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  “Girls, it’s still me!” I wanted to remind them. “Even without a six-inch stack of nachos on my plate, I’m still the Julie you know and love!” But it was no use. They weren’t too sure what to make of my weight-loss progress, and I wasn’t too sure what to make of them.

  I learned a valuable lesson during those first weeks back: When you undergo dramatic change, there is a period of time when you exist in a lonely middle ground. For many months I no longer fit in with my fat friends, but I wasn’t part of the “skinny club” yet either. I was a girl without a group, which for a social butterfly is the worst kind of girl to be. Did I want to feel accepted, or did I want true transformation more? On some days that was an impossibly tough question to answer.

  Over time I sought out a support system of people who really did want the best for me, whatever that might mean. I needed a handful of friends who would push me toward my potential, who would pick me up when I floundered and who would cheer for me over even the smallest success. And interestingly, as I surrounded myself with those positive influences, my old friends came around too. They saw that despite my outer transformation, the inner me was still the same. They resolved to stick with me, no matter what my weight. And finally, they stopped with that annoying whan-whan every time I entered a room.

  CHAPTER 3

  Weight That We All Carry

  IT’S A THE BIGGEST LOSER tradition that, every season, participants come up with personal mottos that represent the reason they’re on the show to begin with. Sometimes the phrases are printed on flags that fly from flagpoles soaring high above the campus. Other times they’re emblazoned on (really, really big) T-shirts so that contestants can wear why they’re there, which was the case for my teammates and me, the season we were all on the show.

  Early on in my The Biggest Loser experience, one of the show’s producers approached me and asked about my motto. What was I really trying to accomplish? she wanted to know. What was my real motivation for leaving my husband and son behind in Jacksonville, traipsing to the other end of the country and subjecting myself to six-hour workouts and a diet frighteningly devoid of fried foods every day?

  My first few responses were things like, “To fit into Jillian Michaels’ jeans” and “To bring sexy back.” But then I took a more thoughtful turn. “The real reason I’m here,” I admitted, “is because I never finish what I start. I want to finish what I’ve started, for once.” The producer nodded a knowing grin as she jotted down what I had said.

  My family and friends could attest to the fact that I was never exactly known as a “completer.” I’d quit relationships. I’d quit college. I’d quit the pursuit of a thousand dreams, most notably my dream of being in shape. But this time would be different. This time on this show, I would finish what I’d started, for once. I’d show everyone—those same doubting friends and family members, as well as every guy I’d ever dated during those brief, slimmer days who might be watching the show thinking, Whew! Talk about a narrow escape!—I would show them all, and I would show myself, that I could finish something just once.

  Or that’s what I told Jillian and my team, anyway, the day we were handed our shirts.

  WHAT WE REALLY HUNGER FOR

  My teammates and I were sitting around one day in our black-team bedroom, just hanging out and chatting about how much better our accommodations were on campus than in the desert. Even a sparsely decorated oversized dorm room felt luxurious by comparison.

  Jillian came bounding into the room, a stack of black T-shirts in her arms. She was wearing one of those pairs of jeans I so desperately wanted to squeeze into someday, and a white tank top that boasted bulging muscles popping out from both armholes. The girls on our team—as well as the guys—secretly coveted Jillian’s physique. Whether any of us would actually ever attain it was another matter entirely.

  Shirts were tossed to each of my teammates, and then a shirt soared through the air toward me. We all unfolded them with the pride of a rookie NBA player who has just received his first jersey. “What do they say?” Jillian pressed us with a smile.

  My teammates and I loved how buff Jillian was, until those moments when she threw her ripped self on our backs while we were forced to run up a hill. She may be slim, but you try hauling a hundred and twenty extra pounds around during your next workout!

  Some of the mottos were funny, and some were poignant. But all of them eventually would serve as helpful insights into the hearts and minds of my team. In that moment, we were acknowledging not only why we were there, but why the rest of our team was there too. It was a level of understanding that made us want to fight from that day forward, not only for ourselves, but also for each other. These people weren’t just competitors; they were now family—real people with real lives and real reasons they just couldn’t quit.

  My teammate Jez was first up. “To kick fear’s butt,” he said, as he read his shirt aloud. “I’m tired of being afraid of everything.” Being overweight had always been Jez’s excuse for why he couldn’t accomplish the goals he had set for his life, and he feared what would happen once he was thin. Would his dreams all magically come true? Or would he realize that being fat wasn’t his problem after all … and then what would be left to blame?

  Hollie went next. “To practice what I preach,” her shirt read. She was a schoolteacher and cheerleading coach who was very demanding about her kids’ dietary habits and their dedication to exercise. She desperately wanted to show her students that she was committed to living by the standards she had set for them.

  “To be a rock star,” Isabeau piped up with a wry smile. Blonde, beautiful Isabeau, who was a singer/songwriter with towering musical dreams.

