The Big Fat Truth: The Behind-the-scenes Secret to Weight Loss (2 page)

I would not blame you if you were also a little skeptical about JD being able to tell you a thing or two about weight loss. But I urge you to give him a chance. JD instinctively knows that the body follows the mind (the seat of emotion), which is absolutely the key for weight loss. Unlike the majority of weight loss books, his book is designed to change your mind-set before you change your diet or your waist size. This book is not about the best diet or exercise plan; there are lots of other books out there that can help you with that. This book is about the power of believing in yourself, the power of deciding you are not going to let the excuses you have used for so long stand in your way, the power to finally go and do it.

The Big Fat Truth
will make you uncomfortable, and it should. If you do not cry and sweat a little when you read this book—and feel uneasy and a little excited at the same time—you did not dig deep enough. Being comfortable is keeping you right where you are today: unhappy, unmotivated, and sitting on the sidelines. Being uncomfortable is where the JD magic really starts. JD sees a much bigger and brighter future for you. This book will not only help you see it, too, but it will help you believe you can get there.

So if you are ready to stop playing the blame game, get rid of the victim mentality, and stop looking for a magic bullet for your weight problems . . . if you are ready to be your own hero and do the work as the star of your own TV show, you are absolutely reading the right book.

The power to change your life once and for all is already inside of you. Sprinkle a little JD magic from this book into your personal recipe to find it, believe it, and finally take a BIG step in the direction of your oh-so-POSSIBLE dream.

Believing it is always the first step to seeing it! JD can help you believe.

With much love, light, and gratitude,

Dr. Holly

Holly R. Wyatt, MD

Associate Professor, University of Colorado School of Medicine

Medical Director, University of Colorado Anschutz Health and Wellness Center

Medical Director, Seasons 4 and 5,
Extreme Weight Loss

Co-Author,
The State of Slim

Why? Why haven’t you lost weight yet? Please tell me you have a reason. It can’t just be that you are hungry. No one is
that
hungry.

You’re willing to get to the bottom of a carton of ice cream, but are you willing to get to the bottom of why you are overeating? If you’re ever going to transform your body, you need to be. So get out a piece of paper and a pencil, and write down four answers to the question above.

I don’t even know you, but I can venture to name a few of the things that you might write.

“I’m crazy busy.”

“I’m stressed.”

“I have the fat gene.”

“I don’t like exercise.”

“I can only afford fast food.”

“I’m Latina, Italian, Jewish—eating is part of my culture.”

“I have no willpower.”

“My dad abused me.”

“My whole family died.”

Now take your pencil and next to each answer write “EXCUSE!”

“I’m crazy busy.”
EXCUSE!

“I’m stressed.”
EXCUSE!

“I have the fat gene.”
EXCUSE!

“I don’t have time to exercise.”
EXCUSE!

“I can only afford fast food.”
EXCUSE!

“I’m Latina, Italian, Jewish—eating is part of my culture.”
EXCUSE!

“I have no willpower.”
EXCUSE!

“My dad abused me.”
EXCUSE!

“My whole family died.”
EXCUSE!

The reasons you listed for not losing weight may all be true statements, but none of them—not even those last two, harsh as it sounds—entitle you to destroy your health. Even when something horrible happens, there comes a point when you have to pick up the pieces and pay attention to your well-being. So stop telling yourself that the reasons you came up with are good ones, because they’re not. In fact, I can tell without even seeing them that they suck. They are stopping you from not only wearing a smaller dress or pants size, but from living a quality life.

Imagine, instead, a world where you say to yourself, “I’m tense and angry—I need to go take a boxing class to get rid of the stress” instead of, “I’m tense and angry—I need to eat some cake.” Or one where taking a salsa class or studying the language of your heritage replaces blaming the way you eat as respect for your culture. Whether you know it or not, you have the potential to dramatically change your inner dialogue and, with it, your life. And it’s not just about losing weight. What I’m talking about is becoming a happier, more vibrant, and more empowered person. Someone who does things they never thought possible.

How do you get to that point? Not with any miracle diet and exercise program. You get there by changing the way you think. It is your mind-set that guides what you put in your mouth and your decision to sit on the couch, pizza in hand, when you should be moving your body. Whether you have 10 pounds or a 100 pounds to lose,
the big fat truth is you are carrying that weight in your head.
I don’t mean that you’re imagining it, but that your body is only a reflection of what is in your head. You’re not fat because you love food. It’s your mind-set that’s keeping you shopping in the plus-size section. And unless you get to the root of the problem, you’ll be shopping there until the day you die (which, let’s be honest, if you’re very overweight, has the potential to come sooner than you may like). But fix what’s going on in your brain and your body will follow.

Here’s another critical factor: choosing to believe in yourself. It’s that simple. Believe in yourself, and you’ll look back at that list of excuses and laugh at how ridiculous they were.

Even if you don’t believe in yourself yet, I
already
believe in you. As the man who invented weight-loss TV with shows like
The Biggest Loser, Extreme Weight Loss, Fat Chance,
and
The Revolution,
I have seen so many people—many of them seemingly hopeless cases—transform themselves right before my very eyes that I know you can do it, too. So even though I’m going to say things that may make you flinch, feel hurt, and even piss you off—I do it because these are hard truths you need to hear. But there is a great big payoff. By the time I get done with you, you’ll be able to wear a glazed-doughnut necklace (with sprinkles!) around your neck 24 hours a day, and not feel the slightest bit of temptation. I’m going to wake the sleeping beast within you—a beast that is immune to the tastiest of french fries and the chocolatiest of chocolate cakes. Really.

