Fat Chance Read online

  I wouldn’t be allowed to communicate with my family for more than two full months after I found out I’d made the show. All Mike knew was that I was living in California, and that I was trying to lose some weight.

  A wave of trepidation washed over me, but I knew that I had to go. “Take care of my baby, and tell him I love him. And Mike? I love you so much too.”

  One of the early twists of Season 4 was that six of the eighteen original contestants were sent home the very first day. Or so we had been told. We had all been taken to a desert, where we raced each other down a mile-long sand dune in an attempt to reach trainers Bob Harper and Kim Lyons, who had parachuted to the bottom of the hill. The two contestants to reach Bob and Kim first would be deemed team captains and given the distinction of selecting their own team members. Bob would then train his six blue-team members. Kim would train her red-team six. And those of us who were left unchosen on the sand lot would simply be sent home.

  It came as no surprise to me that the smallest of the eighteen—yours truly—was left without a team. In that moment my greatest fear was being realized. What I was most afraid of had nothing to do with adopting a new diet, enduring a grueling workout routine or even facing America in nothing but Spandex and a sports bra as I broadcasted the weight I had been lying about for years. What I was most afraid of was making it all the way to the show and then being sent home before I’d lost a single pound.

  Despite a lifetime of serial rejection, somehow this rejection seemed the worst one of them all.

  After the red and blue teams were driven away by bus, the remaining six of us walked toward the café where we’d be picked up and carted off to the airport. But just as we neared the entrance, a motorcycle could be heard approaching from the distance. I stopped in my tracks, took in the size and shape of the person on the bike and said to my teammates, “Please let that be Jillian.”

  Jillian Michaels, a machine of a personal trainer, might as well have been riding on a white horse, for the sense of rescue we all felt. She pulled off her helmet, let her hair cascade down and with the spunk that only Jillian can manifest, said, “You just wish you were going home, dudes! You’re my new black team!”

  Even though it seemed like Jillian rode up immediately after the bus pulled away with the red and blue team members aboard, in reality, the six of us outcasts sat around for more than an hour before she arrived, lamenting the fact that we were obviously headed home.

  At the sight of my weight-loss savior named Jillian, my hopes for change were resurrected. I bent at the waist, clutched my knees with both hands, and wailed like an inconsolable baby.

  HERMOSA HORRORS

  Since the existence of the black team was supposed to be a secret for the first part of the season, we had to stay in hiding until our grand entrance into The Biggest Loser house. So, for two weeks, our workouts were held in Hermosa, a town a hundred miles from campus.

  The black team really was a secret from the other players and trainers, but after we finally made our appearance, we learned that some of the contestants had suspected a third team. Evidently, the culprit was the kitchen floor. In a house that boasted red and blue comforters in the teams’ bedrooms, red and blue towels in the teams’ bathrooms, and red and blue rugs in the entryway, the kitchen featured red, blue and black tiles. Observant types figured that something was up.

  Jillian Michaels’ objective on day one every season is to separate the wheat from the chaff. All she wants to know is who is serious and who is not. Who will persevere and who will not. Who can handle the fire and who will utterly melt. At one point during our first workout, I heard a teammate whine, “Jillian, I’m gonna throw up!” The response I overheard gave me a little window into my trainer’s soul. “Then puke and keep on moving!”

  Jillian had a special disdain for those who threatened to quit. “You wanna quit? Then quit!” she’d shout right in their face. “It’ll be one less person I have to deal with!”

  For two and a half hours, our newly formed black team exercised. I’m not sure what I expected going into that session, but I know it was not what occurred. I thought that since my teammates and I were so fat, she’d go easy on us. After all, what can a bunch of overweight couch potatoes do the very first time they work out? I envisioned a nice tour of our surroundings, some time to relax and get to know each other, maybe an afternoon snack.

  Clearly, I was mistaken.

  The fierce and feisty trainer I had grown to love from the safety of my living room couch certainly was not the same person screaming at me—with viciousness to spare—to hold my big self in plank position for thirty more seconds. Jillian Michaels was far meaner in person than I imagined her to be, and I had a feeling I was in for a very long afternoon.

  We convened on a large patch of desert sand dressed in team-honoring all-black attire. That would have been fine, had it not been ninety-six steamy degrees outside. To the tune of Jillian’s rants and raves—“Why weren’t you chosen by the other teams? Tell me why you weren’t chosen!” and “Go faster! Now !”—we were told to flip five-foot-diameter tractor tires for a hundred yards, and then to flip them right back. We were forced to wind-sprint forward and back-pedal back, commando-crawl our way through six inches of blazing-hot sand, hoist twenty-five-pound sand bags above our heads while doing jumping jacks and lug those same bags up a massive hill using rappelling ropes. When the end of the torture came, my muscles were yelping and I wanted to die—a fate I was sure would feel better than this.

  Several times that afternoon, I was so overheated that I thought I might faint. While standing on a hill between drills at one point, Jillian walked directly toward me with a water bottle in hand, unscrewed the top, splashed half the water up into my face and turned around to walk off. I remember gasping for breath underneath the ice-cold sensation and realizing only afterward that by reawakening my senses she’d saved my hide.

