The Big Fat Truth: The Behind-the-scenes Secret to Weight Loss (23 page)

Shake-ups have unexpected consequences and, certainly in the case of weight loss, that’s a good thing. I particularly believe that making changes that lead to a better-organized life can make it easier to get the pounds off. I may be a little OCD myself, but I’ve seen it enough times to confidently say that disorder in one area of life makes it difficult to attain order in another area of life.

A few years ago, we had the financial guru Suze Orman on
The Biggest Loser
. We often brought experts in various areas onto the show, and Suze was one of them. Before she met with the contestants, she asked us to get everyone’s credit score.

“Why?” I asked her. “Why would you need their credit scores?”

She said, “I’m convinced that I can pick the winner of the show based on their credit scores.”

“How is that even possible?” I replied.

“If you can’t count your money, you probably can’t count calories either,” said Suze.

I was skeptical, but we got her everyone’s credit score anyway. We had actually planned for her to do something completely different on the show, but once she asked for the FICO scores, we changed her segment to deal with credit. She called out the people with low scores, admonishing them, then turned to the person with the highest score and predicted a win. It was only week two of the competition, but she was convinced that she already knew who the winner was. In the end, six months later, she ended up being right! She pegged it in week two of a six-month competition!

And I came to see what she was talking about. If you’re sinking under the craziness of your life, not paying bills, letting debt pile up, it’s not surprising that you’re also sinking under the weight of your body. Suze believed that the person with the highest FICO score would also be the person most capable of staying on the plan. A person capable of balancing her checkbook, she reasoned, was also going to be able to handle the math involved with calorie counting and interval training. Someone who could focus on financial stability could also focus on the road to recovery.

In what other areas of your life are you asleep at the wheel? Look at everything. How do you rank as a parent, a worker, a spouse? Do you let your mail pile up so high that it’s a chore to open it? Do you procrastinate when it comes to fixing things around your house? These are all signs of a sleepy brain. Wake it up—and infuse it with a new sense of purpose and passion! Be willing to make changes, take action, and nothing will stand in your way.

Change Is Good!

Hi JD,

I was reflecting upon the past year, and I still can’t believe how I could not see how truly “broken” I was. If it wasn’t for the show, I don’t think I would have ever emerged from my patterns of self-destruction.

The physical weight loss is such a gift but is trumped by the mental and spiritual clarity I gained.

Self-hatred and unforgiveness are extremely powerful emotions that consumed me for years, and stole my joy. This process has restored my joy, and I cannot be any happier to rediscover the old Jackie.

Everyone I run into tells me there is an energy and light when I enter the room. This makes me so happy that others can see what I genuinely feel.

I remember you told us all to go home and makes changes. I wholeheartedly took your advice. I made a new space in my home office dedicated to display my running bibs from all the competitions I have completed. I call it my wall of motivation.

I also recently made a huge change with my career. I resigned my good-paying job with the D.A.’s office to pursue a job in the health and wellness field. Beginning August, I will be working for Lifetime Fitness. I want to motivate people to become fit and healthy, and let them know anything is possible.

—Jackie,
Extreme Weight Loss
cast member, via email

We get two types of people on our shows: People who know
everything
about food, and people who know
nothing
about food. Yet even the know-it-alls can always use a course in nutrition. Their brains are like a calorie database—they can tell you the number of calories in a single lettuce leaf (virtually none)—and they may even know a little about fats and carbs, but they still really don’t know how to eat healthfully (it’s what you put on the lettuce leaf that’s the problem). These are the people that think eating diet TV dinners every night is a good choice. Calorie-wise, maybe, but do you know how many chemicals and grams of sodium are in those highly processed packaged foods? If you don’t, you need to find out. Put simply, processed anything is not the best choice for your health.

