IN THE 1991 movie What About Bob? Bill Murray plays the hilarious character Bob Wiley, an insecure, neurotic and quirky recluse who self-admittedly has a few “problems.” One day he is referred to a psychiatrist, played by Richard Dreyfuss, and in an early scene sheds light on the exact nature of his dilemma.
“Here’s the simplest way to put it,” Bob says. “I worry about diseases, so I have trouble touching things. In public places it’s almost impossible. I have a real big problem moving.”
“Talk about … moving,” says Dreyfuss’ character, Dr. Leo Marvin.
“As long as I’m in my apartment, I’m okay,” Bob explains, “but when I want to go out, I get … weird.”
“Talk about weird,” comes the advice.
“Talk about weird. Well, I get dizzy spells,” Bob says. “Nausea. Cold sweats. Hot sweats. Fever blisters. Difficulty breathing. Difficulty swallowing. Blurred vision. Involuntary trembling. Dead hands. Numb lips. Fingernail sensitivity. Pelvic discomfort …”
If you never saw What About Bob? and your life seems strangely incomplete, now you know why. Put it in your Netflix queue today. Few movies are funnier than this one.
You get the feeling Bob could go on this way for hours, delineating the symptoms faced by an irrational hermit, symptoms that sound strangely like those also faced by obese people trying to work out for the very first time. Thankfully, Bob’s litany is interrupted.
“Bob,” says Dr. Marvin as he scans his bookshelves, “a groundbreaking book has just come out that might help you.” He pulls the book from the shelf and hands the copy to Bob.
“Baby Steps?” Bob asks as he takes in the title.
“Baby Steps,” confirms Dr. Marvin. “It means setting small, reasonable goals for yourself, one day at a time, one tiny step at a time. For instance, when you leave this office, don’t think about everything you have to do to get out of the building. Just think of what you must do to get out of this room, and when you get to the hall, deal with that hall, and so forth. You see? Baby steps.”
“Baby steps!” Bob cheers as he rises to leave and takes small shuffles toward the door. “Oh boy!”
Several months after I’d been on the show and had made the transition from the madness known as “Jillian Michaels’ workouts” to the madness known as Margie’s, I’d see the baby-steps approach play out in living color.
A new girl named Sharon showed up to be trained one day, and immediately Margie pulled me aside. “Julie,” she asked, “can you please help me look after her? She’s never really worked out.” It was an assessment that would be proven true during our very first hour together.
Partway through the seventy minutes of sprints, races and drills, I looked over to find my newfound, overweight friend barfing for all she was worth. She was exhausted, miserable and obviously physically sick. “Sharon,” I said as I approached her, “you simply cannot quit. I know this is hard, but you have to keep going, just one step at a time.” She nodded as she stood up from her keeled-over position and attempted to pull herself together.
Months ago I posted Sharon’s story on my MySpace page and was in awe over the reception it received. My favorite reply came from a young woman in Mississippi, who wrote,
“I know exactly how Sharon feels. I’d let myself gain so much weight over the last nine years that I was no longer happy in my own skin. I recently started exercising, and six hours after my first cardio workout I could not move. Muscles were hurting that I didn’t even know were there, but three days later, I went at it again. I’m finally sticking to a schedule now, and for the first time in my life, instead of saying, ‘I’m going to do it,’ I’m actually doing it!”
Amazingly, she persevered through the rest of that workout and despite being sore for the entire week following that debut actually showed up for round two of the torture two days later.
During our second seventy-minute training session together, I checked in on Sharon between drills to make sure she was still alive. As I approached her I noticed that tears were streaming down her cheeks. “What is it?” I asked as gently as possible.
“I don’t know,” she whispered through choked-back tears. “I really don’t know why I’m crying.”
I cupped her hand in my hands, looked her straight in the eyes and said, “I do. I know exactly why you’re tearing up.” She met my gaze in anticipation of what I would say. “You’re crying for three reasons,” I continued. “First, you’re crying because you are completely embarrassed about letting yourself get to this point. You can’t believe that you of all people are this horribly and uncomfortably fat.
