A fire under my ass....

That's what yesterday has done. It's lit a fire under my ass like never before. I spent 9 hours in line for the Biggest Loser Casting Call. First let me tell you about the process. I arrived at the convention center at 7:15am. It was a little later than I had planned on arriving, but this girl needs her coffee in the morning. The line was huge already. Literally and figuratively. I ended up being number 869th in line. Wow! And then we waited. And we waited. My sister came to keep me company and with the caffeine reinforcements. I talked to the people around me. Nice guy Jeremy who drove down from Moses Lake, Washington. The crazy girl who swore more than me and told me way TMI about herself. The man who broke my heart. He was from Hillsboro, is in his 40's, unemployed and living with his mother. He weighs 536 lbs. and is on oxygen. The sadness and desperation he conveyed in everything he said made me sad. Back to the process... so we waited. And we waited. Once we made it inside the building, they handed each of us a one page application asking our basic information and a handfull of questions. Then we waited some more. Finally after 9+ hours in line it was our turn. They broke us into groups of 15. Each group got 5 minutes in the room with one of the casting people. They asked us each the same questions. Name, occupation, how much weight we wanted to lose, which trainer we would choose and also what we hoped to take home from the ranch. We each answered and then it was over.

Now for my observations and what I really learned and took home from the audition. First, I was one of the smallest people there. Seriously. A few of my friends have told me that I am not really that big (even though I feel that big sometimes), now I understand. I understand that I really am nothing like any of the people who were in line. Nothing like them. I am smaller. I am stronger, both mentally and physically. I am athletic. I also realized that I never want to be like any of them. Ever. Looking around I noticed that so many of those people have already given up on themselves and on life. They view Biggest Loser as their last resort. Well, I don't. I've been doing this on my own and I will continue to push myself harder each and every day. There were people in line who had brought boxes of donuts, eating fast food and smoking. I wanted to scream. "THIS IS WHY YOU'RE FAT!! You want this show to change your life, but you really just need to take control and do it for yourself anyway." I say that yesterday lit a fire under my ass, because it did. More than ever, I want to help other people. I want to show them that it can be done on your own. I want to help other people get healthy. Stop relying on the easy things in life. Life wasn't meant to be easy. It was meant to be a challenge.

My sister told me that as I was going into the audition room, a very large man was looking at me and shaking his head. Then he said, "It really pisses me off that some people are here when they don't even need to be." Maybe I didn't really belong there in his eyes, but in mine... it was exactly where I needed to be. It was exactly what I needed to see. It was the fire being lit under my ass.