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Joe:
Great question! I’m sure many of my readers would love to hear what made Tim so successful. So to honor your request I called Tim to do a short interview to see if he would share some of his secrets with us. However I must warn you that this contest was worth 250,000 dollars. Since Tim’s ultimate goal was weight loss he was less concerned with gaining muscle.

Trainer: Tim I would like to congratulate you on the great job you did on the biggest loser TV show. Even though you didn’t win you have become an inspiration to many of my readers. You lost a total of 114 pounds. You must have done something right. I was wondering if you could answer a few questions for us.
Tim: I’d love to.

Trainer: Great! Let’s start with weight training. What type of program and exercises did you do? How often did you do them?
Tim: We wanted to put on some muscle but the bottom line was how much weight we could lose. In other words we had to be careful of putting on too much muscle. The doctors associated with the show recommended 3 hours of weight training a week. I lifted on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. I did a full body workout with high repetitions. I included push ups, bicep curls, dumbbell shoulder presses and tons of abdominal exercises.

Trainer: Explain you cardiovascular workout? What did you do? How many minutes a day did you spend doing cardio?
Tim: Every morning I got up and ran 5 ½ miles. At first this run took me 66 minutes to complete. I had to stop and walk several times in order to finish. Each week I was able to run longer without stopping. Within a month I was able to run the entire 5 1/2 miles in one shot. Gradually my time improved to 43 minutes.

Trainer: That’s awesome Tim. What is your best mile time?
Tim: Two weeks before I left for the competition I ran the mile in 5:45. This was a huge accomplishment because a friend of mine at work had said I would never get below a 6 minute mile.

Trainer: O.K. here goes the million dollar question. Tell us about your diet. How often did you eat? What did you eat? Did you have a cheat day?
Tim: I ate five total meals a day- 3 large meals and 2 snacks. The 3 large meals consisted of about four hundred calories a piece. The smaller snacks were about a hundred and fifty per meal. Each meal had a lean protein and a carbohydrate. The lean protein consisted of chicken, turkey, egg beaters or protein shakes. The carbohydrates consisted of mostly fruits and vegetables. However I did eat whole wheat bread or other whole grains at least once a day. As far as the cheat day is concerned I did not include one until after the first two months. At this point in the game it was more of a long term process. I began to allow myself a cheat day only if I made my weight for the week. My weekly goal was to lose 1% of my original weight.

Trainer: O.K. your starting weight was 268 so that means your goal was 2 1/2 pounds a week right?
Tim: That’s right. The doctors told us anymore than that and we would be losing muscle and our diet would become unhealthy.

Trainer: Do you advice for anyone out there trying to get into shape?
Tim: Yes. The most important thing I learned is that you need to start eating early and continue eating throughout the day. I learned how valuable eating breakfast is to my health. Before I started this program I would skip breakfast and lunch and end up eating huge meals at night before I went to bed. I found out that this was not a healthy way to live. Now if I do eat a big meal I make sure I eat it early so my body has a chance to burn it off.

Trainer: Thanks Tim. I’m sure a lot of people will be interested to hear what you had to say. Good luck and be sure to add plenty of weight training to your program. This will boost your metabolism and help you to continue to burn unwanted fat.