“The second reason you are crying is that this is the hardest thing you have ever done, and physically, it just plain hurts.
“And third, those tears are tears of pride. You’re proud that you’re actually doing this.”
Sharon nodded so rapidly that I thought her head might wobble right off her shoulders. “How do you know all of that?” she finally asked.
I told her that on so many occasions on campus, I had shed those very same tears. I too had followed the baby-step progression, from embarrassment to pain to pride, and while I wouldn’t trade the end result for all the money in the world, I vastly underestimated what it would take to walk that path.
Ididn’t fully know how much weight I carried all of my adult life until I tried to run it up a hill. The first time Jillian asked me to jog for five minutes straight—no stopping allowed—I thought I’d literally burst into tears. Sure, she had first prepared my fragile knees by working to build up the muscles that surround them, but when I heard her demand that multiminute run I knew I was a goner for sure. I was writing my obituary in my mind’s eye as I pulled on my socks and shoes. “Julie Hadden—loving wife, mom and friend. Sadly enough, that twenty-foot jog just did her in!” What a pitiful way to go.
Halfway through the run that I was sure I would not survive, I looked at Jillian and wanted to scream, “I’m a fat person! Do I really need to remind you of that? I’m fat, and fat people like couches and French fries and drinks that have fizz, not death-wish jogs in the blazing sun!”
“Welcome to your new world, Jules!” Jillian sneered as if hearing my thoughts. She had been running backward faster than I was running forward, and as she did a one-eighty and raced off into the distance, I heard her cheer, “Keep going! It doesn’t get better than this!”
Prior to my The Biggest Loser experience, the only form of physical activity I engaged in was the kind that involved walking from the living room to the kitchen for a refill on snacks, or from the car to the house after picking up Noah from school. I guess there were other examples, but they reflected accidental exercise at best. Clearly that had all changed drastically, now that I was on the show.
The worst part of being on campus wasn’t the fact that I was denied my French fries and fizz. Nor was it the fact that Jillian made me complete a near-fatal run. It’s that those things happened not just once but on a sickeningly daily basis. In the spirit of referencing Bill Murray movies, it was like I had been dropped onto the set of Groundhog Day, where every twenty-four-hour period mirrored the awful day you thought you’d already lived through.
As a frame of reference, for my entire life leading up to the show, dragging luggage through an airport represented the most rigorous workout I’d known. Well, that, and sweating my way into a swimsuit during those dreaded pageant days.
A typical day on campus involved getting up at seven-thirty, grabbing a bite to eat and hitting the gym before Jillian arrived so that once she was there, our homework assignment was complete. Typically that homework involved an hour of cardio—such as spending twenty minutes on the stair-climbing machine at level eight, followed by twenty minutes on the elliptical machine at 150 revolutions per minute, followed by twenty minutes on the stationary bike or the treadmill. After that, we’d engage in one-on-one workouts with Jillian. And oh, how I hated those.
Some of my teammates actually looked forward to the individual attention, but for the life of me, I don’t know why. I’d refuse to make eye contact with Jillian each morning when she’d ask our team, “Okay, who’s up first?” Thankfully, my teammate Hollie typically jumped at the chance to get her “Jillian time” over with; from the safety of my treadmill I’d watch every exercise Jillian put her through so that I’d be prepared when I was called on. When it finally was my turn, my ever-present thought was, “Great day, let this be over soon.”
After those excruciating one-on-ones, we’d have to log another hour of independent exercise before we could take a short break for lunch. Our afternoon schedule looked strangely the same: individual training with Jillian, followed by an hour of work on our own. Talk about exhausting! My flabby little self didn’t know what to think, after all I was asking it to do.
The most intense days of all were the ones that involved a challenge in addition to the normal stuff of campus life. We’d be awakened at 3:00 AM and told to get “camera ready” as quickly as possible, which usually involved a shower, team-colored workout clothes and an attempt to look at least halfway awake.
