Fat Chance (8 page)
Authors: Julie Haddon
“Take one step toward me,” I dared the man. “I wish you would. I wish you’d take one step toward me, because I would see to it that you were sprawled out on the deck long before you ever reached my space.”
I knew he wouldn’t budge, and he didn’t. Beneath their threatening veneer, abusers are cowards. Not to mention awful excuses for fathers. I wanted to put loving arms around that little girl and let her know that
she did not deserve to be treated that way. I wanted to assure the mother that there was a better life out there waiting for her, a life beyond cyclical abuse. But I didn’t. I had done all that I could do, and I had to let that be enough.
I have no idea if my words—harsh though they might have been—changed that man. But I know that they changed me. For thirty-five years I had avoided all forms of confrontation and controversy because I was too insecure to draw attention to myself and too weak to take a stand. But
that
person wasn’t at Disney that day. A new me was there, and as I spoke each syllable that afternoon, I felt long-awaited strength start to rise.
On campus, Jillian had taught my fellow contestants and me how to defend ourselves using our bodies, through kickboxing and Tae Kwon Do techniques, and for the first time in my life, I actually felt like I
could
defend myself—and even a perfect stranger—if I had to. Something in me knew that if that man had taken two steps toward me he really
would
have been laid out at my feet, pleading for mercy and repudiating his evil ways.
I’m not a violent person, honest. But for once I was equipped to fight for what was right.
For once, the Julie that God had created stood immovably, wonderfully firm. For once, I felt a sensation rise up that could only be called my soul’s
strength
. Plus, if things had turned ugly in a jiffy, I could have grabbed Noah and just run for my life. Strength manifests itself in a number of ways, and one of them is knowing when to cut your losses and bail. But even if I fled on foot, I would have thanked God for stamina to sustain me. It’s stamina I did not possess even thirteen months ago.
Jillian Michaels explained to me that she always trains from the outside in. When a person learns how strong she is physically, she begins to feel powerful on the inside.
My mom lives exactly twelve miles away from our house, and the thought has hit me on several occasions that if for some odd reason I needed to grab my children and run to her house (if we were accidentally locked out of our condo, if our car wouldn’t start, if an armed madman was on the loose), I could actually get it done. I’d be pooped at the end of that two-and-a-half hours, sure. But eventually,
we’d get there, no sweat. There is something very empowering about that realization. I call it the gift of strength.
In the movie version of John Grisham’s book,
The Pelican Brief
, Julia Roberts plays the character of Tulane University law student Darby Shaw. Struck by the recent assassinations of two very diverse Supreme Court justices, she decides to nose around and find out why they were killed.
She winds up uncovering an illegal plot between the president of the United States and an evil oil magnate who’s working overtime to bribe him into overturning environmental law, and she puts her findings in a brief that she shows to her law professor, who then hands the paper over to the FBI for examination. Soon afterward, the law professor is found dead.
Darby grows concerned that she’ll be the next target, and so she goes on the run. (But not before she enlists the aid of a newspaper reporter named Gray Grantham, who is played by the premier specimen of humankind himself, Denzel Washington. But I digress.) The greatest scene in the movie unfolds when Darby finds herself cornered in an old deserted barn and can hear the bad guy’s car drive up. She plots her escape and then flees through the fields, gunfire erupting at her heels.
What the bad guy doesn’t know is that day after day after day, Darby had run her little heart out on her living room treadmill—just in case her life was ever in danger. All that training finally paid off, and mine is finally paying off too.
Strength of character. Strength of person. Strength of my physical frame. These are the strengths that I now live out, and fat will
never
steal them from me.
Years ago
Saturday Night Live
came out with a character who could kill a festive gathering in four seconds flat. “Debbie Downer” would show up at her friend Ronnie’s thirty-fifth birthday party, for example, and when offered a piece of yummy birthday cake by the host say, “None for me. With all the refined sugars we’re eating, America’s experiencing a virtual
epidemic
of juvenile diabetes.” As the rest of the group’s shoulders slumped in the awkward silence that always followed Debbie’s remarks, you’d hear the strains of the deflating, downer-chords play: whan-
whan
.
When I started to make positive changes in my life, I unwittingly became a real-life Debbie Downer. And nobody likes Debbie Downers. I always had been the Funny Fat Friend, but now that I was slimming down, increasingly, people were uncomfortable around me. They assumed I’d judge their food choices, criticize their lack of exercise and suck the fun right out of the room. All of a sudden the people I knew and loved felt not encouraged but indicted by my improvement. It was a reaction I hadn’t expected.
Before I went on
The Biggest Loser
, my closest friends and I had a girls’ night about once a month. Most of us were overweight, and it was a night when we could shove our diets aside for a few hours and feast on all our favorite indulgences—which always included Oreos, nachos and other pillars of wholesome healthfulness. Interestingly, when I came back from campus, nobody wanted to have a girls’ night with me. “We can’t have
that
type of food …
Julie’s
going to be there!” Whan-
whan
.
“Girls, it’s still
me
!” I wanted to remind them. “Even without a six-inch stack of nachos on my plate, I’m still the Julie you know and love!” But it was no use. They weren’t too sure what to make of my weight-loss progress, and I wasn’t too sure what to make of them.
I learned a valuable lesson during those first weeks back: When you undergo dramatic change, there is a period of time when you exist in a lonely middle ground. For many months I no longer fit in with my fat friends, but I wasn’t part of the “skinny club” yet either. I was a girl without a group, which for a social butterfly is the worst kind of girl to be. Did I want to feel accepted, or did I want true transformation more? On some days that was an
impossibly
tough question to answer.
