Success Story - Sean & Elizabeth Harvey

Fitness challege: Desparate for Results

The reason I started the program with Kristi was total and complete desperation. My life was nowhere near where I thought it would be at this point. I was a collegiate athlete in football and baseball, I was an outgoing and charismatic man, and I had everything planned out as to how perfect my life was shaping up to be. However, a career ending knee injury catapulted me in the opposite direction. Even though I ended up having the beautiful wife and the amazing daughter, my life was empty on so many levels because of my weight. I remember vividly how defeated I felt the day the large capacity scale finally arrived, because I knew the number wouldn’t be good, but I was not prepared to see it read an even 470lbs. I stepped off the scale feeling empty, frustrated, angry & hopeless. I was at a loss for what I could ever do to change it. To add insult to injury, the next week, I left for Yahoo!’s annual Sales Conference and had to purchase two plane tickets for myself, and could not fit into the team shirt given to all of us to signify which office we came from. The moment I walked in the door upon my return, barely 5 minutes into my hello’s and welcome home’s, my wife broke down and told me that I had to do something.

She insisted that I try out for the Biggest Loser. Reluctantly I agreed, and to my surprise though I wasn’t selected, the process had opened my eyes to the morbid reality of my situation. Scrambling for how to attack this, my brother (a personal trainer at Club Sport), suggested that I reach out to this woman named Kristi. As an aside, my brother had never met Kristi, but had seen some of the Club Sport patrons transform physically right before his eyes after being on her program and was confident in her abilities to help people on that alone. This is a testament to the type of person Kristi is and the type of work she does. So, once again, desperately I reached out to Kristi on April 7th. As I had failed in every dieting effort previously, I walked into her office skeptical that anything she set out for me to do would actually work, but hopeful and desperate enough to give it a try. I made the decision that I was Luke Skywalker and she was Yoda, whatever she said I would do. I had no idea that this one moment would bring about the rebirth of my life.

The initial hurdles I faced were numerous. For one, exercise would not only be difficult because I was out of shape, but 470 lbs., was a lot of pressure to put on your body, and inertia was definitely working against me. Secondly, I work a desk job 40-50 hours a week so I sit all day every day. Finally, I was an addict. I was addicted to food. I used it to medicate my feelings of emptiness, loneliness, anger, sadness, disappointment and many others. It was my method of maintaining a false sense of control of a life that was spiraling out of that control. I had tried every diet I had heard of: Atkins, LA Weight Loss, Nutrisystem, Medifast, South Beach, all with the same disappointing results.

One of my proudest moments was when I stepped on the scale the morning of my 5 year anniversary and I had reached my first milestone. I was no longer a 400 lb. man weighing in at 397! It was an amazing way to kick off the weekend with my wife. Then there was the first time I eclipsed 100 lbs. lost in mid September. Most recently it was when I was able to wear some clothes in the XXL range for the first time since I was a freshman in college.

Those are some great moments for sure, but I cannot fully encapsulate what this has meant to me and my family in a few singular moments. I can say without hesitation that working with Kristi and this program has absolutely saved my life, my marriage, and my relationship with my daughter. My wife is incredible and she has and will always love me no matter my size, but I’d be lying if I said that my weight was not a significant hindrance for us. Since starting this program, our marriage has come alive. It has caught fire and is spreading throughout our lives together in a way that I thought was lost forever. I love her with all that I am, and I want my wife to know love like she's never known, not by just my words but in the way that I find new ways to sweep her off her feet and win her heart over and over again. I am now able to do that. I want my daughter to know her father as an adventurous and courageous man who sets the world on fire and is right beside her step by step as she tries to do the same thing. I want to experience full and abundant life in every breath. Before I met Kristi, and started this program, I had accepted that this was not possible any longer. I am extremely happy and proud to say that it is! It is available for anyone who wants it.

If I could give any advice it would be that this journey is a marathon and not a sprint. You have to approach it with this mentality. You can’t run a marathon all at once; you have to take it one mile post at a time. This was a major breakthrough for me. When I looked at how much weight I needed to lose it was very discouraging, and I felt like quitting. It was certainly the pattern I had set for myself time and time again. However, I knew that I could not quit this time because I was fighting for my life. I happened to be watching The Biggest Loser Season 9, and the contestants had just run a marathon, something that seemed impossible but something clicked for me as I saw them finish. I realized that there were 26.2 miles in a marathon race, and I met with Kristi every two weeks which gave me 26 meetings in a year, and I began looking at this process as a marathon. Each milepost meant a new goal and a new achievement. Milepost 5 would mark the lightest I had ever been at a U2 concert. Milepost 7 would be an opportunity to be under 400 lbs. for my anniversary and so on and so forth. This approach has made all the difference. It has allowed me to celebrate my successes at each milepost, and overcome any disappointments in the same manner and move on to the next milepost quickly. It has also allowed me a glimpse of what life could be like at the end of this first year of eating clean, and it is more exciting than my words can illustrate. This is a journey, and journeys take time. So enjoy every step, learn at every turn, and celebrate the exquisite view of your life as it changes – and believe me, it will. You can follow my journey as it continues at http://OneMileMarathon.com

- Sean and Elizabeth Harvey