Fat Chance Page 2

  Despite my excitement at the prospect of being on national TV, auditioning wasn’t my idea. In the summer of 2006, my girlfriend Melissa found out that producers from The Biggest Loser were hosting an open casting call in our hometown of Jacksonville, Florida. Shortly thereafter, my cell phone rang, and I spotted Melissa’s number on the screen. “Julie!” she exclaimed as soon as I picked up. “You’re not going to believe who’s in town!”

  After indulging a few of my unsuccessful guesses, she enthusiastically spat out the answer: “The Biggest Loser! They’re doing an open casting call!”

  “Really?” I cheered.

  “Yes!” said skinny, never-has-struggled-with-her-weight Melissa. “And … well, I think you’d be … great … on that show.”

  “Girl, are you calling me fat?” I accused playfully.

  In a tiny voice that matched her tiny self: “Well …”

  I first started watching The Biggest Loser during Season 2, and while I could relate to the contestants, I didn’t see myself or them as “morbidly obese,” to quote the show’s announcer. I focused so much on what their “after” state would look like that I guess the “before” reality somehow faded away. These people were polished and pretty pursuers of a completely new life, and I couldn’t help but cheer them on.

  That season, I resonated most with Suzy Preston—a wisecracker whose witty remarks and animated expressions had me captivated from the start. She had short, blonde hair like me and at five-feet-four with ninety-five pounds to lose, we seemed to share similar dimensions. I’d watch Suzy and the other contestants compete in challenges, fight through temptations, work out every now and then and think, “That’s something I could actually do!” Much like a high school swimmer watching Michael Phelps go for gold in the Olympics, I saw the people on the screen living my dream and wanted more than anything to join them.

  I loved watching The Biggest Loser. I’d stop by the grocery store each week, pick up a new snack, and curl up on the couch to watch every episode. During challenges, I’d look at my husband Mike and say, “I could do that.”

  Yeah, right, Miss Big Talker who’s sitting on her big ol’ butt.

  Since childhood, that “dream” had been to go to fat camp. My chubbiest friend at the time, Tammie, and I even made a pact that if either of us ever won the lottery, we’d take the other one to fat camp. Of course, we also agreed that we’d probably be the most rebellious campers the camp had ever seen. We’d be the ones plotting ways to break into the snack shack late at night and eat our way through boxes of Snickers and Twinkies, figuring when you’re as rich as we’d be, you could eat whatever you want.

  Tammie had struggled with her weight as long as I had, and both of us knew that the only way we were going to drop a hundred pounds each was if we signed up for a massive kick in the pants. These days, people look to gastric-bypass surgery or a Lap-Band insertion. Back then, assuming you didn’t care to have your jaw wired shut, fat camp was the do-or-die choice. But honestly, what’s more fun than camp? With that rhetorical question in mind, I gathered up my purse, my courage and my assumptions about life on The Biggest Loser, and I headed for the casting call.

  MAKING THE CUT

  I asked half a dozen friends and family members to come with me to my The Biggest Loser audition, but every one of them declined. They loved the show and supported my desire to try out, but given the fact that 250,000 people were auditioning for it, they thought my efforts were a colossal waste of time. To be fair, the odds were staggering, and being cast on a nationwide reality show just doesn’t happen to people “we” know. Plus, there was the fact that I wasn’t exactly famous for my track record of completing the things I set out to do. I always had wonderful intentions, but somehow, someone or something seemed to distract me from accomplishing the goal. And so I would go to the casting call alone, me, the one who doesn’t even go to the bathroom by herself.

  I also asked every overweight person I knew to go to the audition with me, but each person said no. “Have you seen what they make contestants do?” they all asked. I wasn’t sure if they were referring to the challenges or to the Spandex weigh-in attire, but either way, they wanted nothing to do with that show.

