The Big Fat Truth: The Behind-the-scenes Secret to Weight Loss (9 page)

There was another problem, too. Panda was inclined to think of himself as incapable of change. “I always felt like I was too weak to lose weight,” says Panda. “I wasn’t strong enough mentally to do it. Part of that comes from living in a pretty broken home and learning to be submissive and give up my needs. That reinforced that I didn’t have any willpower.”

That feeling of weakness pervaded Panda’s life. He wasn’t strong enough to tell his parents about his brother’s abuse, and he wasn’t strong enough to resist enticing foods that he knew were bad for him. His weakness was reinforced when he tried a number of diets and found he couldn’t stay on them. “I started doing radical things. I went on the Atkins Diet. I became a vegetarian, then a vegan with a side of bacon, which turned into the I’ll-only-eat-meat-on-weekends diet,” he recalls. “Then I started doing diet pills, which had horrible side effects. It all just contributed to the idea that I was weak.”

This is the same guy that lost about a third of his body weight in three months so, in fact, he’s not weak—he just needed the opportunity to prove it to himself. But what’s especially heartening about Panda’s story is that he eventually gathered up the strength to talk to his parents about things he had bottled up inside for years. This is exactly what I’m talking about when I say that dropping pounds can change your life in amazing ways. “The weight-loss process proved to me that I was strong, and not just physically strong,” says Panda, “but mentally strong. Mental strength is a lot harder to build. I think our minds might just be the weakest muscle we have.” To me, that was such a deep thought. It was the first time I have ever heard someone say that, and it makes complete sense. Work out that muscle and your problems will be solved!

Panda:
Before

Panda:
After

When you say “I can” to resisting a cookie, and “I can” to running a 5K race, and “I can” to telling your friends that you don’t want to eat at Greasy Joe’s Rib Shack anymore, it’s just a small leap to being able to say “I can” quit this lousy job and “I can” tell my spouse that I want to be treated better and “I can” follow my dream of becoming an artist. It just bleeds into every part of your life. When you become an “I can” person, every glass becomes half full and life improves exponentially.

Let me just tell you one more story about someone who has an unbelievable can-do spirit. We had a contestant on
The Biggest Loser
, Moses, who blew out his knee within the first week of the show. He couldn’t do anything that required being on his feet, which meant no running, no walking—there really was very little that he could do to burn calories. And that was a big problem because, in order to stay on that show, you have to drop pounds each week.
The Biggest Loser
is all about the weigh-in. Moses also did not want to let down his daughter Kaylee, his partner on the show. But in my opinion, he was done; we were about to eliminate him.

Moses shadowboxing

So what does this guy do? Fold? A few weeks before he might have played the victim card and said that it was through no fault of his own that he couldn’t continue. But not this time. This time, he came up with the idea of sitting on the edge of his bed and shadow boxing for
12
hours a day. Some switch in this guy’s mind had flipped, making unbelievable commitment possible. Sweat poured off him in rivers. The bed was soaking wet. He definitely didn’t say, “I can’t.” That’s what most people would say. Here’s what I say: If you want something, you will figure out how to get it, just like the shadow boxer did. Desire leads to bright ideas. Put another way, desperation is the greatest motivator.

It helps, too, if you start thinking of yourself as someone who is powerful, competent, and capable of extraordinary things. You are!

To me, one of the most inspiring guys ever was the college basketball coach Jimmy Valvano, who sadly died of cancer at the age of 43. In one motivational speech he gave, Valvano tells the story of how, as a 16-year-old at basketball camp, he heard a pastor he admired say, “The Lord must have loved ordinary people because he made so many of us.” That disheartened Valvano—he had thought he was special! But then the pastor went on to say that, “every single day, in every walk of life, ordinary people accomplish extraordinary things.” That became Valvano’s rallying cry: You don’t have to be some spectacularly talented person with a will of steel to do something remarkable.
It’s not extraordinary people who do extraordinary things; it’s ordinary people who do extraordinary things.
That can be you. That
is
you. Just add the word “extra” to your “ordinary” life, and go do something amazing.

The people I talk about in this book who changed their lives are no different from you. They are ordinary people with ordinary families and ordinary jobs. What sets them apart is that they believed that they could do something extraordinary. This can-do confidence doesn’t happen overnight. Nobody goes from lying on the couch eating a whole coffee cake to the perfect life in 24 hours. Most people get there by taking baby steps. Each small victory you accomplish gets you one step closer to becoming an “I can” person.

