Fat Chance (10 page)

For once, I could see the Julie that God intended me to be, the less-burdened woman who had been hiding within. For once, I felt my body changing and those extra weights melting away. For once, I was doing it—I was actually finishing what I had started.

For once.

My newfound appreciation for that verse in Hebrews has caused me now to believe that
everyone
can throw off the extraneous things weighing her down. The writer of that verse didn’t approach the idea timidly. It’s not like he said, “You know, give it a little thought, and if it seems like a good idea to you, then maybe get rid of your weight.”

Far from it. It’s more like, “Get the weight
gone
, girl. Get it gone!” Remember the great cloud of witnesses. And throw off what hinders and entangles you. Think about who’s gone before you, and choose now to lay down your weight.

I originally wanted to be on
The Biggest Loser
because I thought it was going to be fun. I wanted to be the cute, peppy, happy-go-lucky girl who made everything cheery and everyone laugh. But I got there and realized that the joke was on me. You see yourself differently when you are forced to acknowledge your weight, and ultimately to lay it all down. I felt crippled in every way while I was on campus: At various points along the journey, it seemed I’d been stripped of every form of support—emotional, physical, spiritual and more. But it would take being broken in every possible way before I’d agree to get my weight gone.

And so it is with that verse in Hebrews 12. The instructions found there only work when you stumble upon a crossroads and dare to take the riskier path. For me, that crossroads was the intersection of streets named Big Change and Big Forever. Would I embark on “big change” or would I settle for being “big forever”? Which path would I choose?

My self-talk went something like this: “Decide today that you want this change badly enough to pursue the person you deserve to be, or say to yourself
right now
that you’re going to be content with being fat every day for the rest of your life.”

I was thirty-five years old and facing a do-or-die situation.
Which path should I choose?

Y
ears ago when Mike and I were potty-training our son Noah, we noticed that Noah would always go crouch in the corner when he had to poop. We’d say, “Noah, we can see you hiding over there. Do you need to go potty?” To which he’d reply, “No!” just before producing poopy pants.

He was old enough not to poop in his pants. He had been
trained
not to poop in his pants. And he
hated
the sensation of walking around in that awful poop-in-the-pants state. So why did he stick to his crouching routine? Because he wasn’t ready to make the effort to stop.

Finally Mike and I decided that Noah would be banned from wearing his favorite Thomas the Train “big boy” underpants until he proved to us that he would go to the bathroom
in
the bathroom instead of hiding in the corner and lying his way through another poop. From there, things shifted.

There’s a point in our lives when we are supposed to be babies. We’re supposed to be fragile and dependent and needy and weak. We’re
supposed
to poop in our pants. But then comes the point of awareness that it’s time to put aside childish things and live in the fullness and richness and “adultness” of who God has created us to be.

At some point we must quit hiding, rise from our crouched position and decide in our hearts to grow up.
That
is the crossroads I was standing at. I had been hiding in a corner, trying to mask the stench of my obesity and its requisite weights. I knew that it stunk. Everyone
around
me knew that it stunk. But only I could make the decision to clean up the mess that I’d made. Maya Angelou says that, “When we know better, we do better.”
³
And although it took me more than three decades to get there, at last I would prove I knew better.

T
here is a third aspect to the verse in Hebrews 12 that inspires me every time I read it. “Let us run with perseverance,” it says, “the race marked out for us.” Now, you tell me: Is it even possible to run—let alone to run
with perseverance
—when you’re fat and unhappy and an emotional wreck? I dare you to say yes.

At the end of our season on the show, the remaining contestants and I had to complete a challenge that involved dragging a giant forty-pound scale behind us as well as the equivalent of whatever weight we had lost to that point in the game. The weight was added to our scales a little at a time, and as the challenge went on it became increasingly difficult to race back and forth. It was such a clear picture to me of how tough it is to soar when you’re dragging dead weight.

Back then I had no idea what race God had marked out for me. Still don’t, as a matter of fact. But this much I do know: However the road winds and wherever it leads, it will be vastly easier to run in a sloughed-off-weight state. And I’ve got the proof to support it.

When my teammate Isabeau auditioned for
The Biggest Loser
, part of her driving motivation was that she wanted to fit in with her family—her brother, her mom and her dad—all of whom were “normal” size. Sure, she wanted other things, too, like pursuing a songwriting career, becoming a bona fide rock star and wearing off-the-rack jackets from Urban Outfitters. But underneath all of that were those “deeper waters”—the emotional weight of feeling ostracized from her own family.

Every year Isabeau’s family ran a 5K race together, which she had never been able to run. It would bring her to tears to talk about how every summer she’d sit on the curb, waiting the half-hour for them to return. “It was inconceivable to them that I’d ever participate in that run,” she told me one day. “We all had just accepted the fact that this was ‘their thing’ that I didn’t do.”

Between Isabeau’s time on campus and our season finale, she ran that race
with her family, all 3.1 miles of it. She wasn’t rail-thin when she ran, but she was definitely carrying less weight—physically, emotionally, in
every
regard—and on that day Isabeau soared.

I think about her achievement now and remember every drop of sweat that got her to that race. I remember every hour in the gym. Every wind sprint we were forced to run. Every doughnut we refused to eat. Every
everything
that brought the new “us” into being. And still today I know she’d agree that it was worth every ounce of that work. To feel light on your feet on a God-ordained path—is there a better reward than that?

People ask me whether I kept that goal-shirt, and my answer’s always the same: Of course I kept that shirt! It’s the
motto
that I changed and now can leave behind. I already “finished what I started, for once.” And now I’m determined “to
continue
what I started,
forever
.”

I
N THE 1991 movie
What About Bob?
Bill Murray plays the hilarious character Bob Wiley, an insecure, neurotic and quirky recluse who self-admittedly has a few “problems.” One day he is referred to a psychiatrist, played by Richard Dreyfuss, and in an early scene sheds light on the exact nature of his dilemma.

“Here’s the simplest way to put it,” Bob says. “I worry about diseases, so I have trouble touching things. In public places it’s almost impossible. I have a real big problem moving.”

“Talk about …
moving
,” says Dreyfuss’ character, Dr. Leo Marvin.

“As long as I’m in my apartment, I’m okay,” Bob explains, “but when I want to go out, I get … weird.”

“Talk about
weird
,” comes the advice.

“Talk about weird. Well, I get dizzy spells,” Bob says. “Nausea. Cold sweats. Hot sweats. Fever blisters. Difficulty breathing. Difficulty swallowing. Blurred vision. Involuntary trembling. Dead hands. Numb lips. Fingernail sensitivity. Pelvic discomfort …”