My teammates and I would plod downstairs to eat an apple and some almonds, even as I offered up a silent prayer—“Seriously, Lord, if you’d deliver me a cinnamon roll, I’d be far more pleasant to be around.” We’d then pack a lunch for ourselves and climb into a van that would drive us to the challenge location ninety minutes away. I always thought I’d be able to sleep during those van rides, but my plans were futile at best. Between the chatter of my teammates, the potholes in the road, and the rising sun casting bright beams across my face, it was no use.
Once on-site, we’d spend another hour preparing for the physical part of the challenge. Sports-training staff members would tape our feet and ankles, give us instruction on the nuances of the challenge and then set up cameras and microphones. By the time the challenge actually started, the sun was high in the sky.
The single common denominator uniting a very diverse group of eighteen original contestants for Season 4 was that nobody ate breakfast prior to their time on the show. Eat breakfast, people!
Each challenge took thirty to forty-five minutes to complete. If the show’s host, the lovely and talented Alison Sweeney, was asked to redo certain shots because of audio blips or lighting issues, it could take longer, but usually we’d be done in less than one hour’s time. Afterward, each contestant had to sit for interviews about the challenge itself, answering questions like, “How did you feel when two blue-team members outlasted you?” and “Walk us through your initial strategy… why did you think you might win?”
I was incredibly enamored with Alison Sweeney at the beginning of the show because I had seen her for so many years on Days of Our Lives. She still starred on that show while she was working with The Biggest Loser, and often she’d come to our set immediately after leaving the set of her soap. We all loved to harass her after her flashback scenes on Days; she’d arrive at our show with hair that still boasted a 1950s bouffant or 1970s flyaways.
It took more than two hours to run everyone through the interview process, so when it wasn’t our turn, we’d grab a seat and eat our sack lunch. When everyone was finally done, we’d load back into the van and head home. Incredibly, even after a tiresome morning like that, we’d get back to campus and have to unload the van, empty the coolers and put everything back in the appropriate kitchen cabinet or refrigerator drawer. So much for being TV celebrities! Since when do stars do their own chores?
Then, into a fresh set of workout clothes and on to the gym we’d go.
After our painstaking series of workouts, we’d then head back to the house. We would prepare and eat dinner, which seemed always to consist of a small grilled chicken breast, half a cup of veggies, a small side salad and a glass of room-temperature water—again. Oh joy.
We’d clean up the kitchen, moan about how exhausted we were, wait in line to do our “confessional” recordings on camera, write a few letters to family members who were cheering us on from home, update our online Bodybugg, moan some more about how exhausted we were and then whimper our way to sleep.
The Bodybugg is an armband device that measures your caloric intake and expenditure. We would have loved them, except for the fact that our trainer could log online and tell whether or not we were burning calories while she was away. Made it a wee bit harder to cheat.
It was a far cry from the life I’d known in Jacksonville. And things would only get worse.
When the black team was still operating incognito in the desert, a production assistant approached Jillian with a video camera during one of our workouts to ask her about the strategy she employed when training a team. “Tell us about your approach, Jillian,” the guy said. And in response, Jillian shed light for millions of Americans on the truth of what makes her tick.
Contestants weren’t allowed contact with loved ones until well into the game—no phone calls, no letters, no e-mails, no nothing. Finally, by week eight, I was allowed to call Mike. No sweeter sound had my ears ever heard than that particular “Hello?”
“My plan is the same, season after season after season,” Jillian said as she then punched one fist into the palm of the other hand: “Beatings, beatings, beatings. And then some more beatings.” Whether or not we appreciated her approach, evidently it had been working well for her. At this writing, out of the six seasons that Jillian has appeared on, a member of her team has won every single time.
Jillian Michaels also has won every season of The Biggest Loser Australia on which she has appeared, which makes her an international training threat.
Still, on those frequent occasions when I needed a way to ease the pain that she so fervently loved to inflict, I’d dream up new reasons to detest the trainer who has a strange affinity for abuse. While I could write an entire book on the trouble with Jillian Michaels, I’ll try to contain myself to a top-ten list of sorts. Here they are, in no particular order.