  “To be half the man so that I can be twice the man,” Bill said with pride. He told of the time he went to ride a roller coaster with his daughter but couldn’t wedge himself into the seat. His daughter, who constantly worried about her dad’s weight, tried to console him, but her words only made him feel worse. “Kids shouldn’t have to wonder if their dad’s going to be around,” he said. “I want to lose half of my weight so that I can be twice as active in my kids’ lives,” he said.

  Bill’s twin brother Jim then spoke up: “For me, for them, forever,” he read with a satisfied nod that silently honored his wife and his kids, “that’s why I am here.”

  And then it was my turn. “To finish what I’ve started, for once,” I said as I propped myself up on my elbows and held up my shirt.

  Jillian caught my eye. “What does that mean to you, Jules?” she asked. “Tell me about your shirt.”

  “I never finish what I start,” I said. “I mean, I’ve started to lose weight a hundred times. I’m here to finish it … once and for all.”

  There was real meaning behind what I said, and as I glanced down at my hands after I’d said my piece, I halfway expected to see them coated in grains of sand. Of course they were perfectly clean. But the residue of the afternoon spent in the desert hotel the previous week, just God and me and the realization that I was worth the dreams I felt compelled to chase, still coated my mind and my heart. He knew I had it in me to finish what I’d started. And now I was starting to believe him.

  For once.

  I’ve spent the vast majority of my life being fat, and I’ve had plenty of fat friends along the way. What was surfacing for my The Biggest Loser teammates as we learned about each other’s goals only served to validate what I’ve long believed: for nearly every obese person I know, physical weight is just a cover for the emotional weight he or she bears.

  I saw a psychiatrist on TV one time who was counseling overweight teens and their exasperated parents. “What are you really hungry for?” he asked each of the kids. “I mean, aside from the food, what is it you crave?”

  The kids’ responses caused tears to spring to my eyes. How easily I could relate. How easily any obese person could relate.

  “I just want time with you!” one teenager cried out to her mom, a single woman working two jobs t
o support her family.

  “Acceptance,” another said as he looked sheepishly at his overbearing father.

  “Approval from the other kids at school,” a young boy said. “I’m tired of them teasing me because I’m fat.”

  I too had been hungry for those things—for approval and acceptance and a sense that I mattered—and I, too, had tried to eat my way full. But food would never be able to satisfy the sort of deep-down hunger I felt.

  WEIGHT OF ANOTHER KIND

  Since my days on The Biggest Loser, I have done a fair amount of public speaking. I stand before women’s groups and MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) meetings and community gatherings, and without exception when I get to this part of my story—the realization that my physical weight wasn’t just about diet and exercise but was reflective of deeper turbulent waters rushing far below the surface—I see streams of tears chase their way down scores of cheeks.

  Audience members frequently approach me after a talk to tell me that my before-and-after photos hang on their refrigerator as a daily reminder of their need to finish what they’ve started, for once. What a surreal thing, to think that such a simple statement could have such a wide-reaching effect.

  “I went to the show thinking the only weight I carried was the kind that can be measured in pounds,” I explain. “All those years of being overweight, I never knew there were other burdens I was carrying; I had become a master at diverting the frustration I felt toward everyone else instead. My family told me that my weight was my problem, but I thought that they were the problem—their criticism, their negative attitudes, their disappointment with who I was. I would push all the blame onto them and go on my merry way, filling the role of the happy fat girl—Jokester Julie—never once having to admit what lurked beneath.

  We all carry weight that God does not intend for us to carry. Call it the human experience or call it sheer insanity, but somehow we walk through this life tethered to things that serve no purpose but to weigh us down. For some people it’s anger—a boiling rage they feel in their soul. For others, it’s the quicksand of a lifetime of racked-up regrets. For still others, it’s the dreadful quandary of feeling insignificant in their own skin.

  It could be a financial weight, the weight of fear over infertility, the weight of deception—living two or three lives or more. Like me, it could be as straightforward as a terrible lack of self-esteem.

  It could be a weight we’ve chosen to pick up, or a weight someone else has placed on us—abuse. Neglect. A lifetime of being misunderstood.

  But whatever the weight we carry, it’s proof that there’s always far more to the story than what shows up on the bathroom scale.

  When you think about it, it really is lunacy that we voluntarily lug around so much extra weight. Wouldn’t it be easier to walk and run and sleep and live without all that? Speaking from personal experience, it’s a heck of a lot easier to pretend to be perfect—whether weighted down or not—than it is to admit when something is wrong. Or at least that’s how it seems. The truth of the matter is that eventually we crumble under the weight of the façade we try so hard to hold up. It’s scary to confess, for instance, that we struggle with insecurity—that despite our confident cover, we’re not who everyone thinks that we are. Or who everyone needs us to be. The reality of admitting who we really are? That can feel heavier than the physical weight we bear.

  Men and women often come up to me after a talk I’ve given and with brushed-away tears speak of their struggles with weight. They talk about how they are consumed by the extra forty pounds they are carrying, and how they are at their wit’s end regarding how to lose them. I look into their downcast eyes and see so clearly the real battle they fight. I see the fear. I see the insecurity. In some cases, I see the remnants of verbal abuse. “Your physical weight is the least of your worries,” I want to say. “Don’t you see the bigger picture here? Truly, now, what are you hungry for?”