  As I entered the atrium of our local mall, I realized that my friends and family might have been right. The main floor was flooded with hundreds of prospective contestants, some with neon poster-board “Pick Me!” signs in hand, some with colorful Afro wigs, one in a full-body sumo-wrestler costume. Handprinted signs pointed me toward the line where I would stand for hours, left to my insecure thoughts about how I stacked up next to the far more interesting people all around me. Fat chance—it’s what I remember thinking about the likelihood that I’d actually make the cut, lose the weight, change my life for good.

  A casting assistant from the show ushered us into a meeting room six at a time. As soon as my group entered and sat down, a tall, thin, official-looking man with thick, gelled-back hair that made him look exactly like John Stamos during his Full House days glanced at us and said, “Tell us about yourselves, one by one.” He looked at the woman sitting at the other end of the line from me. “We’ll start with you, and keep it brief. Ten minutes and the bell will ring, which will signal your group to leave.”

  I did the math and concluded that even if the other five people talked fast, I wasn’t going to have much time to share my story. What’s more, I realized in that moment that I didn’t even have a story to share.

  The first woman piped up with a slow, steady twang. “Well,” she said, “I’m fat because I drive an ice-cream truck for a living.”

  The hurricane victim made it all the way through the casting process and wound up being a contestant on the same season as I did. Told you she’d be stiff competition!

  John Stamos chuckled and then asked several follow-up questions about life on an ice-cream truck before moving on to the next person, who had lost everything in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. An ice-cream-truck driver and a hurricane victim? How was I supposed to compete with that?

  The third person was a beautiful young woman who explained that she was getting married soon and wanted to lose weight before her wedding day. She was so desperate for change in her life that evidently she even was willing to postpone her wedding date for a shot on the show. The other two had equally compelling and heartrending tales to tell, and as the conversation made its way down the line everything around me blurred out of focus as a full-on panic attack set in. “I’m Julie,” I practiced silently. Now, what do I say after that?

  Finally that gelled-haired head swiveled my way, and I knew it was my turn to speak. Before I even said my name, I leaned forward, craned my neck toward the other end of the row, and with a dose of recognition and a thicker-than-usual twang said, “I knew you looked familiar! I was the fat lady chasing your ice-cream truck yesterday! You shoulda slowed that thing down … I was hungry!”

  Waves of laughter filled the room as I sat back against my chair and let my shoulders fall. When the impromptu moment eventually passed, I said simply and with a genuine smile, “Kidding aside, I’m Julie Hadden—a stay-at-home mom here in Jacksonville.” And with that, the bell rang.

  I dialed Mike’s cell phone number the moment I exited the room. “You’re already done?” he asked. The shock in his voice was undeniable.

  “Yeah,” I admitted. “I’m glad I did it, but it’s pretty much over.” Of course this news came as no surprise to Mike. With each syllable I spoke, I was validating his pipe dream suspicions. We agreed to meet at the food court to grab lunch and chat about the day. Partway through our meal I noticed the casting people walking by. They grinned at me, glanced down at my greasy oversized slice of pizza, and probably fully understood why I needed to audition for their show. “So, it’s really over?” Mike asked, after they’d passed. “You’re done, just like that?”

  I explained that I’d overheard someone in my group of six ask one of the show’s representatives what would happen next. “We’
ll contact you if we’re interested,” came the reply.

  The next day, after church, lunch and a long and lovely nap—made possible by my wise husband’s thinking to turn off the phone ringers—my life completely and dramatically changed. It was almost eleven o’clock at night when Mike remembered to turn on the ringers again, and soon after, he noticed that we had six voice mail messages waiting. “Julie!” he shouted moments later. “The Biggest Loser people have called six times and want you to audition again. If you don’t contact them by eleven, they’re going to give away your spot!”

  I bounced up and down and squealed like a giddy schoolgirl. And then I took a deep breath and called them back.

  FINDING A STORY TO SHARE

  The casting director’s request was a no-brainer. “We’d like to interview you again,” he said, “but the date we have in mind falls on the Fourth of July. Can you make it?”