On a near-daily basis Jillian would lead a small group of us in cardio drills. She’d say, “Okay, everyone, twenty jump-squats, starting now.” She’d begin counting as we obediently crouched down low and then sprung up high, but when we got to twenty, mysteriously, we were not done. “Five more!” she’d holler, just when we were pulling back to take a break. “Really, Jillian,” Hollie would protest. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
Obviously, she was not.
The extra five would become an extra fifteen in the end, and my teammates and I would despise her even more. The first twenty were tough enough, let alone an agonizing total of thirty-five. I stand by my case: She cannot count. But that was hardly the worst of her quirks.
The only thing more annoying than a person who thinks she’s always right is a person who is, in fact, never wrong. Enter Jillian Michaels.
For instance, it would be mere hours before a weigh-in, and I’d say, “I think I lost six pounds this week.” I mean, I know my body best, right? Jillian would shake her head immediately and say, “Nope. You only lost three.” Or, “Are you kidding? You clearly lost eight.” Of course, come weigh-in time, she always was dead on.
Jillian also knew our personal limits better than we did. During one especially awful workout, Isabeau was running on a treadmill when Jillian came into the gym. She made a beeline for Izzy and said, “Harder! Faster, Isabeau. Move!” Through labored breaths, Izzy panted out her reply: “I can’t, Jillian! I’m already going as fast as I can go!”
Jillian, of course, took that response as a challenge. She reached around and punched buttons on the treadmill’s control pad until Isabeau was nearly flying, she was running so fast. As soon as Izzy successfully completed the thirty-second interval, with Jillian counting down every single stride, she heard Jillian shrieking at the top of her lungs as she left the gym, “ I AM NEEEEVVVVVER WRONG!”
Jillian was so concerned about my polycystic ovary syndrome that she made contact with some of the world’s most renowned doctors to find out how I could convince my body to lose weight. The meds I was taking were being used preventively—to regulate my hormones, mostly—and those doctors and the show’s doc agreed unanimously that if I was going to begin normalizing my hormone levels through better diet and exercise patterns, then I could discontinue my habit of popping pills. Thank goodness!
Closer to home, weeks into my The Biggest Loser experience, Jillian decided to take me off of all of my medications, which included Ortho Tricycline to combat the effects of my polycystic ovary syndrome, and Metformin for my glucose intolerance and prediabetic condition. Understandably, I was nervous about it, but she assured me that in three weeks’ time my body would adjust. Twenty-one days later, you guessed it: My plateau of piddly two- and three-pound weight-loss weeks was jolted, and I finally began to see results.
Never wrong. Never, ever, ever wrong. It’s annoying, but it’s true.
If you’re overweight, it’s tough to tip yourself over and walk on your hands and feet, but “bear crawls” were one of Jillian’s favorite exercises from day one. She’d divide us into duos and wrap resistance bands around the waist of one member of each team. “Get in back of them,” she’d holler to the ones without the bands strangling their bellies, “and don’t let them get up the hill!” Talk about misery. With us pulling against them, our beloved friends and teammates would then tip over into the bear-crawl position and try with all their might to ascend the hundred-yard hill.
I remember one situation when this was the drill du jour, and all was going well. That is, until Hollie cried. Keep in mind, Hollie was not much of a crier. But on that particular day she’d simply had enough.
Jillian noticed Hollie hesitating, and so she grabbed the resistance band that was wrapped around Hollie and said, “Are you going to do this, Hollie? Or are you going to quit?”
The rest of us kept moving and tried to avoid eye contact with Jillian. We hated to see Hollie get picked on, but it was better her than us.
Through the corner of my eye I saw Hollie tip herself onto all fours, her heavy, heavy weight coming down hard on her hands. Her neck looked constricted as her chubby cheeks covered her eyes. Sweat ran down her face and pooled on the ground below.
But still, she forced herself up the path.
In the face of an emotional breakdown, I’m sure some trainers rush to the person’s side, wrap a loving arm around the person’s neck, and say, “Oh, you poor thing. Here, let’s have a Snickers and take a break.” But not Jillian. Far from it. She’d rush to your side, all right. But only so that she could fire a closer-range shot that was sure to take your sorry self down.
