The Big Fat Truth: The Behind-the-scenes Secret to Weight Loss (26 page)

One day in the gym, Elaine saw some guys hitting a heavy punching bag (one of those guys was me). “That looks cool,” she thought, but she didn’t want to try it. “I thought I might hurt myself.” Steve convinced her to give it a go, and it triggered a revelation. “I never knew how much rage I had inside me,” says Elaine. “I’d wail on that bag, and it would all come out. It was such a gift. A healthy way to get it out rather than stuffing food down my throat.”

Okay, so what’s the upshot here? One, find people who will help you see the light. It doesn’t have to be a trainer; not everyone can afford that. You might, though, be able to pay for a few sessions just to have someone show you the right things to do in a gym. Don’t let fear of making a fool of yourself in the gym stop you. Even Robert and Raymond, who had played sports in high school, felt at a loss of what to do whenever they went to a gym. Find that friend or relative who loves exercise, and let them take you under their wing. Join a group. Start a group. Unless you are really self-disciplined (and my guess is you’re not), don’t just buy a workout DVD and try to exercise in front of your TV at home. You’re never going to do it. Get out there with people who will hold you accountable, expect you to show up, introduce you to new ways to move your body, and keep you company. Find your exercise community.

When Amber went home after Boot Camp, she was determined to change her social relationships—relationships that had previously been built around going out for burgers, meeting for frozen mocha drinks, maybe taking in a movie (and a large-size bucket of popcorn). Now she wanted to build her relationships around exercise. Here’s how she did it: She started signing up for fun runs and posting her plans on Facebook. “Hey, this week I’m doing the 5K down at the beach, anyone interested?” She’d then take note of who said they might join her, write it down in her datebook, and call them to follow up. “Let’s do it,” she’d say. “Even if we’re the only two people in our group of friends, let’s do it!” Like Amber, be the recruiter. Take on the responsibility of making others accountable to you. That will also ensure the reverse—that you will have to be accountable to
them.

Moving connects you to people, which is why we are on this Earth! Connection feeds the soul, and for a lot less calories then a triple-fudge sundae. A sundae lasts about 5 minutes; human connections can last a lifetime.
There are billions of people on the planet . . . go experience some of them.

Here’s the other thing to be learned from Elaine’s experience, Amber’s, too. Exercise is the best antidepressant in the world. If everyone would do it, the pharmaceutical industry would be out of business! Forget your co-pay, and make exercise your coping go-to. If you’re angry, hit it, run it out, or walk it out. If you’re stressed, hop on your bike, hike up a hill. If you’re sad, get into the gym and start lifting weights or take a cardio class. There’s no better way to take your mind off what ails you than having to concentrate on not dropping a weight or crashing into the person next to you during Zumba.

From now on, the treadmill is your Prozac. I guarantee that you will feel better after you exercise—and so much better than if you were drowning your sorrows in plates of macaroni and cheese. Not only are there tons of studies that show that exercise is an effective antidote to depression but also there is some research to suggest that comfort foods aren’t really even that comforting. In a study at the University of Minnesota, the researchers induced a bad mood in people and found that those in a group that ate foods like brownies and apple pie to soothe themselves didn’t perk up any more than the group that ate healthy foods or nothing at all.

Here’s the thing. Eating comfort food is only comforting for a short time. Then you just feel miserable;
comfort food always comes with a side of remorse.
But exercise doesn’t. Have you ever met anyone who felt guilty for spending an hour swimming laps or working out on a stationary bike? No one comes out of a spinning class and says, “Oops, I shouldn’t have done that.” No, instead we feel great when we move. Movement is incredibly more soothing than food.

Something exercise-related you should remember (I’ve said this before but it bears repeating here): Don’t reward yourself for a hard workout with food that isn’t good for you. So many people will say, “Oh, I worked out so hard, this piece of cake is my reward.” Reward? Never reward doing something right with doing something wrong. Instead, reward right with right—something like a nutritionally dense, healthy lunch that will keep your metabolism humming at its highest levels. Or treat yourself to a new piece of exercise gear or clothing. Reward yourself by taking your pants to a tailor and getting them taken in. Buy a new pair of shoes. Choose something that will make you feel good in the long run versus something like a cupcake, which will only feel good while you’re eating it. This may not be such a difficult adjustment. Once you start caring for your body in one way, it can inspire you to care for your body in other ways. Eating healthfully will come naturally.

If you’ve been sitting on your butt every day for the past fifteen years, just getting to the point where you exercise every day is a pretty amazing feat. But what if you did something
really
amazing, so amazing that no one, least of all you, believed you were capable of it? It would rock your world.

I’ve seen hundreds of people do the seemingly impossible, from running marathons after never running more than a mile in their lives, to climbing up the stairs of a 100-story building after struggling to walk up the flight of stairs at home just to get into bed. Each season, we ask our cast members to do something extremely challenging, but nothing is as demanding as the 7,000-calorie-burn challenge. That’s when we ask the cast to burn 7,000 calories in
one
day. The calories they burn just through the daily process of living and breathing doesn’t count. The 7,000 calories have to all be burned through exercise. And let me give you a sense of how much energy you have to put into it: Running a marathon burns approximately 3,500 calories, so the 7,000-calorie challenge is equivalent to the energy it would take to run two full marathons in one day!