Over time I sought out a support system of people who really did want the best for me, whatever that might mean. I needed a handful of friends who would push me toward my potential, who would pick me up when I floundered and who would cheer for me over even the smallest success. And interestingly, as I surrounded myself with those positive influences, my old friends came around too. They saw that despite my outer transformation, the inner me was still the same. They resolved to stick with me, no matter what my weight. And finally, they stopped with that annoying whan-
whan
every time I entered a room.
I
T’S A
THE BIGGEST LOSER
tradition that, every season, participants come up with personal mottos that represent the reason they’re on the show to begin with. Sometimes the phrases are printed on flags that fly from flagpoles soaring high above the campus. Other times they’re emblazoned on (really, really big) T-shirts so that contestants can
wear
why they’re there, which was the case for my teammates and me, the season we were all on the show.
Early on in my
The Biggest Loser
experience, one of the show’s producers approached me and asked about my motto. What was I really trying to accomplish? she wanted to know. What was my
real
motivation for leaving my husband and son behind in Jacksonville, traipsing to the other end of the country and subjecting myself to six-hour workouts and a diet frighteningly devoid of fried foods every day?
My first few responses were things like, “To fit into Jillian Michaels’ jeans” and “To bring sexy back.” But then I took a more thoughtful turn. “The real reason I’m here,” I admitted, “is because I
never
finish what I start. I want to finish what I’ve started, for once.” The producer nodded a knowing grin as she jotted down what I had said.
My family and friends could attest to the fact that I was never exactly known as a “completer.” I’d quit relationships. I’d quit college. I’d quit the pursuit of a thousand dreams, most notably my dream of being in shape. But this time would be different.
This
time on this show, I would finish what I’d started, for once. I’d show everyone—those same doubting friends and family members, as well as every guy I’d ever dated during
those brief, slimmer days who might be watching the show thinking,
Whew! Talk about a narrow escape!
—I would show them
all
, and I would show myself, that I could finish something just once.
Or that’s what I told Jillian and my team, anyway, the day we were handed our shirts.
M
y teammates and I were sitting around one day in our black-team bedroom, just hanging out and chatting about how much better our accommodations were on campus than in the desert. Even a sparsely decorated oversized dorm room felt luxurious by comparison.
Jillian came bounding into the room, a stack of black T-shirts in her arms. She was wearing one of those pairs of jeans I so desperately wanted to squeeze into someday, and a white tank top that boasted bulging muscles popping out from both armholes. The girls on our team—as well as the guys—secretly coveted Jillian’s physique. Whether any of us would actually ever
attain
it was another matter entirely.
Shirts were tossed to each of my teammates, and then a shirt soared through the air toward me. We all unfolded them with the pride of a rookie NBA player who has just received his first jersey. “What do they
say
?” Jillian pressed us with a smile.
My teammates and I loved how buff Jillian was, until those moments when she threw her ripped self on our backs while we were forced to run up a hill. She may be slim, but
you
try hauling a hundred and twenty extra pounds around during your next workout!
Some of the mottos were funny, and some were poignant. But all of them eventually would serve as helpful insights into the hearts and minds of my team. In that moment, we were acknowledging not only why we were there, but why the rest of our team was there too. It was a level of understanding that made us want to fight from that day forward, not only for ourselves, but also for each other. These people weren’t just competitors; they were now family—real people with real lives and real reasons they just couldn’t quit.
My teammate Jez was first up. “To kick fear’s butt,” he said, as he read his shirt aloud. “I’m tired of being afraid of everything.” Being overweight had always been Jez’s excuse for why he couldn’t accomplish the goals he had set for his life, and he feared what would happen once he
was thin. Would his dreams all magically come true? Or would he realize that being fat wasn’t his problem after all … and
then
what would be left to blame?
Hollie went next. “To practice what I preach,” her shirt read. She was a schoolteacher and cheerleading coach who was very demanding about her kids’ dietary habits and their dedication to exercise. She desperately wanted to show her students that she was committed to living by the standards she had set for them.
“To be a
rock star
,” Isabeau piped up with a wry smile. Blonde, beautiful Isabeau, who was a singer/songwriter with towering musical dreams.
“To be half the man so that I can be twice the man,” Bill said with pride. He told of the time he went to ride a roller coaster with his daughter but couldn’t wedge himself into the seat. His daughter, who constantly worried about her dad’s weight, tried to console him, but her words only made him feel worse. “Kids shouldn’t have to wonder if their dad’s going to be around,” he said. “I want to lose half of my weight so that I can be twice as active in my kids’ lives,” he said.
Bill’s twin brother Jim then spoke up: “For me, for them, forever,” he read with a satisfied nod that silently honored his wife and his kids, “
that’s
why I am here.”
And then it was my turn. “To finish what I’ve started, for once,” I said as I propped myself up on my elbows and held up my shirt.
Jillian caught my eye. “What does that mean to you, Jules?” she asked. “Tell me about your shirt.”
“I
never
finish what I start,” I said. “I mean, I’ve started to lose weight a hundred times. I’m here to
finish
it … once and for all.”
There was real meaning behind what I said, and as I glanced down at my hands after I’d said my piece, I halfway expected to see them coated in grains of sand. Of course they were perfectly clean. But the residue of the afternoon spent in the desert hotel the previous week, just God and me and the realization that I was
worth
the dreams I felt compelled to chase, still coated my mind and my heart.
He
knew I had it in me to finish what I’d started. And now I was starting to believe him.
For once.