Jillian would send one of my teammates or me to retrieve something from the house during a workout and become irate when we finally returned. “You should have been back in three minutes!” she’d accuse whoever had been sent on the errand, forgetting entirely that it was a five-minute walk from the gym to the house … and therefore a ten-minute walk round-trip.
Jillian would tell us to eat lunch when we were between workouts and then thirty seconds later, obviously angered by the fact that food was not finding its way to our faces yet, say, “I thought I told you to eat your lunch!”
“Hello!” we’d fire back. “We have to cook it first!”
Once we finally did get our lunch prepared, Jillian would control our portions through the use of condiments. If she felt like we’d had enough to eat, she would upend the ketchup bottle or unscrew the salt shaker and destroy the remainder of our meal. And she wanted to be our friend?
Whenever our team competed in a challenge or a temptation activity, Jillian only wanted for us to assume risk if we would be guaranteed immunity. The reward could be a priceless video made by a loved one, a much-needed full-body massage or five thousand dollars in cold hard cash, and still Jillian would not budge. Family meant nothing and money meant nothing, because there was only room for one goal, and that goal was immunity, immunity, immunity. “Who cares if you win five grand, if it costs you a week in this game?” she’d rant. And as always, Jillian was right.
Jillian loved to lead our team in “spin” classes. She’d circle up the stationary bikes, tell us to take our pick and find a seat and then promptly proceed to remove them—the seats, that is. She’d rev up all the bikes as high as they would go and then come jump on my front wheel. There I’d be, pedaling as though my life depended on it—because it did—huffing and puffing out prayers to God and fending off Jillian’s added resistance until the magical moment I heard the word Stop.
From day one, the black team was instructed to bring snacks with us to every workout. If you forgot it, sweet heavens, the universe would utterly come to a halt. “I asked you to bring your SNACKS!” Jillian would roar upon discovering delinquency in the ranks. I’m sure that camera operators and production assistants stationed in the gym who heard that little reminder thought that Jillian was looking out for our own good. “What a kind and thoughtful trainer she is,” they must have thought. After all, wouldn’t any trainer worth her biceps want her trainees to eat healthy, frequent meals?
But that wasn’t Jillian’s motivation at all.
In reality, Jillian preferred to beat the snot out of us, and she knew we needed nourishment to withstand it.
Beatings, beatings, beatings—she was a woman of her word.
On the heels of one workout in which Hollie did, in fact, remember to bring her snack, Jillian circled up the black team and asked us to have a seat. We were all exhausted, and as Jillian stood in the middle of the circle, giving her best attempt at a pep talk, I couldn’t help but notice the teammate sitting directly across the circle from me.
Evidently Hollie had brought her food in a plastic grocery bag, and now the empty bag was hanging around her face, its handles hooked over both of her ears. I snickered a little at the sight of my friend, which caught Jillian’s attention. “What’s so funny?” she said, genuinely curious.
She swiveled around to see what I was looking at, and when she took in her trainee with a barf bag on her face, she just had to know more. “Hollie, honey? What’s up?”
But of course Hollie could not reply. For days on end our bodies had been detoxing from all the “clean” eating and incessant workouts we’d endured, and Hollie had some business to tend to. With all eyes on her, she drew her knees toward her chin, and, able to hold her cookies no longer, completely and thoroughly barfed. Which sent Jillian into full-fledged dance-mode.
I’m not sure when it began, but by our season on the show, Jillian had crafted a puke-induced dance of joy. Why was she so elated about such a terrible turn of events? Because it meant that her beatings had taken effect, that her poor, suffering contestant had actually worked out that hard.
It’s a little difficult to describe without nonverbals, but essentially she squats down, throws her hands in front of her thighs, thrusts her butt into the air and swings her hips in ever-widening circles while squawking out strains of sheer delight.