Have you noticed that obesity rates leap up with a vengeance every time a new food trend is shoved into our consciousness? The food revolution was supposed to make our lives better, but it actually has made it worse. First, in the 1950s, it was convenience foods like TV dinners (better for the start of the age of working mothers), then came the proliferation of fast-food places in the 1970s—it wasn’t just McDonald’s anymore but Taco Bell, KFC, Popeye’s, Chik-fil-A, and Arby’s, all of them eventually supersizing their meals and sodas (and helping the family on the go who needed to eat quickly). Next, in the 1980s, the notion that we should eat fat-free foods took hold. What did they do to make our foods fat-free? Added sugar! And lots of it! Carbs were in; carbs were out. It’s like a virus, growing in power and infecting more and more people with each new invention. First the government says eat lots of meat. Now, research is saying meat is a carcinogen and we’re eating way too much sugar. Eat a plant-based diet, they (finally!) say. It’s not only better for you but it will help us sustain the Earth.

When You become a Person Who Eats Healthfully, Everything Changes

Confession: I cheated today! I had my vinaigrette dressing tossed into my salad instead of dipping it on the side. Isn’t it crazy that our perception of “cheating” has changed? LOL.

—Jamilla, posted on
The Revolution
Facebook page

My point is that it’s very confusing. And even when solid nutrition information is laid out straight, there are areas of the country where the message is still not getting through. Classic example: Before Bruce came on the show, he owned a monster 100-ounce mug that he would fill with soda at least three times a day. That’s the equivalent of more than four of those big 2-liter bottles. How many calories do you think that is? A 2-liter bottle of soda has about 800 to 900 calories. Multiply that by the number of times Bruce was refilling the container and he’s drinking in between 3,000 and 4,000 calories a day, more than the amount most people
eat
—and at least one and a half times more than his current calorie intake for the day. He was horrified when he found out. Soda is one of our worst enemies—regular or diet—it makes no difference (yes, there’s a calorie difference but diet soda just makes you crave more sweet stuff). If you haven’t already, give up soda now.

In my book you should
never
drink a calorie other than the occasional alcoholic drink (and you shouldn’t even do that if you’re trying to lose weight). News flash. Drink water. The planet and humans are mostly made of it. It makes sense to drink something that we are made of. I know what you are saying to yourself. But I love the feel of the fizz on the back on my throat. Yeah, yeah, and the scientists that work for the big soft drink companies designed it that way. You drink it, and they win. Sodas are completely empty calories. I would rather see you eat a cookie than drink a soda. That’s how much I dislike soda! If you love fizz so much, have a club soda.

Like Bruce, Robert and Raymond also had no sense of how many calories they were taking in. By their own account, they’d eat fast food four, five, even six times a day. They knew it wasn’t great, but they’d tell themselves, “It’s meat and a tortilla; it’s not horrible for you.” During their time on
Extreme Weight Loss
, Robert started doing a little investigating, and was shocked to find that the burritos he was eating totaled about 3,000 calories, not counting the extras on the side. To my mind, as horrifying as all those calories are, the ingredients (truckloads of sodium and unhealthy fats) are worse.

Some mistakes people make are less blatant. “I mostly eat salads,” a cast member will tell me, beaming about her good choice. The fact that her salads are usually drenched in thick white dressing, sprinkled with cheese, and littered with croutons doesn’t seem to register. If soda is the recognizable scourge of America, salad is the sneaky enemy that masquerades as a friend—and ranch dressing is its accomplice. Even olive oil, which is known as a “healthy fat,” can be a problem. One tablespoon of olive oil is 120 calories of pure fat. How many people do you know who put only one tablespoon of olive oil on an entire salad? So watch out for salads that have anything more than a good assortment of lettuce and other vegetables and a light coating of dressing. Keep it colorful: Anything white in a salad (i.e., blue cheese dressing, ranch, cheese) other than cauliflower is adding calories you don’t need.

At first, your taste buds will scream for that ranch dressing. Don’t give in to them. Within days, your taste buds will stop longing for that ranch. Believe it or not, a salad with fresh lemon juice or balsamic vinegar and a touch of oil will be more enticing to you than ever before.

