Fat Chance (13 page)

On the night that my teammates and I found out we had been cast for Season 4 of
The Biggest Loser
, J. D. Roth,
the show’s executive producer, told us that contestants from previous seasons eventually found themselves facing such significant physical pain that they could no longer wash their hair. They simply could not lift their worn-out arms that high.

One evening when Hollie and I happened to be in the communal showers at the same time, I saw my friend cave to the trend. Too fatigued to move her arms, she instead grabbed her bottle of Pantene, gave it a good squirt toward the wall, let her head fall forward and rotated her neck in small circles until the blob of shampoo found its way to her hair. Talk about
exhaustion
.

Hollie doesn’t remember the episode today, which is testimony to God’s grace. I liken it to women who forget the pain of childbirth right after it happens, which is pretty much the sole reason we don’t have a world made up of families with just one child.

The next morning, as was the case nearly
every
morning, another exhausted teammate, Jim, served as our alarm clock. Who needs a buzzer when the guy sleeping thirty feet away from you wakes you up every day with deafening moans and groans? “Ow, my
knee
!” he’d cry as soon as his feet hit the floor. Or, “Oh my
back
, my
ankles
, my arm! Ow, ow,
owww!
”

Still, despite our body’s creaks and groans and wails and pleas, toward the end we wanted to win the grand prize so badly that we would do the craziest things.

We would watch the other teams come into the gym, and if we caught wind of the fact that they were going to work out for an hour, we’d stay in there an hour and two minutes just to mess with them. Who cared if we were in excruciating pain? It was worth it if it meant that a black-team member would win!

My teammates and I also started staking out our favorite equipment, such as the calorie-blasting stair-climbing machines. If Hollie got into the gym first, she’d hop on a stair-climber and throw her towel on the one right beside her. When a blue- or red-team contestant approached it, intending to climb on, she’d say, “So sorry, but Julie already called it.” In fact, I
hadn’t
already called it. In fact, I was still in the kitchen eating breakfast. But what are friends for, if not to keep everyone but
your
team from taking home the ultimate prize?

Once on the coveted stair-climbers, my teammates and I would stay put for as long as we could convince our legs to move. With every stride we were keeping someone else from losing weight. Ah, the splendor of a little spirited competition!

Somewhere along the way various players even participated in voluntary workouts, on top of the already ridiculous workout regime our trainers had established for us.

One morning, blue-team member Neil snuck off to the gym at 5:00
AM
to get in an early workout. To his surprise, he found my teammate Bill sprawled out on the floor. Bill evidently had been working out all night long and must have caved to utter exhaustion. “Oh my gosh,” Neil thought, “he’s
dead
!”

Wasting no time, Neil stepped right over Bill and mounted his beloved tread-mill. I told you, didn’t I?
Crazy
.

Later that day, several of us hunted down Neil and demanded an explanation. “
Really
, Neil? You didn’t even check to see if Bill was
alive
before you worked out?”

“Hey,” Neil replied, “I figured, at least there’s
one
down.”

We were becoming insane, every single one of us, which was fitting, given where we happened to be living at the time—at a bona fide former insane asylum. Read on.

E
very contestant on Season 4 thought he or she would be competing at
The Biggest Loser
Ranch, site of Seasons 1 through 3. Far from
some dusty primitive campground,
this
ranch was actually a posh mansion. So, while we knew we’d be absolutely tortured while on-site, at least our surroundings would be pretty.

You can imagine our dismay when we realized that Season 4 was going to be billed as “
The Biggest Loser
University”—complete with cold and sterile dorms.

Come to think of it,
real
dorms would have been better than where they chose to house us in the end.

In passing, we had learned from one of the production assistants that our “dorm” was actually a former clinic for the mentally ill. Sometime during that first week on campus, long after the rest of our team had fallen asleep, Isabeau and I were talking to each other from our respective beds. Suddenly we noticed that some of the windows had sawed-off bars on them. I sat up in bed and took in the long room that we stayed in, eyeing the series of beds that lined the wall. “This was the
hospital
ward!” I whispered. It felt like we were in a war scene, where all of the injured soldiers are lined up in a row—a metaphor that wasn’t lost on me at all.

