I watched the Biggest Loser last night with Angie.  She loves the show, I like the show a lot.  I snark at the overtly obvious product placement portions and generally watch the”game” with a bit of a cynical eye.  The producers have to have a mix of “gamers” and people that are genuinely looking for life change to make the show interesting to watch, and the cynical part of me has some knee-jerk hate response when a gamer gets the better of one of the life changers.

Watching last night’s preamble and cast selection show was revealing because I realized that they have some pretty consistent principles for the contestants to get them on the road to a healthier lifestyle right out of the gate, principles that I unconsciously applied when I started down my path in April.

1. Own your weight.  Every contestant has to do the first weigh-in. At the beginning I needed to own a number.  We have a futzy scale at home that I never used, and so one of the first steps in my journey was to find a scale and use it consistently to measure progress.  I went to the gym, and found a good consistent scale (actually two at two different gyms).  The identification of a starting point and owning up to the weight you are was an important first step on my way.
2. Understand your why. All people that are trying to change the way they live have to understand WHY they are making a change.  For the contestants they all have intriguing stories to tell, that’s why they are on TV, that’s why they get selected to be on TV.  But each of us have a story too. You can share it publicly, you can start a blog, or you can, like me journal it, share it with my support group at Celebrate Recovery.  I know that if I didn’t understand my why, week x would be hard to find the reason why I don’t drink Coke Classic any more.
3. Have a support team. Last night, each person that was featured were surrounded by supporters.  Some might be #teamBiggestLoser volunteers to help with that first challenge, 500 steps, or 1 mile run, but they also had family and friends that supported the life change decision.  The rest of the season their support group becomes each other, fellow competitors, and is one of the things that ‘irks’ me about the competition is that the support team are also adversaries.  My support team is my family, as well as the larger group of people I social network with.  Twitter and Facebook friends, as well as my church family, and my Celebrate Recovery friends.  Also growing niche networks on dailymile.com and runkeeper.com help keeps my exercise regular.  I know I can’t do this alone, and a large support group keeps me going, when alone I would be drifting.

So take these three principles and start your own journey.