If you’ve picked up this book, you are probably fat. Maybe you’re really fat, or maybe you’re not all that fat but you know you’ve been abusing yourself by living on junk food and sitting on your butt. The people who try out for my shows have these problems in a big way. They usually need two airplane seats to make the trip to our casting calls, then endure sitting on a tiny, unbelievably uncomfortable chair for hours, all because things in their lives are not going well.

My guess is that things are not going well for you either. Your weight and unhealthy living is robbing you of a good life. Maybe you’ve had years of disappointments, self-doubt, self-loathing, bad relationships, and bad jobs. Even your car may be a disaster. I wouldn’t be surprised, either, if you have an overwhelming feeling that you are unworthy of happiness. Love, pleasure, prosperity: They’re for other people. That is the mantra that swirls around in your head. And you couldn’t be more wrong. You deserve everything that everyone else has. Your life has the potential to be 100 percent better—even if from where you’re sitting right now, dramatic changes seem overwhelming. They’re not. Don’t use that as an excuse to not do what you know you need to do. Instead, take action; take control.

The rewards of a successful weight-loss journey far exceed simply looking better. Looking good is great; we all want to look good. But you have the opportunity to change your life in a much more profound way—just like so many of the participants in our weight-loss shows have. As they shed weight, they get off serious medications, they go places, and they do things that they had never done before or had been avoiding for years. Most significantly, they get their lives back by resolving the issues that made them fat in the first place. As the person who has final say on who will appear on the shows, and the behind-the-scenes guy in charge of inspiring, persuading, and prodding (and okay, sometimes yelling at) contestants to stay committed to change, I have seen people overcome the most horrific obstacles to reshape their bodies and their lives. And if they can do it, so can you.

This book is here to help. It’s not a diet book. Yes, I sprinkle some eating and exercise advice throughout, but I will not be giving you a food plan or any of the other typical advice you find in a diet book. (I will, however, give you the typical disclaimer you’ll get in a diet book, which is that you should always consult with your doctor before trying any sort of weight loss plan, especially if you have any chronic health issues.) I don’t even believe in diets—the kind you go on, then go off later. What I’m offering you instead is something much more critical: strategies for changing your perspective, your attitude, your
whole
approach to weight loss. Discovering the
real
reasons those pounds have piled on can be painful, it can create anxiety, and it can take time to heal. But life without introspection can be even darker.

And life without introspection doesn’t bode well for weight loss. That’s something on which I’ve staked my career. When my partner, Todd, and I pitched our first reality show to the networks, we were told to go away and come back with doctors and other weight-loss experts who would confirm that we could get people to safely lose dramatic amounts of weight on a weekly basis. After all, what did we know? We were just television producers. We called every well-known weight-loss center in the country and talked to every specialist we could find, and
none
of them believed we could do it. Zero. “People can’t lose more than one to two pounds a week,” we were told again and again. At that rate, it would take at least a year to get weight off our show’s contestants, and that wasn’t going to fly on TV. “If your cast loses only one to two pounds a week, you’ll be off the air in a week,” said one of the network execs.

Somehow, we got the go-ahead from NBC to do it our way. The night before the first official weigh-in—the moment when the cast members get on the scale and learn how well they’ve done that week—we secretly weighed the contestants. If it was going to be bad, we wanted to know ahead of time. Only we could see the numbers on the scale (a special system we created so we could build the drama) so the guy’s reaction when he got on the scale for the cameras the next day would be real.

I wish I had our own reaction on tape: The cast member had lost
16 pounds in less than a week
. Not one or two pounds, as every medical expert has told us to expect, but
16
. Todd and I couldn’t believe our eyes. We made him get on and off the scale three more times just to make sure it was right. The two of us were jumping for joy. That week, everyone in the cast lost weight in the double digits. Collectively, they went on to lose 768 pounds over the 16-week season. Suddenly, all those weight-loss experts who had turned us down earlier went from thinking we were crazy and irresponsible to asking us for our data so they could use it in their own research. So what was it? The secret ingredient that helped us annihilate what the experts told us was impossible?

What I believe we—and all the people who’ve appeared on our shows—have proven is that addressing your mental and emotional blocks is the secret to sustained weight loss. Nobody was dealing with people’s heads and hearts; they were dealing with science (calories in, calories out, and all that stuff). But science can only get you so far. We discovered that
love
was the secret ingredient needed to bake the perfect weight-loss cake. We really believe in our cast members, and we truly love them. They can see it in our eyes. Throughout this book, you’ll hear me say how important it is to have supportive people around you. That’s not just psychology 101—we have thousands of TV episodes to prove it.

Poster for the first season of
The Biggest Loser.

*  *  *  *  *

Everyone has different underlying reasons for being overweight, but one thing that everyone shares is responsibility. Yes, you are to blame for the fat body you’re in. I’m not saying there aren’t other guilty parties: the fast-food makers, taunting you with images of double-decker, cheese-soaked, bacon-wrapped burgers at dirt-cheap prices. Places that serve not glasses of soda, but buckets. Supermarkets full of microwaveable meals as quick and easy as they are calorie-laden. Cookies, ice cream, candy, fattening coffee drinks that taste
so-o-o-o-o
good. Food scientists have become experts at mixing up just the right amount of salt and sugar needed to trigger the brain chemicals that send you into ecstasy. They know what they’re doing just as surely as the tobacco companies and corner drug dealers know how to ensure repeat business: Studies have shown that sugar and fat can cause cravings as potent as those caused by cocaine and nicotine.