The Big Fat Truth: The Behind-the-scenes Secret to Weight Loss (25 page)

If you think you can never love working out, let me tell you more of Amber’s story. Amber, whom you’ll remember was on
Extreme Weight Loss
with her fiancé, absolutely hated exercise. Asked to describe herself, she’d say she was an indoor girl. “I love to read. I love movies. I love snuggling with my dog on the couch. I have never been one to say, ‘Let’s go for a hike,’ ” she told me. Part of this might have been rebellion. Amber grew up in a family that was health conscious and active. Her stepfather was especially diligent. “He’s Mr. Fitness, in his sixties and still does short board surfing daily,” she says, “My mom and I laugh at him because he eats chicken and broccoli for lunch every single day.”

Amber was definitely the slacker in the family so, for her, the first weeks of Boot Camp were pretty torturous. The expectation that she work out for hours every day made her grouchy and argumentative. She’d pick fights with her fiancé, Bryce, who took to the exercise part much more easily. It wasn’t as though Amber had never exercised before, at least in theory. In high school, she’d joined the swim team because it didn’t involve running, which she hated even more than swimming. Plus, with swimming, she figured she could train inconspicuously in the slow lane and that nobody would pay her much mind; they’d see she had no potential—if they saw her at all. Because more often than not, after Amber’s mom drove her to the 5:00 a.m. practice, Amber would slip into the locker room and stay there. “I was the queen of ditching practice,” she says.

On
Extreme Weight Loss
, Amber couldn’t ditch her workouts without some serious flack. So she did them, unhappily at first. One way she got through them was to remind herself that every workout has an end. It became her mantra. Ten more minutes left to go on the treadmill?
Every workout has an end.
Five more sit-ups?
Every workout has an end.
“Then when it was done, I would think, ‘That wasn’t so bad,’ ” she says. “It was like I had amnesia.”

Then something weird happened (weird to Amber’s mind, not to mine because I’ve seen it a thousand times). Typically, when anything sent Amber into an emotional tailspin, she’d drown herself in food. When she was 13, her 40-year-old father became engaged to a woman who was 21, closer in age to Amber than to her father. It upset her, but she didn’t feel comfortable voicing her opinion. Along with internalizing her feelings, she “internalized” about 30 chocolate bars she was supposed to be selling to raise money for school. Amber hid in the closet, devoured the chocolate, then stuffed the wrappers in her dresser. When her mother found them while putting away the laundry, she sobbed. As someone who once only found solace in food, Amber was stunned to discover that, upset one day during Boot Camp, she wanted to run, not eat. She ran and ran until that bubbling feeling of distress subsided. She looked at her watch. She’d run for an
hour
. Suddenly, Amber understood what all those runners were talking about. She understood runner’s high. “It kind of caught me off-guard. Ever since then, it’s been my go-to for anxiety,” says Amber.

This can happen to you. It might not be running for an hour without stopping, it might not be running at all, but you will find the turning point. One reason I believe that Amber did is because she kept at exercise long enough to reap its rewards. Exercise never feels good in the beginning, even for me, and I run several times a week. But if you give up after 15 minutes and say, “This isn’t for me,” you’re never going to experience all that exercise can do for you. You’ll never get that endorphin rush. You’ll never see your body start to change. You’ll never show yourself that you can master a challenge. But tough it out like Amber did, and you will be as pleasantly surprised as she was. “I always thought you were born liking exercise,” says Amber, “that you had a special thing inside you. When I’d hear people on other
Extreme Weight Loss
episodes say, ‘I love working out,’ I’d think, okay, you’re clearly crazy. But I think it’s just letting it sneak up on you.”

You (Yes, You), Too, Can Learn to Love Exercise

Hey everyone,

I just faced my fear in spin class! I woke up at 4:30 a.m. and said today is the day . . . I took my first-ever spin class. It started at 5:15 a.m., and I burned 807 calories! OMG . . . I loved it. It was fun and challenging all at the same time. I am actually in shape. I did it; I did it! I am so proud of me today!

