The Biggest Winner is a Loser

I’ve often heard people gripe and complain about their weight. They might say, “I’ve got to lose 40 pounds!” Are you kidding me? I had to lose 240 pounds! Now I know that 40 pounds—or even 10 pounds—is not easy to lose. I’m just trying to paint a picture for you of the task that was in front of me. It’s like the difference between being $10,000 in credit card debt and $100,000 in credit card debt! While $10,000 is a huge task, $100,000 seems impossible. In fact, 240 pounds did seem impossible.

Day after day, my thoughts had resigned me to the fact that I would die early; it was just a matter of time.

Would I see my children graduate high school? How would my wife, Darci, take care of everyone after I died? As I popped my pile of pills that helped me with my high-blood pressure and edema, I would make sure my life insurance was paid up so that when—not if—I died they would at least be able to pay off the debt I had accrued! My life seemed hopeless.

So I was relieved when I had been chosen to be a competitor on season eight of the NBC weight-loss reality show, The Biggest Loser.*

The show, which aired seventeen seasons from 2004-2016, gave me enough motivation to try to tackle what I knew was slowly destroying me: my weight.One night at The Biggest Loser ranch, we received a call sheet. A call sheet tells us a little of what to expect the next day. It usually told us what to pack, how many meals to prepare, and gave us small hints of what was happening. This certain call sheet said to dress in sweats and a hoodie that we could move well in and bring an extra pair of shoes. This usually meant there was a challenge. They said we’d be leaving just before dark and to be prepared for cool weather. What in the world were we going to be doing?! We would all look around at each other and make guesses about what was about to happen. The guesses were never even close!

We ended up at the beach just at sunset. It was beautiful! But it was getting cold, and the ocean breeze was blowing. I remember wondering what we were going to do. Challenges and I just didn’t mix. I hadn’t done well in any of them! I was one of the biggest and perhaps the slowest person at the ranch. We lined up and began walking down the sandy beach. You have to imagine being close to 400 pounds and walking on the soft sand of Malibu Beach. You sink far down in the sand and walking is a task in itself.

When we finally walked around a corner, there stood the show's celebrity host Alison Sweeney. Now, one of three things was going to happen when we saw Ali: a weigh-in, a temptation, or a challenge. There were piles of sand with shovel handles sticking out of them. These were four-foot tall piles of sand! We were told our task was to get the shovel out of the sand and begin digging. There was a treasure chest buried beneath the sand and in it would be a key. Now, there isn’t anything too complicated about that task, but that night was one of the most important nights of my life. It was the night I learned my first important lesson to achieving anything you want, and it was the night that my journey on The Biggest Loser changed forever.

You see, when you dig a hole in the sand—especially the soft sand of Malibu Beach—it doesn’t just sit there in a pretty pile. The hole  didn’t  act like that old red clay I used to dig in Oklahoma. When you get deep enough to see some progress, the sand from the side collapses and caves in on the work you’ve just done. So you dig some more, and it caves in again. You dig even some more, and it caves in again. I mean, after 15 minutes of digging as if my life depended on it, it looked like I had made no progress. This was going to take forever! And even then, I might not make it to the treasure chest. While digging that night, I felt like quitting.

I felt like giving up and resigning to the fact that the task was just too big. It felt like a mountain of weight I had carried around for years. Would I ever be free of the burden?

But that night something else happened. You see, there was something huge at stake. What Alison said made us realize the stakes. She said when we retrieved the key from the chest, it would open one of four locks. When all of the locks were opened, there was something inside that box. And she said only one thing about that something. She said, “What is inside that box is what will determine who will stay on the ranch, and who will be going home” for a visit.

What? Could my existence on the ranch depend on this one moment in time!  Could I be going home if I lost? Well, if there’s anything you know about goals, it is that to reach your goal you need some sort of motivation. That motivation could be one of many things. It could be money, recognition, a cause, or even fear. The thought of leaving the ranch so early—just five weeks into my journey—terrified me. There was NO WAY I was going to let this send me home tonight! I had been put at risk, and I found my motivation behind the goal. I just kept digging.