Oddities abounded at the asylum. Old pharmacy rooms still had those Dutch doors I remember from childhood Sunday school classes, where the top and bottom halves work independently of each other. The hallway that ran down the middle of the facility seemed to span forever. On one side were various rooms that had been used as wards, and on the other side were cages where they probably had performed lobotomies. Nearby were still-operational vegetable fields, and depending on the way the wind blew, we’d wake up to the smell of either strawberries, which was great, or onions, which was less than great.

Contestants from past seasons would drop in for visits every once in a while and rub in our faces just how atrocious our living conditions were. Until that point, we hadn’t really noticed. It was like living in a third-world country and having someone show up and say, “You know, in America we have running water.” And you go, “You
do
?”

We had a comfortable room, a paved walkway that led to fully outfitted gym, and teammates that were becoming more like family every day. Despite the rigors of our routine, like little Mary Lennox in her lovely Secret Garden, who found a little slice of serenity in the most unlikely of situations, the asylum was our refuge—for us, a home-sweet-home.

M
y team and I not only got used to our mad surroundings, but eventually we got used to Jillian’s madness too. And truth be told, some of the lessons she taught us I will carry with me all the remaining days of my life.

There is a sign that hangs in
The Biggest Loser
gym that says, “Feel the fear … and do it anyway.” It’s a quote from Jillian, and a philosophy I would come to embrace. Through her constant encouragement—if you can call it that—I would learn that progress doesn’t show up unless discomfort comes with it. And oh, how she knew how to bring us to that point. I go to the gym these days and see people on treadmills, going three miles an hour on a 0 percent incline. Come on, now. You’ve got to work harder than that!

Here’s my on-campus takeaway, free of charge: If you are able to carry on a conversation while working out, then you aren’t working out hard enough.

Another of Jillian’s exhortations was, “Remember: It’s just exercise.”

During those weeks when we were working out in the gym in Hermosa prior to our on-campus appearance, it wasn’t uncommon for us to cause quite a stir. We’d walk into the local 24 Hour Fitness and immediately hear whispers and gasps as people noticed that Jillian Michaels was leading our pack. From that moment until the moment we left, all eyes were on us.

One day Jillian was training Jim, who physically was the strongest member of our team at that time, when some random guy rushed up to her and said, “You’re
killing
him! Quit
killing
him!” Jillian took a step back, sized up the guy, and then said with a level voice, “Do you have
any
idea who I am?”

In the man’s defense, he was, in fact, genuinely concerned that Jim was going to die. And understandably so, given how it must appear to normal people who see Jillian train for their very first time. But she—and Jim too, for that matter—understood what all of us had come to know: Once your body is strong, everything else is just exercise. I would
need to remember that when I was back home after the show and depressed about gaining a few pounds. “It’s just exercise,” I’d tell myself when I felt like giving up. “You’re used to this, your body craves this and if you persevere, you’ll find your target weight once more.”

Can I give you one more tidbit from my favorite trainer? “It never gets easier,” she’d say to us every day. “
Ever
.” And you know what? She was right.

Even now, it is not easy. It’s not easy to work out one or two hours a day, five days a week. It’s not easy to make wise food choices when French fries taunt me at every turn. It’s not easy to dig deep for motivation to stay healthy and capable and strong. But I do it anyway.

I do it because I would rather suffer the pain of progress than the pain of being fat. I would rather celebrate the joy of well-made choices than the joy a cupcake can bring. I would rather leave a challenging legacy of healthfulness to my family and friends than the cheap one marked only by fun.

I look back and can’t
believe
what my body was able to do during the show. I was irritable and in agony much of the time, but I did it. And when my long-hated weight finally found its way off, what a sight for sore eyes was the new me.

D
uring week thirteen of my
The Biggest Loser
experience, I won a twenty-four-hour trip home. More accurately, Hollie won it for me. By that point in the show there were eight contestants left in the game, and she beat the lot of us in a twenty-four-kilometer triathlon. The prize? Not only immunity and a home-visit for herself, but immunity and a home-visit for another player of her choosing. Praise Jesus and all things holy, she picked me.

I remember looking up when I heard my name called, thinking,
Me? Little ol’ me? Great! Let’s go!

It was a mad dash home. Hollie and I flew through the shower,
grabbed a few articles of clothing from our room and hopped in the van that was waiting to take us to the airport.

I remember walking up the sidewalk in Jacksonville in my T-shirt, flip-flops and jeans, with butterflies flapping their way through my stomach. Mike told me later that it was the first time in nearly eight years that I had worn jeans, but who was counting?