  Was he serious? It could have been Christmas and I would have gone.

  July Fourth arrived, and as I entered the appointed hotel room I noticed a single video camera positioned to my right. Despite the small crowd of onlookers, I immediately felt put at ease—both in my surroundings and in my own skin. Amazing what the prospect of real life-change can do for a person.

  Minutes into my discussion with my interviewer, I slipped off my shoes, folded my legs up under me on the couch, shrugged my hands to chin-level as if surrendering all hopes of self-preservation and said, “Ask me anything you want.”

  We got through questions about how my weight affected my sex life, what my friends would think about my being on a reality TV show and what aspects of my body I most disliked. At that point, I pulled off the cardigan portion of my sweater-set and tugged on a flabby underarm. “Well, this, for starters,” I said. Uncharacteristically, I then stood up, twisted into an about-face and jiggled my well-endowed butt. “And I don’t need to clarify why this is a problem.”

  Just before I left the room, I was handed a piece of paper by the casting assistant. “Julie, I want you to make a video that shows your struggle in everyday life,” she explained. “Send it to this address, and make sure you write, ‘Attention: Christmas Package,’ on the envelope in big bold print, okay?”

  I knew then that I might have more than a fat chance.

  Who knows how much time elapsed, but eventually, after I had complied with the original request for a video, I received another phone call from someone requesting a second one. “Show us a few more of the realities that you face,” came the instruction.

  My patient husband trailed me with a video camera for two days straight, capturing real life as a large woman. One scene showed me trying to make Noah’s top-bunk bed by standing on the bottom bunk; as soon as I shift my weight to tuck in the sheet, the entire bed almost falls apart. Another scene features me folding clothes. First you see Noah’s tiny tighty-whities and then me holding up a pair of what I affectionately referred to as my big-girl panties. Still another shot is of me attempting in vain to squeeze my oversized self into an old size-eight pageant dress that had been hiding in the recesses of my closet. Despite the sobering realities depicted in those images, I like to think my lighthearted, buoyant self shone through.

  At some point that fall, I received word from an NBC representative that the show had gone into hiatus. “And we don’t know when it will resume,” he admitted.

  Months and months went by, which really proved challenging for someone who typically spent her days fretting about how to lose weight. How was I supposed to get motivated about losing weight now that my fat-camp dream, a la The Biggest Loser, might just come true? Regardless what NBC said, I still had great hopes that I’d be cast. Soon enough I’d have all the help I needed—for now, I figured, I’d live it up.

  My hopes crested when I finally heard from the show’s lawyer. Evidently, I needed to submit to an extensive background check, which to me meant that I really was in the running to be selected as a cast member. My hunches were right, and sometime in April 2007, I was informed that I had made it to the final audition and would need to fly to Los Angeles to be pitted against thirty-five others who were vying for spots on the show.

  The naysayers in my life were stunned.

  Coming from Florida, I was the last person to arrive in LA. In short order, I was escorted to meetings with more interviewers, a psychologist, a medical doctor and a nutritionist, as well as told to complete what must have been a five-hundred-question survey that probed my family history, my relational intelligence and my reasons for being fat. At last, I was taken to a prep session for what I was told would be my “final interview.”

  I entered a large meeting room at the hotel and remember thinking that I had never seen so many beautiful fat people in my entire life. I immediately took note of my would-be-teammate Isabeau, although I didn’t yet know her name. Will they cast two girls with platinum-blonde hair? I wondered skeptically.

  We were asked to have a seat, and then the show’s executive producer, J. D. Roth, said, “We want to hear your story in this interview. We don’t want you to be especially happy or sad or contrive anything that’s not true of you. We simply want to understand why you’re here.”

  With that we were dismissed to our hotel rooms and told that within the next three-hour block, we’d be called down for our interview.

  The entire elevator ride to my floor, I cried. After making my way into my room, I let the door slip shut behind me, I fell onto the bed, I dialed Mike’s cell phone, and as soon as he picked up, I cried some more. “I don’t have a story!” I sobbed. “I have to go down there and tell my story, and I still don’t have a story to tell!”