Have you ever worked so hard on something only to see little, if any, results? Have you ever expended so much energy only to look and see you’ve only moved a fraction of an inch? Well, I have. I did for years trying to lose weight. Losing weight wasn’t my problem! In fact, over the past 15 years I had lost 20, 30, or even 50 pounds several times! But let’s face it; when you lose 50 pounds and still weigh 410 pounds, you just don’t see much of a difference! So, I would quit. I would give up and gain all the weight back—usually a few more pounds than I had lost!

But that night, with the fear of going home as my motivation, I never once stopped digging! Was it hard? Yup! Was it frustrating? Of course! In fact, seeing so little progress in my digging just ticked me off. But I had to keep on digging or my family was going to get 372-pound Danny back. Just the year before I went to The Biggest Loser, I lost weight down to 370 pounds. So, did I get on The Biggest Loser to do less that I had done before I went? NO WAY! I was going to make my family proud! I was going to show them what it takes to be a champion! I was going to lose this weight and live to see them grow up—live to grow old with my wife—and live to see my grandchildren! So, no matter what I felt like, I just kept digging and digging and digging until I reached my treasure chest and pulled it out of the ground!

Now, at that point I heard something I hadn’t heard before on The Biggest Loser ranch. I heard Alison Sweeney say, “Danny is the first one to get his treasure chest out of the ground!”

In that one moment, I finally felt like I was making progress on my journey! I felt like there was a chance I might win this thing. There was a chance I could succeed and lose this weight! So I ran to the box and unlocked my lock.

Now, there were three more to go. I had to get back and help my teammates dig up their chests so we would win  and  stay  on  the  ranch!  But  that  wasn’t  going  to happen. While I was skilled with a shovel, I worked on my uncle’s paving crew as a mud cutter shoveling concrete and had dug up hundreds, if not thousands, of property corners over the years as a land surveyor, my teammates weren’t quite as skilled. I scanned the three holes to figure out who I could help finish and increase our odds of winning only to see they were all only inches deep! The Blue Team, our opponents, beat us in the first of our many losses to them in the challenges. I felt so defeated, humiliated, and frustrated.

When they opened the box, the Black Team and I waited to see what we had lost. They pulled out an envelope and we listened to the Blue Team scream with excitement! Then Alison Sweeney said, “You have won tickets home!” My heart sank, as I had been without my family for over 30 days! I wanted so badly to kiss my wife and hold my kids! But a thought then entered my head. Why would I want to go home? You see, Darci and I had made an agreement. My only job was to stay on that ranch as long as I could! I took the negative of losing a trip home to see my family for a week and turned it into a positive of realizing that in the long run, my family would be better off with me staying at the ranch.

That positive lasted about one minute when Alison Sweeney said, “But you have a choice, Blue Team. You can go home and see your families…or…you can stay here and keep your trainers on the ranch, The Biggest Loser gym, The Biggest Loser kitchen, and send the Black Team home to deal with the distractions.” My heart sank as they chose to send us home.

I was ecstatic to see my family, but I was scared of leaving the ranch. I walked over to the hole I dug in the sand and looked into it. When I did, the sound of the waves seemed to disappear into the background. I barely heard anyone talking. It was like I was in a dream. I saw the walls of the sand and remembered just a few hours before how they kept caving in on all the work I was doing. I remembered feeling hopeless; like I would never be able to get to my treasure chest and get my key.

Then I remembered what seemed like a thousand times in the past when I lost 20 or 30…or even up to 50 pounds. I would quit and give up because I would see so little results in the mirror. Then I would gain it all back!

In fact, I added it up that night and, with a little mathematics, figured out I had lost almost a half-ton over the last 15 years! But I would always quit when I became discouraged. I always lost my motivation when I couldn’t see results, because when you weigh 400+ pounds and you lose 20 pounds, you just don’t see any physical difference!