—Angela, posted on
The Revolution
Facebook page

The other thing that Amber did to her everlasting benefit was to try a lot of different types of exercise. There are so many forms of physical activity.
Something
is going to click if you just give it a chance. For Amber, it was hit and miss, and that’s to be expected. She played ultimate football (fun, but she wasn’t going to make it a regular thing), Zumba (she learned she had no rhythm), cycling (not a fan—her knees and bottom hurt), spinning (it took a while, but she found the right way to sit in the saddle and now she’s fully into it), running (in her repertoire now, too), and CrossFit. CrossFit, if you haven’t heard of it yet, is a combination of interval training, resistance training, kettle bell lifting, plyometrics, gymnastics, and a few other strongman-type activities. All our cast members on
Extreme Weight Loss
do it three to four times a week, and it is
hard.
Yet you think you can never be a CrossFit enthusiast and one day, like Amber, you’re dead-lifting 280 pounds and you’re hooked. (Just for the record, I am not personally a fan of CrossFit. I love the sense of community and how passionate its devotees are, but I hate the fact that people are encouraged to dead-lift heavy weights when they’re in a state of severe fatigue. We make sure our cast members use caution when they’re doing CrossFit workouts, and I advise you, if you try them, to do the same.)

The transformation of attitude toward exercise we see is astounding. Cast members even get to the point where they see doing the “wall wash” as a point of pride. This is a phenomenon, so named by the Season 1 contestants of
The Biggest Loser,
where your arms are so sore from exercise the day before that you can’t even lift them up to scrub your hair so you squirt the shampoo against the wall and rub your head on it. This is no joke. Washing your hair becomes hard work.

Once upon a time, you were a little kid who loved to run around. With very few exceptions, we all did. Go back and find that feeling again. Also, think about all of the things you have survived in your life. It doesn’t have to be a big trauma, but everybody has stuff. Maybe you went through a tough breakup or divorce. Someone you loved died. You failed a class in school. A friend betrayed you. You got fired. And you survived. In all of those instances, you figured out a way to not end up in a dark room forever suffering from that pain. You moved on. Mentally, you are already strong. Use that strength to power you through your workouts.

Exercising when you are fat is doubly hard. I’m aware of that. The more weight you have, the harder it is to move. To give you a sense of it, grab two 20-pound dumbbells, and go for a 10-minute run on the treadmill. Then, put them down and do it again. See what a difference just carrying an extra 40 pounds makes? It’s nearly impossible to run 10 minutes! (One the other hand, failing at this little exercise gives you a sense of how much easier moving around will be if you
lose
40 pounds.)

That is not all you’re up against if you’re carrying a lot of extra weight. There is also the awful feeling of having to walk into a gym and feel like the fat person. Panda felt so embarrassed that he joined a 24-hour gym so he could go in the wee hours when nobody was there. It was the only time he felt comfortable working out. Not ideal, but the point is that he found a way to do it. Going to the gym late at night helped him lose about 50 pounds before he even came on the show. Maybe for you it’s exercising in a welcoming environment. Many women gravitate to Zumba and other types of dance classes for just that reason.

For the most part, weight loss is simple math. Newer research suggests that a calorie is not always a calorie—in other words, some calories are more fattening than others. But for our purposes let’s stick to a formula that may be imperfect but gives you a ballpark figure to work with: calories eaten minus calories burned equals pounds lost. Every 3,500 calories of deficit is equal to about 1 pound of weight loss. So if you eat 2,000 calories and burn 3,000 a day for seven days you will lose about 2 pounds per week. Don’t freak out—you don’t have to burn 3,000 calories on the treadmill every day. Your body burns calories all day long even if you do nothing but lie in bed, so the 3,000 I’m asking you to burn includes that freebie.

You’re probably wondering how many freebie calories a day you get. It’s different for different people and at different times. Some people have a higher metabolism than others, plus the percentage of body fat you carry as well as both your internal and the external (read: weather) temperature can figure into the equation. To get a close estimate, search the Internet for a Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) or Mifflin-St Jeor formula. Either one will help you calculate your resting calorie burn off.

