I’VE BEEN AN adrenaline junkie my entire adult life, and one of my favorite rush-inducing pleasures is racing motorcycles. I’m no pro, but I do follow the pros. And a guy who caught my attention more than a decade ago is Valentino Rossi, one of the most successful racers of all time.
Nearly one hundred race-wins before the age of thirty—the guy was incredible, but so was his bike. And after he claimed back-to-back Grand Prix championships a few years ago, skeptics began to wonder how much of Rossi’s success was due to sheer talent and how much was due to the ride. So, in a move that surprised fans and critics alike, he switched bikes. Rossi let his contract with Honda expire and signed with rival manufacturer Yamaha, maker of an undeniably inferior machine.
Talk about going all-in on a highly unlikely bet.
When Julie Hadden showed up on The Biggest Loser, I was unimpressed, to say the least. She was smaller than the other contestants. She cried all the time. And she lost a grand total of two pounds her first week on the show. I’ll just give this poor girl a few helpful hints, I thought, and put her back on a plane headed home.
But as if reading my mind, Julie did something that probably shocked us both: She actually began to prevail.
People often ask me what it takes to make it through an abrasive, aggressive, confrontational experience like The Biggest Loser, and my answer’s always the same: courage—and a lot of it. If you want to change your life, you have to first be brave enough to face the truth of who you are, brave enough to look deep inside, to take responsibility for what you find there, to stop behaving like the victim you believe yourself to be and to learn to use your faculties for something other than absolute self-destruction.
As I trained Julie those first few times, I saw the courage of a champion peeking through. She did not whine, she did not complain, she did not stop and she did not quit. As stronger contestants unraveled, it was Julie who kept pushing through.
Some judge of character I am, right?
Early into the season, after an especially tortuous workout one morning, I pulled aside a very sweaty Julie, looked intently into her eyes and told her the story of Valentino Rossi. “It wasn’t about the bike,” I explained. “His victories came because he was well-made. And although anybody in a right mind would tell me to bet on the bigger, stronger guys on this campus, I’m choosing to bet on you, Julie. You’re my Yamaha.”
For four months straight, Julie endured the worst that my beatings could offer a girl and emerged a woman who knew her own strength. What was flabby became firm. What was slow became fast. What was timid became brave. And nothing could hold her back now.
The two years following his very bold move, Valentino Rossi would capture back-to-back Grand Prix titles—and do it, unbelievably, on a Yamaha. After his victory lap on Valencia’s course in Spain, Rossi swung himself off his bike, fell to his knees and planted a kiss on the track. Funny how I witnessed a similar reaction from a thirty-something stay-at-home mom while she was netting a victory of her own. Several weeks before the finale, overcome by the joy that accompanies finding courage she didn’t know she had, Julie Hadden fell to her knees and kissed the scale that in the end would declare her a full 45 percent thinner than she’d been.
Back at the finale, as she sobbed her way toward an ear-to-ear smile, I shook my head in absolute admiration of the “too-small, too-weak” girl who’d proven her critics dead wrong. It was a picture of courage personified that I’ll remember for a long, long time.
I’m a firm believer in the idea that you can build courage in the same way you build physical strength. While most fat people can’t curl twenty-pound weights their first day in the gym, a few weeks into their regimen, you wouldn’t believe how their capabilities have changed. In the same way, even those who are utterly paralyzed by panic and fear will one day emerge victorious and strong, if they suck it up and do the work that transformation demands.
The process played out for me starting in my early teens. I was in desperate need of a catalyst and a motivator, of an educator and an encourager, when I got all of that and much more. A martial-arts instructor stepped into my life, and despite my hefty weight, my cavernous wounds and my wavering self-esteem, he bet on me to win. It was a vote of confidence that propelled me into the soul-level passion for fitness I’ve been thriving on ever since.
If you’re in need of an advocate who will cheer you on toward change, I’ve got just the one for you. Let Julie—and her compelling book, Fat Chance—inspire you and change you and draw out your courage. You are worth the life you long to live. You are capable of bringing it to pass. And the time has come for you to finally bet on you to win.