The Big Fat Truth: The Behind-the-scenes Secret to Weight Loss (15 page)

Let me say it again. I am looking for you to pinpoint the exact moment or moments in your life when you began to view food as a source of comfort, rather than as fuel to feed your body. Once you identify this, you start your transformation. This moment (or moments) might seem like a small thing—perhaps someone called you ugly, or you had a fight with your mother—but for you it was a major issue and you are still feeling the repercussions.

By going on the same journey as the cast members on our show, you are effectively becoming the Sherlock Holmes of your weight issues. This detective work will be a big wake-up call. All those issues that have been swirling around in the back of your mind for a long time will come to the forefront, ready for you to deal with them head-on. So use this information to good purpose. Look at it again and again as you go through the weight-loss process to remind yourself why you’re doing this—and why there’s no going back.

I want to mention one thing that you should also be on the lookout for during this process of self-examination. You may actually find that you’re not ready to do this yet. You may have thought you were, but you’re not. It happens. Let me tell you one cautionary tale. We had a guy named Wally try out for
The Biggest Loser,
but he turned out to be too big for the show. Imagine that. Too big for a show about fat people. I felt so bad sending this guy home to a most certain future of sickness and early death. Maybe, I thought, there is a way we could help people like him, too! So my business partner, Todd, a guy named Adam Greener, and I came up with an idea for another show—the show that eventually became
Extreme Weight Loss
—that would help people who were too big to be on
The Biggest Loser.
We called them the super obese.

To pitch the show to ABC executives, we screened a video of Wally struggling to put on his socks. That was literally the whole tape. It took him 5 minutes to get just two socks on his feet. As he struggled to do something we all take for granted, I saw the show buyer tear up. We walked out of the room with a deal. In a sense, Wally made it happen for us; the executives were hooked on the idea of seeing that super obese man (and others like him) fix their lives on TV.

When we told Wally, he was thrilled. “That’s amazing,” he said. “You guys are going to change my life.”

“Okay, just send us all your paperwork so we can get started,” I told him.

Weeks went by and I kept calling, trying to get him to send us his questionnaire and other information. “It’s in the mail,” he’d say.

“Send it,” I’d say, “or I’m going to fly to Chicago and get it myself. I want to help you, Wally.”

Finally, the paperwork came in, but only after I called, emailed, and threatened to show up at his front door. The show started filming. For the first 90 days, Wally did well. In fact, everything was going better than we had all hoped. Then his wife called. She couldn’t find him; he’d been missing for 24 hours. We went to the house to keep watch for him to come home and eventually he did—with a car of nearly 20 (we counted) fast food wrappers. Ultimately, we helped Wally check into an in-patient weight loss facility. He just wasn’t going to be able to do it with our help alone.

The moral of the story is that, while you may feel (and act) gung-ho at first, you’re not ready if you cannot do the interior work it takes to change your life. That was Wally’s downfall. The fact that we more or less had to drag him to the starting line should have alerted us to that fact. That was a live-and-learn moment for us. You will have to be the judge of whether you are prepared for the challenges that lie ahead. If you are just answering yes or no to the questions I asked you on pages 96–97, it’s a sign that you don’t yet have what it takes to succeed. (Which doesn’t mean you won’t be ready sometime down the line!) But if you’re ready to go deep, then you’re ready get on with it and ready for success. The weight is going to fall off—just watch.

The first thing I learned on the very first season of
The Biggest Loser
was that fat people want to talk about their feelings. The problem was, in their normal lives, no one had cared enough to ask them to share what was going on in their heads. They not only received no encouragement but they felt invisible—even though they were the largest people in the room. It was as if everything they were experiencing didn’t matter.

I got a pretty rude awakening during the first interview we did with a
Biggest Loser
contestant. Suddenly, a grown man was crying. Not just crying. Blubbering. At first, we all stood there not knowing what to do. But we quickly learned that the man’s crying (and the crying of many of the other contestants that would follow) was the sign of a phenomenon we’d see again and again: After a breakdown, an incredible breakthrough followed. When anyone finally let out what had been bottled up inside for years, the pounds fell off them with the greatest of ease. The discovery was monumental:
Tears weigh more than fat.

Throughout the years, getting people to talk about what they’re feeling has proven to be a formula for success. We’ve seen cast members go from dropping zero pounds in a week to having an emotional moment—opening up in a way that they never have before—and, as if by some miracle, achieving double-digit weight loss the following week. This hasn’t just happened a few times; it’s happened dozens of times! What is so powerful about unlocking the subconscious and letting the tears fall that helps people who have always failed at weight loss start succeeding? I’m no shrink (in fact, there are times that I think I could benefit from one!), but I can confidently say that it’s because tears weigh more than fat. As I’ve been saying all along, fat is just a symptom of something bigger. You are not fat because you love food. Just acknowledging that something lies beneath starts the ball rolling—and it’s all downhill from there.

I’d say that 90 percent of the people we cast on our shows come on thinking that they’re just going to deal with their eating and exercise habits. If only that were all they needed to do! That would be a walk in the park. A lot of them will try to get around digging below the surface, but we force the issue. And, eventually, they get it: Diet and exercise and the process of dealing with emotional baggage go hand-in-hand—and feed on each other. Jennifer, who you might remember had lived a trauma-filled life, saw the connection early on. “The more weight I lost,” she says, “the more I was able to say good-bye to my past.” Yet in the beginning, she was terrified. Most people are. But it’s the only way out. Fear, sadness, secrets—they weigh you down. But once you address their origins, you’ll be lighter in every way.