The 3,000 calories a day I mentioned, even if they include that gift of calories at rest, may still be too much for you to fit into your life, but come on! At least try for 500 beyond your at-rest number. You’re in the losing phase, so you’re going to need to do extra. And the 500 I am asking for will help bump up your body’s metabolism, giving you the “extra burn” you always hear about. When you hit the stage where you’re maintaining rather than losing weight, you can ramp it down a bit. At all stages, set a goal that feels reachable . . . then go a little beyond. For instance, set your watch to run 30 minutes, but then stretch it to 35. Make your body listen to your brain! Get that burn in, and soon you’ll crave it.

Speaking of maintenance, it is very, very hard to maintain weight loss without exercise. James O. Hill, PhD, who is the founding executive director of the Anschutz Health and Wellness Center at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus where we hold the
Extreme Weight Loss
Boot Camps, also happens to be the co-founder of the National Weight Control Registry. The Registry, which has been joined by more than 6,000 people who have lost weight and kept it off, has allowed researchers to study what all those successful people have in common. One thing the registry has shown is that people who maintain their weight after shedding pounds share a devotion to exercise. The overwhelming majority of the participants in the study (89 percent) combined diet and exercise to lose weight, and Dr. Hill calls exercise one of the best predictors of who’s going to keep the weight off. More than half of those maintainers do about 3 hours of exercise per week (I, of course, say do more!) You’d be crazy not to add exercise into the mix. It not only helps you lose weight, but it makes you feel good. I have never regretted doing a workout. Yes, your muscles may ache when you’re just starting out, but I think most people would agree that it’s a good kind of ache. It’s a badge of honor.

So when I wake up in the dark, and don’t really want to get out of bed, I tell myself that after it is over, I know I will feel good for doing it, and if I don’t do it, I will feel guilty all day! That gets me moving. But if you need more motivation, try to create a streak. Can you avoid hitting the snooze button for 20 straight days? Be proud of each day you keep the streak alive. Brag about it to let people know that you aren’t kidding.

You might remember that, before she slimmed down, got that convertible, and turned into an exercise adventurer, Elaine was a typical yo-yoer. She’d get fat, she’d get skinny. Repeat. At one point, she’d lost about 40 pounds and thought to herself,
I know how to diet, but exercise is missing.
It wasn’t as though she’d never tried. She had; it just never took. But Elaine knew she had to do it, even if she didn’t really want to. So she called a friend who was in good shape and asked her to recommend a trainer. She made an appointment.

Most people would go to their first meeting with a fitness trainer and put on a good face. They’ll usually say stuff like, “Let’s do it!” “I’m excited to get started!” Not Elaine. “In my heart, I knew I had to tell him the truth,” she says, “so I said, ‘I will show up on day one with the best intentions, then a few days later, I’ll text or email some BS excuse of why I can’t come to the next session. Slowly, ever so slowly, I will disappear on you. I don’t believe this will work, but I’m here.’ ”

This sounds like a classic case of the person who says “I can’t” and is right. But Elaine had the good fortune to be talking to someone who got her and welcomed her honesty. He helped her modify exercises to accommodate the orthopedic challenges she had because her weight put so much pressure on her joints, and contrary to what Elaine expected, he didn’t think she was a loser because she could only do 3 minutes on the elliptical trainer. He made a safe place for her, loved her, and believed in her. And as a result, she thrived. She climbed that hill in Jerusalem, she bought new clothes, she stayed the course.

That trainer’s name is Steve Mareska, and he is one of the most motivating fitness professionals I have ever known. He creates the temple, church, place of worship—a safe place—instead of trying to motivate through fear. Steve not only opens his doors to his clients but also he opens his heart (I know because I work out with him, too.) To impress him is to impress your rabbi or priest. Go find yourself a Steve, and you will never
not
want to be in shape again. I always leave his place of “worship” filled up emotionally and worn down physically. I love going there, and it might sound silly, but that hour I spend with him sets me up for success the entire day.

Elaine with her trainer, Steve