

But wait, there’s more: Not only did their metabolisms plummet, their levels of the satiety hormone leptin fell to almost nothing, leaving them constantly hungry. And even when their weights climbed again, leptin levels drifted up to only half of what they had been before. “What was surprising was what a coordinated effect it is,” Dr. Joseph Proietto of the University of Melbourne said. “The body puts multiple mechanisms in place to get you back to your weight. The only way to maintain weight loss is to be hungry all the time.” But the the worst part? No one knows what to do about it.