If you say, “I can keep my promises,” you’ll take a step forward. “I can choose to have a better life for myself.” Take a step forward. “I can make decisions that will give me that better life.” Take another step forward. Pretty soon all of those baby steps add up to something amazing. Suddenly, instead of giving up before you even get started, you’ll start seeing obstacles as inspiration. Like that guy who shadow boxed for 12 hours a day, you’ll be unstoppable. By the way, have you ever tried to shadow box in your bed for even 12 minutes? I have. It’s exhausting—and he did it for 12 hours! The power of the mind still amazes me each day.

I don’t have to tell you that fat people, especially fat kids, are prime targets for cruelty. No doubt someone—maybe even lots of people—have said something mean to you about your weight. And it’s awful. The pain and self-hatred these insults dredge up are hard to bear. It’s enough to make you build the Great Wall of Chinese food around your heart so that nothing anybody says about your body, your eating habits, and your general neglect of your health can penetrate. But that’s a problem. If you tune out everyone, when people who love and care about you try to tell you the hard truth about yourself, you’re going to shut them down, too.

Instead, you’re going to listen to those people who want you to stay fat and unhealthy either because they like you the way you are or (the more likely reason) because they need a partner in doughnut and pizza crimes. “Yeah, they’re right,” they have you saying to yourself, “there’s nothing wrong with me.”

These are not people who truly want the best for you. They’re nonfriend friends. Not only do they not help you come to the critical realization that you need to change but also they make you feel that staying the way you are is the best way to win people’s love and affection. This is something just about every cast member on our show has grappled with. “I thought that my body and the way I ate was what people appreciated about me,” says Bruce, who is one of our best
Extreme Weight Loss
success stories. “It’s not okay for people to take drugs. People hide them, and society frowns on them. With eating, it’s okay. You can go out and have dinner and feel good about yourself. So I could eat as much food as I wanted to eat. Everyone searches for acceptance, and I think I thought that was the way I was accepted. It’s cliché but true—I was the good-time guy. ‘Oh, Bruce is here, he’ll eat all the food.’ I thought that was okay.” For Bruce, his ability to chow down was like a badge of honor.

“Bru-u-u-u-uce! Bruce will eat it.”

“Hell, yes, I’ll eat it. I’m the man!”

Panda, the young cast member I mentioned earlier, said he often told himself that he was happy being the size he was. “People like me at this size. I don’t intimidate people. This is how people know me, and this is how I have to be for them,” he’d say to himself. What he admits now: “That was a fake mask I was wearing.”

While the people who want you to stay just the way you are may love you, they love themselves more. Or at least they don’t want their way of life threatened. If you change, what’s that going to say about them? It might say that they, too, need to change, something they’re simply not up for. Also, they often don’t want what they see as your personality—who they
think
you are—to change. Believe it or not, even friends and families of alcoholics can fear what will happen when they’re loved one gets sober. It’s fear of the unknown. Will that person who gets healthy become a proselytizer? Or maybe end up just plain dull? Suddenly, the life of the party is gone; nobody wants that.

Besides the fact that someone’s health is more important than the amusement of others, that’s just idiotic. I’ve seen lots of life-of-the-party types drop half their weight and still be just as engaging as ever. And without their bodies weighing on their minds, I’ve even seen some people who frankly weren’t that interesting before come out of their shells to become some of the most fun people ever. Regardless of the outcome, you cannot let other people’s fears and desires drag you down. It’s time we retired the old fat-people-are-jolly line. Most of the fat people I know are in pain. When they’re alone, they’re far from jolly.

Still, I get why people equate eating behavior and/or body shape with identity. Would Melissa McCarthy and John Goodman have such outsized personalities if their bodies weren’t outsized? Would Barbara Streisand still sell records without that nose? If I couldn’t eat healthfully and exercise, I wouldn’t feel like myself, so it goes both ways. We’d all probably still be the same people at our core if we went through physical changes, but it’s hard to visualize it if you’re used to seeing someone—or yourself—a certain way.

A few years ago, a famous comedian was all set to join one of our weight-loss shows. He came to me and said he was finally ready to lose the weight because he was the only person he knew over 400 pounds and 60 years old. I told him that it was because all the others are dead. I was very excited for him and got the network to agree to have him on the show. I called him to say congratulations and could hear his nervous laugh over the phone. He said, “I guess this means I really have to do it now, huh?” I knew right then and there it was going to end badly.