But what I didn’t realize is that the physical manifestation of anything happens long after the mental decision not to quit! All of those times I quit and gained all the weight back—all 15 years of work—was many times more work than it would have taken to lose the weight in the first place.

I just needed to LOSE MY QUIT! I needed to decide to go the distance no matter what.

I needed to learn that one step at a time added to the faith that your work is making a difference is the key. With that, you can reach your weight goal—any goal! The bigger the goal is, the longer the journey may be, but it has a destination that will be reached with tenacity, hard work, and losing your quit!

That night I lost my motivation and found my quit. Motivation is great, but it often won’t last. You need to renew your motivation every single day of your life.

So many people run the 99-yard dash of life, but they give up with one yard to go.

If they saw the game from the press box, they would see the finish line and keep going to win. But when they are in the situation, they just don’t see the details. That is where faith comes in. You only physically see the finish line moments before the end of a race. That is why you must visualize that finish line every moment of the race.

When Bob Harper, the trainer, worked me out  on the ranch there was a sign. It said, “Believe in yourself.

Trust the Process.” You see, people always ask me, “Why can’t I lose weight?” I dread giving them the answer because often people just don’t want to hear the truth. Bottom line, if you eat healthy food in right portions and do the work, the weight will come off. The problem is usually both parts A and B of that equation. People want drive-thru food. People want monumental portions. There are restaurants that actually specialize in the “endless bread sticks” and “all you can eat buffets.” These restaurants stay in business for one reason: America loves it cheap, quick, and easy. We Americans  don’t want to mess with the details of weighing food and controlling portions. Many businesses don’t want to follow the details. Accounting is an afterthought. Budget is a myth, and those companies will eventually fail because of the debt they will accrue.

Most people don’t ever want to hear that it takes hard work.

Think about this. Leonardo Di Vinci once said, “O Lord, thou givest us everything at the price of an effort.”

Yes, anything worth having usually takes effort. And it usually takes hard work at that! I watch as people file in and out of the gym, getting on the treadmill and turning it on only to grab it with both arms while they walk quite slowly. We had a guy on our paving crew once who would average about a shovel full every minute. Needless to say, his hole was always exponentially  smaller than everyone else’s. He  promptly  lost  his  job. You  don’t  build  great  cities  by doing a little work here and a bit of work there. Hoover Dam took six years to build during the Great Depression. Over 100 lives were lost during its construction. It wasn’t a walk in the park; but it is a great wonder!

Have you ever seen the Grand Canyon from an airplane? It is an amazing sight. It is over 277 miles long, up to 18 miles wide, and over one mile deep and all formed by a single river. The Colorado River and its tributaries are responsible for that great wonder! Not a shovel of dirt was excavated by man to create it. But it took almost 18-million years to come to be. Slowly, the mighty Colorado River whittled away layer after layer of rock. The Colorado Plateau rose into the air because the river was busy with its work. What if that river had decided to stop? What if someone had turned off the water? Sounds funny, but that’s what happens in businesses, relationships, and yes--even in weight loss. When the going gets tough and little results are seen, we usually quit. But that stubborn river carved out the greatest canyon on the face of the earth with slow, steady, relentless work.

Bottom line, if you want success in anything you do, the first requirement is that you become fully committed to finish. You just need to be stubborn like the Colorado River and decide quitting is not an option! You will most definitely find times when results  aren’t  seen quickly. But  do  you  want  results?  Then commit yourself to the task no matter the circumstances. When you stop letting the circumstances of your life dictate your course of action, the work gets done. Do you want results? Then you’ve got to LOSE YOUR QUIT! *The Biggest Loser featured overweight contestants competing to win a cash prizes by losing the highest percentage of weight relative to their initial weight. Danny Cahill won season eight of the show after losing 239 pounds, dipping from 430 to 181 pounds over the course of seven months.