There’s absolutely
no
good physiological reason in the world to burn 7,000 calories in one day, but it delivers an incredible psychological payoff. A lot of the people we work with on our shows think that everything is impossible. “I’m not a runner, I can’t run.” “I can’t get a job.” “I can’t lose weight.” For them to accomplish something so ridiculous that they and everybody else think it’s impossible, well, it becomes a badge of honor. It gives them a new perspective on themselves and their lives. That’s what I see it offering to you as well. As I’ve said in earlier chapters, there’s great value in small victories and small changes. But if you can handle it (and anyone who puts his or her mind to it can), doing something drastic can speed up the process of change. And by the way, after you’ve done something like the 7,000-calorie burn, the next time someone asks you to burn 2,000 calories in a day (let alone just go to the gym for an hour’s workout), you’re going to say, “I can do that before breakfast!”

My favorite 7,000-calorie-burn story belongs to a cast member from
The Revolution.
Jen was single mom who’d recently recovered from a rare form of cancer. She had a hysterectomy because of the cancer, and afterward put on a lot of weight. Her son, Ryan, who was ten at the time, loved
The Biggest Loser.
He printed out an application, filled it out, and brought it to her. It was her wake-up call. “I thought, Oh God, I’d better do something about the weight I’ve gained,” says Jen. So she and Ryan made a video, sent it in, and were contacted by our staff—not for
The Biggest Loser,
but for
The Revolution.

Like
Extreme Weight Loss, The Revolution
sent cast members to Boot Camp. One day, I made them an offer: The first person who can burn 7,000 calories in one day will win an iPad. One woman said she’d do it that weekend. Then Jen chimed in. “I have a competitiveness in me from being an athlete in high school, and I wanted to win that iPad for my son,” she remembers. “I couldn’t afford to buy one.”

One Challenge Leads to Another

JD,

On Thursday, my “comrades in arms,” Derik and Brian, and I all decided to take on the epic 7,000-calorie challenge you gave us. We all had a lot of random commitments throughout the day (filming, work, etc.), but we didn’t let that stop us! We
all
completed it!

I did mine split up between a total of 5 workouts for a total of 10.5 hours! The last 2 hours really sucked at first, but as the trainer Joey reminded me, this day was a marathon not a sprint. And ironically, that’s exactly what I did. On Thursday, I logged over 27.2 miles! No wonder I felt so tired and spent—I did an entire marathon!

However, I felt euphoric and rejuvenated at the end! I am already looking for the next challenge.

—Cheyanne,
Fat Chance
cast member, via email

Jen—and Ryan, who stayed with her the whole day, working out with her part of the time and cheerleading the rest—hit the gym first thing in the morning. And by first thing, I mean at dawn. They took spin classes, worked out on the treadmill, rowing machine, and the stair-climber, moving from machine to machine, hour after hour. And that was just the warm-up! They didn’t stop. Another one of the women who’d taken on the challenge (and the one Jen saw as her nemesis in this particular competition) was going just as hard; she and Jen were neck and neck the whole day, posting the developments online as they went even though they were doing it in different states. (To keep track of their progress—and keep them honest—we had given them FitBits, wearable computers that calculate how many calories you’re burning.) “We have to beat her!” Jen told Ryan. When Jen had about 500 calories more to go, after nearly 20 straight hours of working out, the gym announced that it would be closing in twenty minutes. It was already ten o’clock at night, and they’d noticed that Jen’s rival had stopped posting her progress. So what did they do? Call it a day? Say, “I
almost
made it to 7,000”? No way. There is no special T-shirt for almost finishing something. Inspired by how close they were to completing the impossible, they went outside and ran around the gym by the light of the moon. “Every time we’d pass this one corner we could see bats, but we kept going,” says Jen. “I don’t know what came over me that night. Up until then, I had only exercised one hour, sometimes two hours a day, but I didn’t want to let my son down. I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it, too.”

Jen:
Before

Jen:
After, with her son Ryan

Needless to say, Jen won the iPad for Ryan. But that was really the least of what she gave her son that day. His mom had just shown him how powerful she was. She wasn’t the sick incapacitated person who was going to die from cancer; she was a force of nature, a superhero. That kid (who’s now a high-school football player with offers for a full college scholarship) will never forget the night his mom did the impossible. She taught him that a person can do anything he puts his mind to. Jen taught herself that lesson, too. “Every day, on my way to work, I drive by that corner where we’d see the bats and smile,” she says. “That was the day I realized that your mind is in control of your body. You can convince yourself to do anything.” So, yeah, no real physical advantage to burning 7,000 calories in one day, but 7,000 reasons to do it and prove to you and your family that you are special. You can achieve anything if you want it badly enough. Quitting is always easier. So is choosing a cupcake over a bowl of broccoli. But if you start making the herculean tasks normal choices, they become much easier.