Earlier, I told you a little bit about Bruce. He’s the young guy—28 when he came on
Extreme Weight Loss
—who was wary about losing that jolly fat-guy persona, something his friends loved about him. Believe me, that was the least of his problems. One day, when Bruce was in ninth grade, he came home and there were police cars everywhere. His father was being arrested on 22 counts of sexual molestation, but Bruce didn’t understand why until he read an article in the newspaper (and it was front page news): Several kids from his Pee Wee football team had come forward and accused Bruce’s father of molesting them. Bruce had never even heard the term sexual molestation—and he didn’t understand that what his father had been doing to
him
since he was a young boy was also sexual molestation. He thought his father was his best friend. To him, it was normal—that’s what your father did. Bruce’s mother worked the night shift and left the house every night thinking she was leaving her son in a safe place.

After Bruce’s father went to jail, the kid ballooned north of 400 pounds. “I was just fighting to survive in my life, battling to keep a roof on our house and food on the table. I didn’t worry about what I looked like,” he says now. “Plus, I just thought I was fat because I loved to eat food. I didn’t want to face the real reason why. I didn’t want to use what had happened as an excuse. Poor me. So many other people use drugs; my drug was food.” At the heart of it all, Bruce was still battling with the notion that he had never been truly loved by his father. He realized that what his dad wanted from him was wrong—but even from prison, his dad still had an emotional hold on him. And it was choking Bruce to death.

When we first met, Bruce was leading a seemingly normal life, working as a high-school football coach and inspiring his players with his go-for-the-gusto personality. But he still hadn’t dealt with the past. Whenever there were hearings at the board of pardons, he’d go and try and connect with his dad—and, as unbelievable as it sounds, advocate for him to get out of prison. I asked him, “Why would you try to connect with someone who did unspeakable things to you and other kids? Why wouldn’t you try to keep him in prison for the rest of his life?”

In his final sit-down with me during the finalist selection process, Bruce’s hands shook and his eyes released the biggest tears I have ever seen. Then he said something I still struggle to understand. “My dad was the best dad ever,” he said. “We did everything together. We were inseparable.” With a body now more than 400 pounds—clearly a sign that something had gone seriously wrong in his life—Bruce had still not come to terms with the fact that his dad never loved him in an appropriate way. Yet even with all the abuse that man handed out, he could not put out the inner light inside this kid. Bruce was broken, for sure, and he wasn’t even aware of how broken he was. Still, his spirit endured.

Bruce had originally tried out for
The Biggest Loser,
and I did not pick him. He seemed so out of touch with the truth, and unwilling to deal with the pain in a way that would help him transform. Undaunted, he kept coming back year after year, trying to get on one of our shows. Each time he came back, I heard a new version of what he wanted from life, and slowly I started to believe that this kid could scale any wall to success.

What helped swing the pendulum in his direction was the fact that Bruce started to lose weight on his own. He lost 50 pounds
before
his final audition. Even before I told him he had officially made it onto the show, I had a private meeting with him and let him know that I was the only one who thought he could do it—and that I don’t like looking like a fool. I asked him point blank, “Are you going to let me down?” He didn’t even hesitate and said, “I am going to be your greatest success ever. Let’s do this thing!”

Call it luck, call it coincidence, but the season he finally made it onto
Extreme Weight Loss
, his father came up for his final parole hearing. If he didn’t get released then, he’d have to serve out his life sentence.

By the time of the hearing, Bruce had lost a lot of weight (he ultimately lost 185 pounds) and, more important, gained confidence. He’d spent considerable time working with a therapist and dealing with what had happened to him. He’d also proved to himself that he could get a handle on his eating and transform his body—he was “the man” now in so many ways. Still, from day one, Bruce was adamant that he didn’t want to go to his dad’s hearing. I told him I would honor his wishes, but that he should really think about how powerful it would be to look his dad in the face as a new man, and let his dad know that he no longer had any power over him.

Bruce and I spent a lot of time talking about how he could close that chapter in his life and make sure that his father would never hurt him or any other kid again. Bruce had been carrying a lot of guilt about his silence during the years of molestation; now was his chance to speak up. Finally, just a few days before the hearing, he decided to go—and our cameras went with him since the hearing occurred during the filming of Bruce’s episode. As you can imagine, for Bruce, walking into that board of pardons hearing was like walking into hell. Several members of his family were there arguing
for
his father’s release, so speaking out
against
his dad—who never once turned around to look at Bruce and even denied under oath that he abused Bruce—took considerable courage. Yet he spoke forcefully and swayed the judge, who said she didn’t believe Bruce’s father’s denials of abuse. His father is still in prison and, because Bruce was so courageous, will be there the rest of his life. The weight finally came off Bruce and you know, of course, that I’m not talking about body fat.

Bruce is one of the most inspiring guys you’ll ever meet—so inspiring that we hired him as a trainer. He now works for
Extreme Weight Loss.
In the 12 years that I’ve been doing weight-loss shows, I’d never hired a cast member to train anyone before! That’s how special he is. I often tell his story when I speak to groups because it just shows you what can happen when you tackle the mind-sets, the head trips, the subconscious twists and turns that contribute to being overweight. During the weight-loss process, Bruce became his own man. Does he still have darkness? Yes. A lot. Is he still fragile? Very. But he took steps to improve his life. And continues to take them every day—it doesn’t just end once you lose the weight. Just as you have to adopt healthy diet and exercise habits for a lifetime, you have to stay on top of the psychological and emotional reasons you put on pounds.