As you know, Tara Costa from Biggest Loser Season 7 is going to join us tonight for our Tworkout! (Twitter + Workout = Tworkout!) You can read about that HERE in case you’ve missed only one of our biggest announcements EVER!
I got a chance to chitchat with her on the phone a couple weeks ago and she inspired me all over again and maybe she’ll inspire you too (well, I know she’ll inspire you, she just does that.)
If you don’t remember Tara, she’s the one who pulled a car and won most of the challenges on the ranch. She lost 155 pounds on the ranch and became the at-home winner. What inspired me most about her was not her weight-loss (though inspiring!! I mean, come on!) but her determination and drive and ability to dig her heels in and move forward with reckless abandon.
She called me and right away on the phone we just chatted away, she is just so very easy to talk to and very, very real. We got to talking about some good stuff, like for instance, telling me about when she was in Tampa (where I live) and how she went to a restaurant Seasons 52 which has entrees all under 500 calories! And now I really have to try it, I mean, imagine: I have to get an interview with Tara Costa to find out about great restaurants here in Tampa! They have locations in Florida, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Georgia with locations opening up in more states this fall and in 2011, so go to there and find it and let us know what you think! M’kay?
The weight-loss journey for all of us is riddled with highs and lows and I wanted to know what hers were along her more than 150 pound weight-loss journey. She openly told me about her rock-bottom moment, which for me was a picture at a birthday party, and for her was a night out for her best friend’s birthday. Her rock-bottom moment, she explains, was just a couple weeks before the Biggest Loser casting call in New York City, where she lived. “I didn’t really want to go out, I had to work the next morning. But we pile up into two cabs, I was in the second cab, I’m the last girl walking in (to the club), and the bouncer closes the red velvet rope and wouldn’t let me in, and says, ‘Sorry, we’re at capacity.’”
Some of those damn bouncers can be real jerks, can’t they? So her first reaction? “Fight or flight and I did the flight, took a cab, walked in to Ben & Jerry’s, grabbed the ice cream and a bag of Milano cookies.” And she went home. But it was when she walked in the door and saw her reflection in the mirror, the mascara running down her face and she realized this was it. “This is why I’m fat. This is what it is,” she said looking down at her two most favorite comfort foods in the world. And then she dumped them.
Soon after, she found out about The Biggest Loser casting call and found out her friend Laura was also applying for the show, and well, the rest is history, along with that 155 pounds.
Of course, maintaining that loss is never an easy task but it looks like Tara found a way. Her biggest weapon is a tiny yellow square piece of paper called a Post-It. You might have heard of it. It’s her “Just for Today” Post-It, a tiny little yellow power house where she jots down whatever her vice is that day and sticks it to her computer. “I know that just for today I’m strong enough to get through it,” she says. Gosh she makes it sound so easy. I’m going to invest in some myself now.
As her weight-loss journey began to wind down, Tara was able to close that chapter of the book by running the New York City Marathon, finally letting go of all her old haunts by running past her old apartment, her old wing joint, her old Chinese place. She’s now turned her attention to triathlon, like me, and found herself immersed in a culture of spandex. “I can’t stand spandex! I feel like it’s the 80’s craze taken to a whole new level!” she tells me. And it’s true, there really is a ton of spandex in triathlon and you just have to be one with it but it’s so.not.easy.
But just in case you still think triathlon is too much to handle, and I’ve repeated it a million times, it’s so not, and even Tara thinks so as she repeats to me: “It really encompasses everybody! People have different weaknesses and different strengths, you see yourself progress.” Which is why I love it too, for instance being passed by a 78-year-old woman on the bike like I have. “It’s like homework, if you wanna do a triathlon or an Ironman, you gotta do your homework,” she says.
Her next challenge is the Florida Ironman race in November, a full 140.6 miles. I am training for a 1/2 Iron in November because the full 140.6 to me still feels like crazy people only do those but I’m not surprised she’s one of the crazy ones at all, to be perfectly honest. She’s already proven she can do anything she puts her mind to. “I’ll be able to make it,” she says, “I’m going to do it and be like, alright I did this, I put myself out there. I have faith in myself and my mental toughness to you know, get myself through it.” Which is so much about what the weight-loss journey brings people and why we should all embrace the difficult, soul-searching, sometimes grueling journey that it is. Because you find yourself becoming someone you never thought you would, doing things you never thought you’d do and finding things out about yourself that you never thought you had inside there.
That’s why Tara Costa inspires me.
She also gave me some of her favorite workout insights from the ranch and beyond:
- “The first important thing is to look at yourself, your needs are going to be different than your best friends or your neighbors.”
- “Write down what you think you would need in a plan.”
- “Establish a roadmap for where you will go.”
- Write yourself a weight-loss checklist and have the right tools: a scale to measure food? Check. Fruits and Veggies? Check. A plan? Check.
- Have “accountability. Write in a pretty journal, download a Blackberry App, take pictures of your food, etc.” Otherwise, “You’re only kidding yourself!’ she warns. (She’s right.)
- Her faves? Almond Breeze milk, Truvia, Turkey Bacon from Trader Joe’s, frozen mangoes.
- And her key to maintenance: “I think for me it’s definitely trying new things, I’ve also realized that I like to be around similar like-minded people.”
You can ask Tara your own questions tonight after she works us out! Join us at 8:30p.m. ET for the pre-party sponsored by Subway (which means GIVEAWAYS!), the workout at 9p.m. ET by Tara herself and the Q&A with Tara at 10 p.m. ET! Follow @tara_costa, @shrinkingjeans and #tworkout!
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