  As I look back now, it occurs to me that an entire camera crew was on-site every moment of our impossible first workout. And while one might think that vanity and pride would cause a person to perform with a little more poise while cameras are rolling, I was so engulfed by physical pain that I couldn’t have cared less who was there. I liken it to when you deliver a baby; during those critical moments of pushing, do you really care if anyone is watching? The physical rigors of your situation cause you to focus in laserlike fashion on nothing but getting that child born, and in the desert that day, the baby I was birthing was named “Living through Jillian’s Workout without Weeping, Fainting or Sudden Death.”

  THE DAY I GOT KICKED OUT

  In addition to working out in the desert, Jillian made accommodations for our team to exercise in a nearby gym. She knew that if the six of us were to stand a chance of competing against the red and blue teams upon entering The Biggest Loser house, we needed real workouts on real equipment in a real fitness setting that only a gym could provide.

  Every time my teammates and I worked out in the Hermosa gym, we felt like bona fide stars. Amazing how much attention you receive when you’re flanked by Jillian Michaels!

  About a week into our desert-then-gym-then-gym-then-desert routine, I got a taste of Jillian’s wrath, this time aimed directly at me.

  Without exception every black-team member had endured one form of reconstructive surgery or another. Well, except Isabeau, I guess. Jim, Bill, Jez and I had knee surgery, and six months prior to the show Hollie had ankle surgery. No wonder we were the “unchosen” ones: We were all but broken-down!

  Since I’d had two knee surgeries and been sedentary for years, the incessant workouts had taken quite a toll on my knees. Still, I did everything that Jillian told me to do and worked as hard as I possibly could. One afternoon a teammate and I were running on side-by-side treadmills at the gym, when Jillian approached me and said with a scowl, “Get out.”

  I hit the emergency stop button on the treadmill, wiped off my face with my towel and craned my ear toward Jillian. Surely I had misund
erstood her.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Get out!”

  My head was spinning. I hadn’t been slacking off. I was doing exactly what she told me to do. Why was I being kicked out of the gym?

  “Jillian, I’m doing …”

  “Out,” she said. “Now.”

  Being the smallest person on the team, I knew that I needed every minute in the gym that I could get, to avoid being the first one voted out.

  “But why?” I pleaded.

  Jillian looked at me with disdain. “Why are you even here?” she asked.

  “I want to lose weight!” I cried.

  “Get out,” came the reply, as she turned on her heels and strolled away.

  I reached for my water bottle and made my way toward the exit as my entire slack-jawed team looked on.

  I paused momentarily and met Jillian’s gaze. “When can I come back?” I whispered.

  She stormed toward me. “This whole ‘I’m the smallest … I’m the weakest link’ deal of yours is nothing more than a cover. I want to know what you’re really made of, why you’re really here. Until you quit saying, ‘Why me?’ and instead start saying, ‘Why not me,’ I want you gone.”

  A production assistant took me back to the hotel where my team was staying. I staggered up the flights of stairs to my third-floor room, cursing the absence of an elevator with every step. Tossing my water bottle on the floor as I entered the room, I grabbed my Bible from the nightstand and plopped down on the edge of my bed. “What in the world …” I said to no one in particular. Completely demoralized, I sighed as I untied my shoelaces and began to pull off my right shoe. Immediately, a stream of sand poured out onto the floor. I eyed the sand, the dirt and the grime, and all I could think about was how sick I was of the desert, of exercise, of this entire experience.

  I emptied my shoe until the sand quit flowing and then brushed off the sole with my hand. My palm was caked with crusty sand, and as I stared at it through a cloud of tears, God brought to mind a passage of Scripture I’ve always loved. Psalm 139:17–18 says, “How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand.” I couldn’t even count the grains on one inch of my hand, let alone my whole palm. To think about every grain of sand on every beach and in every desert in the world? It made my head spin.

  Years prior I had read that there are roughly seventeen thousand grains in every teaspoon of sand. What came to mind as I sat slumped over on a scratchy comforter on top of a squeaky bed in a dark room of a budget motel was that if God’s thoughts toward me were so gracious and numerous, then he obviously saw me differently than I saw myself. It would be the first of many spiritual lessons I’d learn while on the show.

  “Why am I here?” I said out loud, echoing Jillian’s demands. Since my first audition at the open casting call in Jacksonville, I had considered myself the smallest, most unlikely person to be cast on a show like The Biggest Loser. I had considered myself the weakest link. But why?

  The answer came to me in waves, as if whispered from God himself.

  I had spent so much of my life being held back because my weight was excessive. Now I felt like I was being held back because I was too light. Would I ever be “just right”? I was told by the cast and crew alike that I was funny and fun-loving, that I’d be the last one to cause any trouble for anyone, that I was a “great girl.” But nobody thought I could actually win; I didn’t have enough weight to lose, and on a big-people show, the biggest people take home the prize.

  Somewhere along the way, I had turned over my belief to their doubts. But thanks to some divine insight from a very loving God, that would all change the next day.