  I saw a sign at the airport the other day that simply asked, “What have you got to lose?” What a meaningful question—and in the context of carrying weight we were never intended to carry, one both you and I must frequently ask.

  They don’t know it, but they have on a goal-shirt I can read. It’s written all over their faces, all over their hearts, all over their words. “Look down and read your real goal, ” I yearn to cry out. “Be willing to face the hard truth.”

  There are people who would find such joy on the other side of a major change, but something deep inside says, “Losing the physical weight is only going to force me to take a closer look at the real reason for my burdensome state.” And man, can that message mess with a person. They buy into the lie—as I did—that they’re not worth the effort, they cast aside the lightness of life and they pad their way back toward the fridge. They want genuine change. They just don’t want it badly enough.

  It’s incredibly frustrating to see people with all the potential in the world dig in their heels and refuse to change. Your heart wishes you could lift every extraneous burden off of them, that you could just hand them the wings they will need to soar. But the truth is, we have to face our weights for ourselves. The move is ours alone to make. Which, by the way, is why my Weight Watchers experience at age eight didn’t work. My well-meaning mother had a vision for me that I hadn’t quite bought into myself. And despite her noble intentions, it was my move, alone, to make.

  My team’s goal-shirts carried so much meaning because the words were more than mere slogans; they were tangible proof that the six of us were no longer comfortable in our pain. Each of us finally knew what we were hungry for, and we were determined to persevere until we were really and truly full.

  DECIDING TO SEE WHAT’S UNSEEN

  Jillian Michaels has a philosophy that when you begin to change your body, the rest of you changes too. As physical strength powers up, emotional weights power down. It’s a theory I agreed to pretty early on, because when you wake up one day and realize that you can work out for ninety minutes straight without vomiting, it really is true: Suddenly, you’re wildly intolerant of the fear, the regret and the insecurities you carried your whole life.

  The challenge, then, is hanging on until you see that new you emerge.

  When my teammates and I started to push ourselves physically, our various weights—fears, insecurities, assumptions—tried to push back against our progress. It was tempting to use that as an excuse, to whine that it was utterly inhumane to make fat people do skinny-people things and that if we were made to run up a steep hill, for instance, there should at least be a stack of Oreos at the top.

  But we knew that for the sake of our goals, we had no choice but to hang on—just a little while longer, a little more sweat, a few more reps … hang on.

  To date, the largest man to compete on The Biggest Loser is participating in the season that’s airing as I write this book. He weighed in at 454 pounds his first week on the show and was given Jillian as his trainer, poor guy. Last week the camera caught him on a treadmill, walking when he was supposed to be running. In typical Jillian-fashion, she hopped up onto the base of the treadmill, looked this young man in the eye and said, “Run!”

  He kept walking.

  “I said run!” Jillian bellowed.

  “My legs hurt,” he whimpered. “I can’t run!”

  Jillian stared at him for several seconds as the viewing audience held its collective breath. Then, with a surprising amount of tenderness, she asked, “What is really wrong with you?”

  He choked up as he kept walking, his gaze firmly fixed on his feet. “All I can focus on is that I’m hurting,” he said. “I can’t focus on where I’m headed with this whole thing because I can’t even imagine myself not-fat.

  “I’ve never been not-fat,” he continued. “I’ve never pushed through pain. I’ve never been where I’m going, and I can’t for a second imagine myself there.”

  One of my favorite worship choruses says, “I want to know you; I want to see your face. I want to know
you more.” It’s a song sung to God, but the lyrics took on fresh meaning for me during my days on The Biggest Loser campus. I did want to know God more through my experience on campus, but I also wanted to know more of the woman he had created me to be. Like the contestant on the treadmill said, though, I had never known that person. I had never met her. I had never seen her face. And it’s hard to pursue a vision you just don’t see.

  I wanted to know what the burden-free Julie looked like, who she would be. I knew she existed, and that she had been ordained by God, but where was she hiding? And how was she going to be found?

  During the finale show that caps off every season of The Biggest Loser, contestants get to rip their way through large sheets of paper that feature life-size images of each person’s “before” body. On more than one occasion during those early days when I craved a vision of the me I would become, I’d daydream about that finale-moment. I’d be falling apart during an especially rigorous workout, and instead of talking to me about the agony I was experiencing, Jillian would come up to me and say, “So, Jules, are you going to wear red lipstick to the finale? I think red would be good.” Or, “About that finale: are you thinking slacks or a dress?” Or, “Will your hair be up or down? Are you doing heels, or what? You’re short, you know.”

  Jillian already knew what I was slowly sorting out: If I could just catch a glimpse of who I’d be on the back side of all my hard work, the work wouldn’t seem so hard after all.

  I wound up wearing black pants, a black strapless top and a rhinestone-studded belt to the Season 4 finale. With four-inch heels, by the way.

  DARING TO LAY DOWN THE WEIGHT

  If part of the life experience is acknowledging the weight we were never intended to carry, then the other part is learning that it’s possible to lay it down.