Try though we did to contain ourselves for Hollie’s benefit, my teammates and I finally dissolved into a fit of laughter. By the time we composed ourselves, Jillian was on the floor in happy-baby position, kicking her feet in the air and crying hysterical tears. “That’s fantastic!” she cheered over poor Hollie’s condition. “She’s carrying a puke-purse on her face!”
Surely you’re with me here in deeming our trainer a little unstable at best. For all the reasons I’ve cited—not to mention a training philosophy that includes not one or two or three but four occurrences of the word “beatings”—I dare say Jillian is just a little south of sane.
Still, for all her craziness, we loved her. She was our trainer and confidante and yes, she’d even become our friend. Her commanding presence had commanded us, and our trust for her ran deep.
The implications of working out that long and that hard, for that many days in a row, were many.
After about two weeks, every bone in my body felt like it was made of Jell-O. I knew I’d hit an all-time low when I realized that for four days straight I had been crawling on all fours to the bathroom because I was too exhausted to carry my own weight. Exhaustion can do funny things to a girl, making trips to the bathroom and showering incredibly difficult.
Surprisingly, I grew accustomed rather quickly to having a video camera in my face twenty-four hours a day. I just hoped one wasn’t rolling each time I crawled my way to the ladies’ room. How pathetic.
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!”
There actually is no such thing as a “last-chance workout” on The Biggest Loser. The term was cooked up just for TV. I wish we would have had them, because that would have meant that other workouts were less intense in nature! In actuality we worked out six to eight hours a day every day, and every hour was just as hard as the one that had just passed.
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!
Before The Biggest Loser, I could barely walk for three consecutive minutes without becoming winded. Every time I go to the gym in Jacksonville these days, I find it odd that people leave after “only” working out for an hour. My, how things have changed.
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.
Surely you remember Neil. You know, the guy who water-loaded one week and gained seventeen pounds, only to lose thirty-three the next week and make the rest of us so mad? I know, I know: It’s a game. Still, we were mad.
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.
Every 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.
My 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.”
One of the greatest rewards I received from my The Biggest Loser experience is the ability to walk into any gym in any city today and not be embarrassed by how I look. What a gift!
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.”
On the show we were trained to be on a par with professional athletes, and although it may take time and effort for me to meet a particular goal these days, I honestly believe that, physically speaking, there is nothing I cannot accomplish.
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.
During 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?
Immediately I spotted Mike and Noah and our puppy Flower, and the tears just started to flow. It had been three months since I had seen them last, and the woman’s heart in me simply came undone.
Approaching them, life fell into slow motion. I stretched over my son to kiss my husband before realizing that I had been intercepted midstride by Noah. For the first time in his life, he was able to wrap his arms all the way around my waist. What a thrill!
After a lovely—and nutritionally safe—lunch at Subway, a camera crew took Mike, Noah and me to the beach so that I could give them a glimpse of what a “real” workout entailed. I went easy on them, but even so, they were whipped.
Prior to The Biggest Loser experience, Mike and I probably ate out five or six times a week. The richness of the food, the gigantic portion sizes, the desire to eat all that you paid for—nothing about that trend was good.
Thirty minutes into a measly routine of commando crawls, push-ups, mountain-climbers and leg presses, Mike’s legs collapsed under his own weight. He was sweating and out of breath and his body was clearly done—Mike, mind you, who is six feet one and strong as strong can be, under regular circumstances. Sad, sad man. Pitiful, even.
I had lost thirty-eight pounds by that point in the game, and as Mike took me in that day, I remember thinking, This is what it looks like when your husband is proud of you.
My darling husband had lost twenty-eight pounds on his own while I was on the show those first few months. Twenty-eight pounds, and without a lick of torture from the likes of Jillian Michaels. Where is the fairness in that!
Of course, he had always been proud of me. Perhaps what I really meant is that for once, I agreed.
William Shakespeare once wrote that, “To climb steep hills requires slow pace at first.”!4 I look back on my four months on The Biggest Loser campus—as well as the strenuous months that followed—and realize that while I started turtle-slow, I still made it all the way to the top. There’s something to be said for baby steps.
There’s something big to be said for small steps.