Biggest Loser Couples

This season started like all the others: with the weigh-in. The difference is that they had to do so in front of all their friends and family (and others I'm sure) in their own home town. How humiliating! It's hard enough being fat, but to have to show everything, rolls and all, in person, bare to the world and the people you know and love as well as others who may ridicule you -- that's hard. It's not enough that you think badly of yourself for having achieved such a rotund state, but now you have to give account for it before everyone else -- in person! These people must be desperate!

Ok, I'm purposely being much more harsh in my wording than I normally would. I'm not that insensitive, because I've been there. I started at 396 lbs. I know what it feels like. I recognize the emotions that the contestants talked about at the beginning of the show. Just like them, I did something about it, and you can too!

I receive emails quite often from people who visit my site here asking how they can get onto the show. They say that are desperate and the show is their last hope. You might even be one of the people who sent one to me. Here's my reply. If there are only 22 slots on the show and only 2 seasons each year, that means usually only 44 people max make it on the show per year. What happens to all the other hundreds of thousands of people who applied?

If you are desperate enough to be on the show and bare all to the world, then you are desperate enough to make a change in your life right where you are. Think about it. The contestants are about to undergo the most painful ordeal they have ever experienced. They most likely are going to eat less and exercise more than they have done in their entire life. They are going to go to bed every night sore from workouts and face the same thing the next morning when they wake up. They are going to experience emotional pain as they have to deal with issues that helped them get to where they are now. They will deal with thinking patterns and habits that have destroyed their health and strive to change them.

Sound familiar? The contestants are going to do the same things that you and I do here at home. There is a big tradeoff though. The players are in a controlled environment that has all the right surroundings to encourage them to lose weight. You might think this is awesome, and it is reason that they are losing weight. Yes, it has a lot to do with their extreme success. HOWEVER, they have to come home and making that kind of transition is hard, very hard. It is so hard, in fact, that many of them will put the weight back on.

What makes it so difficult? On the Ranch, they have nothing to distract them from their only goal -- losing weight. When they get back to real life, they have to deal with jobs, family, spouses (some of them), friends who still eat and drink to excess all the foods that lead to poor health. They will have to figure out how to make exercise and eating correctly fit with their daily responsibilities. When the pressure goes up because of life's circumstances, they will have to learn to cope with stresses in other ways than food.

There are even harder aspects to coming home. The body is regulated by chemical processes that fluctuate every minute of every day. The body has to adjust to the new weight, and it takes time -- not just weeks, we're talking months, a year, or maybe more. In addition, the emotional and thinking patterns that were easily pushed down while on the Ranch will be rearing back up. These contestants are not only going to war against all the outward pressures, but they are going to have to successfully conquer their own habits and ways of thinking.

On the Ranch, they had pressure from the outside to squelch bad habits and ways of thinking. Once at home, there is no outward pressure and if good habits and ways of thinking are going to become a way of life, the players must put that pressure on themselves until it happens. (It's called self-discipline.)

YOU HAVE A HUGE ADVANTAGE OVER EVERY BIGGEST LOSER CONTESTANT!

- You can lose weight without being at the Ranch
- You can develop correct eating habits one step at a time
- You can make exercise a part of your lifestyle
- You can change thinking patterns one step at a time
- You can do all these things slowly over a longer period of time so that small changes easily become habits, then ways of thinking, then an unconscious part of your lifestyle
- Because you can do all this slowly, your body has time to adjust which will minimize the physiological impact of severe changes. It will also help you avoid the injuries that the player will sustain from such heavy amounts of exercise.

You can do all these things, but here is your advantage: you can do it all in the context of real life so that when you have reached your goal weight, your ways of thinking, ways of eating, ways of exercise have already become your lifestyle. There's no period of adjustment at the end. You simply go on with your life with all the same benefits as the contestants and without the hard adjustment period.

SO WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH BEING DESPERATE?

You CAN get healthy and lose weight at home. If you are desperate enough to be on the show and show it all to the world -- all the rolls of skin, the triple or quadruple chin, the large hanging belly, the saggy breasts -- then don't you think that you are desperate enough to get up right where you are at and make a change in your life right now? You can do this thing!

A friend of mine tried a dozen ways to get started with exercise. He finally bought himself one dumbbell because that was all he could afford. He set it on his living room floor. Every time he saw it laying there, he would do 15 bicep curls on each arm. He did that for awhile and then added 10 static lunges on each leg. He will continue to add in new exercises. Shelli, another friend of mine, started by just changing what she drank. Two months later, she had lost 20 lbs. and made another change. At the current time, she has lost over 110 lbs. Sure, it didn't happen in 4 months, but her weight has successfully stayed off and health is part of her lifestyle. Before, she didn't do exercise. Now she jogs, bikes, hikes, teaches aerobics and more just because she loves to do it.

You can do the same thing right now, right where you are at. Are you desperate enough to start? You'll face some tough times and it's not an easy process, but when you get through you will be so much farther ahead than the Biggest Loser contestants at the end of a season.

Let the Biggest Loser inspire you and teach you, but don't wait for the show to save you. Get up and get moving. Start now making the healthy life that you want happen.

You can do it!