Salads and soda. That’s about as specific as I’m going to get here; as you know, this isn’t a diet book. This is a book about using your brain to lose weight. But I do want to talk about how important it is to get your overall nutrition facts straight. Your action steps in regard to eating shouldn’t just focus on what you should take out of your diet; it should also concentrate on what you should add in. Learn about both. Taking unhealthy calories out, putting healthy calories in.

What Tastes Better Than Chocolate Cake? Resisting Chocolate Cake

Reporting live from the West Coast,

Yesterday was major! My absolute favorite cake in the world is chocolate cake with white frosting! We had a project team celebration, and what do you think they served. . . . chocolate cake with white frosting! I am so very proud to report,
I did not have any! Not even a crumb!
I ate a Healthy Choice fudge bar—100 calories and 5 grams of sugar! Thanks for keeping me accountable and inspired!

—Stacey, posted on
The Revolution
Facebook page

These days, it’s pretty easy to find out how many calories are in just about any food you’re eating. Many casual restaurants provide nutrition information (as do fast-food restaurants—if you want to see how out of control your calories are, just go to your favorite fast-food restaurant’s website) and, of course, all food packages must be labeled. But here’s the thing. It’s so easy to misconstrue label information. A package of crackers may say you’ll be taking in 100 calories—if you nibble at
one-fifth
of the package, but who notices the serving size? And who eats one-fifth of the package? Before you know it, you’ve wolfed down 500 calories.

Some foods
seem
healthy, but that doesn’t mean they’re not fattening. A quick look at the label of one brand of kale chips shows it has 640 calories. Kale! So be careful.

When there’s no nutrition information available, you can find yourself entering a danger zone. Even our nutrition team was shocked when we had the well-known chef Rocco DiSpirito on an episode of
Extreme Weight Loss,
and he gave us a peek into what goes on behind the scenes in a restaurant kitchen.

Every night, his restaurant would serve 100 people. “I’d start the night with 16 pounds of butter at my station,” said Rocco. That sounded like a lot, but maybe not terrible if you divided it by 100 people. Then Rocco landed the knockout punch. “And there were
four
of me!”

Can you imagine how much butter that is? Do the math: 64 pounds of butter divided by 100 people = 0.64 pound or about 2,000 calories per person—and that’s not including the food that came along with all that butter! As they cooked, the chefs would grab and grab and grab at those hunks of butter, putting it in everything. By the night’s end, every ounce of the butter was gone—and the customers were happy. Who wouldn’t be? Butter makes everything taste delicious, and they’d just eaten a great meal without the guilt of knowing that they’d just devoured more than a half-pound of butter each. Put enough butter on the book you are reading now, and I bet that would taste good, too!

I’ll let you in on another secret we learned: About half the time you ask your restaurant server to hold the butter or oil, the kitchen ignores your request. If your meal tastes suspiciously succulent despite your pleas for no oil or butter, you are probably being duped. Chefs are more concerned about their food tasting good and developing a customer following than they are about your health. It’s a business!

I once heard a cautionary tale about a very famous woman who was a regular at a swanky Hollywood watering hole run by a chef who was just as famous as she was. The woman was trying to watch her weight and asked the chef to make her pasta without butter or oil. He goes back into the kitchen and, a short while later, presents her with a fantastic dish that she says is the greatest pasta she’s ever had. She loves it so much that she orders it again the following week. This time, though, the famous chef isn’t there so the chef on duty makes the no-butter, no-oil pasta she asks for. This time, though, it tastes terrible. She sends it back and demands that they make it the way the famous chef had. Frantic, they call him on the phone. “How did you make that no-butter, no-oil pasta?” The famous chef starts laughing. “I made it the exact same way I always make it. I just told her it didn’t have butter or oil!” Let that be a warning to you!