  My gracious and loving husband spoke whatever words I needed to hear just then, and by the time I emerged for my interview, I felt competent and capable and strong.

  Spotlights shone on a single red velvet chair, positioned in the center of the interviewing room. Surrounding it was an arc of forty chairs or so, dimly lit and possessed by faces I could not see. Intimidating—it’s the only word that came to mind.

  As I took the seat that obviously was intended for me, I chuckled nervously and said, “Whew! I’m sweating like a Twinkie at a Weight Watchers meeting.”

  A nameless, faceless voice piped up from the back. “Are you nervous, Julie?”

  “Like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rockers!” I shot back.

  Laughing, another voice cheered, “Give us another one!”

  But I couldn’t fulfill the request. “Sorry,” I said with a shrug and a smile. “That’s all I’ve got.”

  The lighthearted exchange calmed my spirits and settled me for what was to come. At some point, someone said, “So, tell us about you.”

  I wasted no time in telling the truth. “The first thing you should know is that you absolutely sent me over the edge this morning, with the whole we-want-to-know-your-story plea. I cried all the way to my room!”

  “Why?” several people said in unison.

  “Because I don’t have a story. Or at least that’s what I thought. But the more I considered it, the more I realized that I do have a story to tell. And it’s the same story so many wives and mothers would tell you, if they were sitting here instead of me. I love my family, and it’s with the best of intentions that I invest everything I have in them. But at the end of the day there’s nothing left for me. I am my own last priority.”

  I paused to collect my thoughts and then continued. “I’m tired of being this way. I’m tired of looking like I’m headed to a funeral every day, with all the black I wear. I’m tired of waiting until nightfall, when no one’s around to see me, to play outside with my son. I’m tired of worrying about whether I’ll live to see my son grow up, or whether I’ll sit by my husband in a rocking chair when we’re eighty, or whether I’ll even make it to forty years of age. I’m tired of being fat.”

  The room was strangely quiet as I spoke, and when I finished, silent tears rolled down my cheeks. I should have been curious about what my i
nterviewers were thinking, but I was not. I had spoken straight from the heart and could only hope that it was enough.

  In the end, of course, it was.

  SAVIOR ON A STEEL HORSE

  Making the shift from being a viewer of The Biggest Loser to being a contestant on the show proved far more challenging than what I had expected. At eleven o’clock at night following the final round of interviews, eighteen of us received a knock on our hotel door and instructions to meet downstairs in one of the on-site ballrooms. Once seated, J. D. Roth congratulated us on successfully completing such a rigorous casting process and informed us that, officially, we comprised the cast of The Biggest Loser, Season 4. In response, some laughed, some cried and still others cheered.

  “But let me tell you what you’re in for,” J.D. cautioned. And with that the stories began to unfold. As he talked about how incredibly difficult the next four months would be for us—physically, mentally, emotionally—I felt my stomach start to churn. What had I gotten myself into? I knew only time would tell.

  My castmates and I had exactly one hour to pack up our things, place phone calls to loved ones and turn over cell phones and laptops to production assistants’ hands. When Mike answered the phone, I heard his groggy, “Hello?” and remembered that it was 3:00 AM his time. With equal parts shock and awe, I said, “I did it! I made the show!”

  In that moment, the same husband who thought it would take divine intervention for me to land a spot on reality TV believed in miracles once more. I sat on the floor of my hotel room and cried precious tears as he conveyed how proud of me he was. “When do I get to see you again?” he finally asked.

  “I don’t know!” I replied. And as the words came out, I realized that I really didn’t know when I’d see him again. Or when I’d see my six-year-old, Noah. Or when I’d be back home. “I have no idea what all of this means. Really. I don’t know where I’m going, I don’t know what I’ll be doing, I don’t know when we’ll be able to talk again.”