Hollie Self Shares Her Weight Loss Journey

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"The Biggest Loser" contestant Hollie Self describes her weight loss experience and motivation to live an active lifestyle.

Todd Hartley:
Since debuting in 2004, the NBC hit series “The Biggest Loser” has grown to become a worldwide hit inspiring people to lose weight in over 90 countries. Their trainers, Jillian Michaels and Bob Harper, have become fitness icons and the results have been life changing.

To talk about her weight loss, let’s go out to Hollywood right now and talk with Hollie Self, “The Biggest Loser” second runner up in season four. Hi Holly!

Hollie Self:
Hi, how are you?

Todd Hartley:
Hollie, we are doing great. EmpowHER is excited to have you and when you started on “The Biggest Loser” you weighed 255 pounds; have you always struggled with your weight?

Hollie Self:
You know, when I was growing up I was always conscious of my weight, you know, but I was a very active child. I was a very active teenager and then when I went to college, like most people, I started to put on weight and kind of found myself in a cycle that I couldn’t get out of. I was constantly putting on weight; about ten pounds a year. I just wasn’t sure what was happening and you know, that on for about ten years.

Todd Hartley:
When you started training with Jillian Michaels your Body Mass Index, your BMI was 39.9 and you got your BMI down to 23.5, which is awesome, but how has lowering your BMI improved your overall health?

Hollie Self:
My overall health is, I mean I just, there’s not enough to really see about it. I went from being not active at all extremely unhealthy, not able to exercise for hardly any period of time at all to, my entire well being has change. Not only, you know, can I exercise now, but I enjoy it, and it has really improved the entire quality of my life.

Todd Hartley:
Yeah, Hollie how long did it take for you to start seeing the results from your exercise?

Hollie Self:
Well, you know, I think that’s a great question because there’s a lot of people who, you know, you see results immediately, most people do when they, that first week they’ll see a pretty big drop and that’s really inspiring to most people whatever kind of diet and exercise plan they embark on, but then after that it slows down, and for me it absolutely slowed down and I lost, on average, about two, two-and-a-half pounds a week and I was working out as hard as I possibly could and really watching my diet but my numbers were slow, but they were steady.

And so, I wasn’t seeing results that maybe other people were and that was discouraging at times but, you know, as time went by those numbers add up. To me, that was the important thing is that it was a steady loss.

Todd Hartley:
You lost 105 pounds, which is 41% of your total weight. What was the hardest part of losing that much weight?

Hollie Self:
The hardest part of losing, it really wasn’t the food; it wasn’t the exercise, it was kind of changing your mindset because you see success stories all the time. You know, people, if they adopt a program and it’s rigorous and they stick to it, they will lose weight, but the hardest part of all of that is really kind of changing your mindset and figuring out why is it that you have the behaviors that you do. So for me it was allowing my mind to catch up with the changes in my body.

Todd Hartley:
And those changes really transform how you think about yourself and how you feel and all your motivations and dietary options. I’m looking at photos right now on your Facebook page and for those who would like to follow Hollie on Facebook it’s www.Facebook.com/biggestloserHollie, and there’s a photo of you running and you are looking totally stylish, got your LA glasses on and your ipod plugged in and somebody comments here and they say – “My little sister thought this was a picture of Victoria Beckham.” How does that make you feel?

Hollie Self:
Oh I definitely think it’s the glasses, but I mean it’s great that people can look at those pictures because it shows people that it is possible because I think that when people start a weight loss journey so it seems impossible. When you know that you have to lose, not only 20 pounds, but 100 or 200 and those numbers can be really intimidating, but you can look at me, you can look at other contestants from “The Biggest Loser” and the thing that I am most proud of is that we can show people out there that you can do it, you know? It doesn’t have to be at breakneck speed, but if you persevere and you keep at something then it’s completely possible.

Todd Hartley:
Losing 100 pounds is an enormous amount of weight. Do you mentally look at it as short-term goals or do you look at it as the big goal?

Hollie Self:
It was quite a shock to the system to go from pretty much eating whatever I felt like and not being active to kind of, doing a complete 180 and it was really hard. Everything that you see on “The Biggest Loser” you think, “Oh, you know, that looks hard.” It’s ten times harder than it looks and there were so many moments where it wasn’t about the finale for me. It was about getting through that particular workout or getting through that particular day and it was, because sometimes if you look out into the future you think, “When is this going to happen and it’s going to take so long,” and so by breaking things up into smaller goals, that’s what made it possible for me.

If I could get through the day and be proud of what I did that day that was enough to get me ready to begin again the next day.

Todd Hartley:
How do you keep yourself so disciplined?

Hollie Self:
The things that I think I didn’t realize is that, you know, it’s all about the quality of your food.

Todd Hartley:
Right.

Hollie Self:
And I was never hungry when I was training for “The Biggest Loser”, never. I never felt like I didn’t have enough to eat. It’s just the quality of the food that I was putting into my body was so much better. There were so many things I had never eaten before, you know, let’s say I didn’t eat tomatoes, I didn’t eat mushrooms or bean sprouts and I have really kind of developed a taste for vegetables now and it’s just so funny because beforehand my vegetables were on pizza or on a hamburger.

So it’s really about, your cravings change. There is a period of time where you still kind of want deep fried food or you want something that tastes really good that might be fatty, but one of the things I have learned is that you can make modifications and, you know, there’s substitution.

It’s not about completely foregoing everything that you used to love; it’s all about balance, like that’s the main thing that I have learned throughout this whole experience, but it’s all about balance. You don’t ever want to say “I am never going to eat that again.”

Todd Hartley:
So is there a day where you are allowed to just go a little crazy?

Hollie Self:
I wouldn’t say that I go crazy, but I do have one day a week where I have a high calorie day and that will be a day where I do go eat a hamburger or I do have a few drinks with friends. I still eat pizza; I still eat hamburgers; I just don’t eat them multiple times a week like I used to do before. It’s all about the balance.

Todd Hartley:
You know, I live an active lifestyle so I get it. I understand and every once a while I find myself out of balance and out of discipline and it takes me a little while to just wrangle that discipline back up and to get back on to my routine, what do you say to people who are listening to this right now, are overweight and without hope, what do you say to that woman?

Hollie Self:
I would say that first of all, nothing is impossible. You see, people have success all the time, you are no different. Why not you? And the thing that you have to realize is that if you start small and you start building good habits then you absolutely can do it and that’s again, for me, I took it day-by-day, sometimes I took it hour-by-hour – did I make the choices this hour? And eventually you build up.

It’s just like, you know, with exercise, you don’t go out and run a marathon the next weekend. You build up. You build up that stamina. You build up that practice of good habits. So it’s the same thing with eating well and little by little those habits will become more natural to you.

Todd Hartley:
Well she is Hollie Self from “The Biggest Loser”. She is their second runner up from season four. She lost 105 pounds. You can follow Hollie on the web at www.Facebook.com/biggestloserHollie and remember Hollie is spelt H-O-L-L-I-E.

That’s www.Facebook.com/biggestloserHollie. Hollie Self, thank you so much for joining us.

Hollie Self:
Thank you so much for having me.

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