Jay & Jennifer: From Biggest Losers to SANEst Winners

“We knew eating less and exercising more worked short-term, but we didn’t know another option was available for the long-term. This is why understanding the science was so helpful for us. Eating more, as long as it’s SANE, is sustainable, enjoyable, and resetting our set-point. We couldn’t be happier with the results.”

Jonathan Bailor

I’m delighted to be collaborating with Jay and Jennifer Jacobs, two past contestants from NBC’s Biggest Loser, to help them eat SANEly and exercise eccentrically.

If you are familiar with Jay and Jennifer, you know they achieved wonderful success dropping a lot of weight quickly during their time on The Biggest Loser. Now interested in practical and lasting health and fat-loss—which is much different than short-term weight loss…and therefore requires a much different approach—Jay and Jennifer are beginning to live SANE, and I hope our experiences together will help you eat smarter, exercise smarter, and live better.

Jay and Jennifer…over to you.

Jay and Jennifer

Thanks Jonathan! Derek Johnson, the founder and creator of New Metabolism and the Executive Nutrition Director for The Biggest Loser Resorts, highly recommended SANE to us a couple of months ago as we were both looking for ways to live the rest of our lives at our personal best. For us our personal best is more than just losing weight, keeping it off and being physically active. It’s about living our best lives mentally and physically so that all of the areas of our lives become “well” too. And we’ve found that the mental journey is more often than not the toughest part of the journey.

That’s one of the reasons we really like what you’re sharing in SANE. Yes the book is based on “science”, but for us it’s also about the way you make it easy for us to start a new way of “thinking” about the why’s and what’s are bodies are doing vs. the usual weight loss/wellness formulas that are presented where you “do this” or “do that” without any real factual rhyme or reason to why we should. And based on the results of where our collective waist lines have been headed, eating and exercising without any real factual rhyme or reason isn’t working too well.

To us SANE for the first time gives all of us non-scientific people the “back story” to what our body understands, while we’re still grasping at straws trying to keep our wits about us as our minds, scales, and waists are on a wild roller coaster ride!

We were blessed with the rare opportunity to have been chosen to be contestants on NBC’s hit show Biggest Loser, and what we thought was going to be a weight loss journey really evolved into a mental and spiritual journey not only on the show, but especially after the show.

Yes it was truly life changing for us (Jennifer lost 114 lbs., and Jay lost 181 lbs.) and not taking anything away from our accomplishments, but when your full time job is eating the highest quality foods ever, exercising/moving 6-8 hours a day, and being trained with some of the world’s best trainers, that’s an amazing gift, but not a “weigh” you can live the rest of your life.

It’s not a secret that when most people lose a lot of weight at a pretty rapid pace it doesn’t take much for the weight to start creeping back on. And sure enough, that’s happening to us as well.

We were told that most likely we’d all put on about 20 lbs. after the show because our bodies would start to settle into their “new normal”, but when Jennifer and I started seeing the scale slide upwards 20, 30 and 40 pounds, we knew we needed to better understand how our new bodies were dealing with all this change, and although we had a pretty good handle on our new mindset, our bodies seemed to have minds of their own.

You already know from our frequent phone conversations, we love SANE’s position of “doing what works for you” and “sustainable results are all that matter,” and are therefore putting our own spin on some of the smarter science. We’ll of course see how that goes and are eager to find a sustainable and enjoyable eating and exercising plan that we can thrive on. We also come to the table thinking we’ve been metabolically-challenged our entire lives, have tried it all, and our questions and feedback are not only going to be coming to you from our experience and mindset, but also from the thousands of people we hear from online and offline as we travel the country who are tired, frustrated and disillusioned as to what to do next. I’m hopeful that our experience of “going SANE” and “getting eccentric” will benefit many lives beyond our own.

So… having test driven SANE over the past 30 + days, and even only following it SANEly 80% of the time, we wanted to tell you how pleased we are with the results. So if you’re game, we’re game to openly and honestly share with all who are interested in what we together can discover “mentally +physically” by applying what you’ve uncovered as we continue to live our “personal best!”

Back to you Jonathan!