  THE LIFE I WAS MADE TO LIVE

  The following morning, although uninvited, I showed up at the gym with the rest of my teammates. Jillian’s reception was more than a little cold. “Hey,” she chirped toward me, her arms crossed against her chest, her head cocked and looking totally self-assured. “Why are you here?”

  With fresh resolve, I squared my shoulders and said, “I’m here because I deserve to be here. And I’m here because I’m determined to live the life that I was made by God to live. I can work hard, Jillian. I can do this.” All at once, I felt “just right.”

  As if in slow motion, Jillian eyed me up and down. I stared right back, hoping she couldn’t see my fast-thumping heart through my jumbo-sized sports bra. As I took in her face, I could have sworn I saw the beginnings of a grin. The edges of her lips twitched upward ever so slightly as a single word made its way out of her mouth: “Excellent.”

  With that, my teammates and I worked out.

  Being forced by Jillian to explore why I really wanted to lose weight was a beautiful gift from God. Not only did it pave the way for a deep and abiding friendship with the hard-core trainer I’d eventually come to love, but also it solidified early on my desire to achieve both a new waistline and a new life.

  Despite all of the blood, sweat and tears—and there had been plenty of each already—I reasoned that if persevering in my The Biggest Loser experience could right the wrongs of thirty-five years of settling for less than the life God had in store for me, then persevere I would. And perhaps even win the whole thing too. After all, someone had to take home the title, right?

  I figured, Why not me?

  MY BEST ADVICE

  Determine the Source of Your Strength

  Most obese people I know have dangerously low self-esteem. That certainly was the case with me. I had bought the lie that said that my value as a human being rose and fell in direct proportion to the number that showed up on the scale. When my weight went down, my value went up. When my weight went up, well … you get the idea.

  Immediately after I was cast on The Biggest Loser, I wondered what I had gotten myself into. Within a couple of weeks’ time, I wasn’t so sure I wanted to work out six hours a day. I wasn’t so sure I wanted to live with a bunch of overweight, cutthroat strangers. I wasn’t so sure I wanted to serve as the poster girl for weight loss. I was a no-name with no special story who suddenly had been thrust into the limelight, and something about that situation felt very intimidating to me.

  “I’m not cut out for this, God!” I’d protest in vain. “Surely you picked the wrong girl!”

  I felt fearful and incapable and doubtful and weak, but God knew he’d made no mistake.

  One of my favorite Bible characters has always been Moses—a guy who was also handpicked for a role that he didn’t quite see himself playing. I’m not sure how things really went down the day that Moses was told of his task, but I like to think a temper-tantrum was involved, complete with a fair amount of pouting and stomping of feet: “I can’t string two sentences together without stut-stut-stuttering myself into oblivion, and you want me to go convince some big-shot leader to set an entire nation free? Come on, God. Get real.”

  Moses thought that God had picked the wrong guy for the job. But God knew he’d made no mistake.

  If I learned one thing during all my childish displays of fear and doubt along the way, it’s that it’s okay to be weak. Because in my weakness, God’s strength is best revealed.

  Clearly, I’m no Moses. But whether you’re asked to win over a tyrannical leader like Pharoah or face Jillian Michaels in the gym, it helps if you know ahead of time the unfailing source of your strength.

  CHAPTER 2

  What Fat Stole from Me

  THIS MORNING UNFOLDED like most weekday mornings do since being back from The Biggest Loser. I pulled on exercise clothes, shoveled apple slices into my mouth and headed to a local park to meet my trainer Margie for a seventy-five-minute workout.

  If Jillian Michaels taught me the value of exercise, Margie Marshall now forces me to live out that value on a near-daily basis. I adore Margie, and I also despise her—a paradox that is fully warranted, given the torture chamber her cheery classes always prove to be. Take this morning’s workout, for example.
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br />   Amazingly, I arrived at the park on time, and ahead of two other women who are under Margie’s tutelage as well. Eventually there were five of us gathered there, eagerly anticipating the tricks our beloved trainer had up her sleeve for the day. We began with five minutes of running around an adjacent set of soccer fields, followed by multiple one-minute rotations of exercises including push-ups, sprints, plyometric jumps, mountain-climbers, jumping rope and planking ourselves atop a basketball. I was huffing and puffing by the end of that section, but absurdly, I was still having fun.

  If a workout is an hour long, I think of it like a TV show. Water breaks become commercial breaks, and I know that after five of them, I’m done.

  Camaraderie during workouts is always a good thing, if only to talk about your trainer behind her back. Misery loves company, especially when that misery involves wind sprints.

  Toward the end of our time together, Margie asked us to run suicides. She’d dotted dozens of tennis balls along the field, twenty or thirty yards apart, and had us compete with each other to see who could race to the first ball and bring it back to the bucket the fastest, and then race to the second ball and bring that one back too—on and on in this way, until every ball had been retrieved.

  It doesn’t take expensive equipment to get a good workout. A water bottle makes a great hand weight. You and a friend can play tug-of-war with a spare T-shirt. Hula hooping, as my son Noah and I discovered, can make for one of the most effective—and most competitive!—workouts around.