Jonathan Bailor

Jay and Jennifer, I couldn’t agree with you more on the importance of the mental piece of the puzzle especially since what we’ve all been taught over the past forty years regarding “weight loss” has been proven to harm our health and lead to fat gain 95.4% of the time. We’ll cover the scientific “why” in the future, but from a common sense perspective, starvation and stress are not healthy. Eating less of our existing diet is simply starving ourselves and leads to terrible mental and physical stress. Exercising for hours per day is the other side of the same stressful-starvation coin. But sadly, all we ever hear is “eat less, exercise more” despite the proven fact that we’re more likely to quit smoking cold turkey than we are to achieve our long-term health and fitness goals with this approach.

We need a smarter approach. We need a less stressful goal. Fortunately, that smarter approach has been uncovered by more than 1,100 international research studies, and here’s a stress-free goal that is surprisingly simple once we have the right information: practical and lasting health and fat-loss.

As you stated so well, Jay and Jen, before any smarter science will stick, we have to shift the way we think about health and fitness. In my experience, the three most common mental challenges here are:

1. Avoiding the trap of trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results
2. Freeing yourself from disproven, but pervasive weight loss and health theories
3. Internalizing the difference between “short-term weight loss” and “long-term fat loss and robust health”

Avoid the Trap of Trying the Same Thing Over and Over and Expecting Different Results

We’ve all experience this, but we’re not to blame. We eat less. We exercise more. It doesn’t work long-term. Then we do it again. Maybe it’s a different DVD workout program or a different diet, but at the end of the day we’re still starving and stressing ourselves.

But what else are we supposed to do when this is all we hear about day in and day out? We’re doing the best we can with the information we’ve been given.

Exactly! The issue is the information. The issue isn’t us. We’re doing our best with bad information…and the results speak for themselves. And sadly, they’re not good.

However, once we get access to the proven science of eating smarter and exercising smarter, long-term health and fat-loss is surprisingly simple. And as a bonus, we’ll never be hungry again.

Freeing Yourself from Disproven But Pervasive Weight Loss and Health Theories

Escaping the trap of trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results is easier said than done because we’re constantly bombarded with marketing messages from those who profit off of our health and fitness struggles.

I find keeping three things in mind very helpful here:

• Remember that the perception that health and fitness is hard is profitable. Think about how much money we spend trying to make it easier to eat less and exercise more.
• Hundreds of billions of dollars of business depend on the continuation of chronic illness and weight gain. If we were all healthy and fit tomorrow, a lot of businesses would lose a lot of money.
• Staying health and fit cannot be complicated. It’s the most basic ability any organism can ever have.

Tying these three points together, the complexity and confusion comes from marketing and myths. The good news is that we can crowd those out by using proven science.

Internalizing the Difference Between “Short-Term Weight Loss” And “Long-Term Fat Loss And Robust Health”

I’ll go out on a limb and say that nobody wants to lose weight this month only to gain more back and get sick for the next six months. It’s critical to keep this in mind because things that DO help us lose weight short term often DO NOT help us stay healthy and slim long term.

I’ll take this one step further. If someone hopes to lose ten pounds in two weeks with no concern for what that does to their health or if it predisposes them to gain twenty pounds of fat back in the next two years, what we’ll cover here is not for them. I would, however, urge them to consider what they really want to accomplish. If they look deeper, they will likely see their goals are actually tied to looking and feeling a certain way and staying that way for the rest of their life.

I like to illustrate this with a little experiment: If you could wave a magic wand and look radiant and feel dramatically better while lowering your risk of diabetes, heart disease, and cancer but would weigh no more or less, would you be happy? On the other hand, if could wave that same magic wand and instantly weigh twenty pounds less but look and feel drained and deprived while increasing your risk of diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, would you consider that a wish well used?

In Sum

I’m so excited for our journey, Jay and Jennifer. Over the coming months we’ll simplify and apply a surprising and scientifically proven body of knowledge that enables you to trigger a fundamental metabolic change that enables you to look and feel better for the rest of your life while lowering your risk of diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

So enough with being told to do the same thing over and over and to expect different results. Enough with theories that have been disproven but live on because the more we struggle the more money big food, pharmaceutical, and fitness corporations make. Enough with focusing on the short-term at the expense of the long-term. And on to practical and lasting fat-loss and health supported by the largest scientific analysis of wellness ever conducted, a program endorsed by the world-wide scientific community including top doctors at The Harvard Medical School, Johns Hopkins, and UCLA, and a lifestyle approved curriculum for RDs by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. On to SANEity!