Jannette

Soon after filming, Jannette went on the trip of a lifetime, travelling through South and Central America then across the Atlantic to Greece and Turkey. She had an incredible time hiking volcanoes, going down canopy zip-lines and got her scuba diving certification along the way.

Unfortunately, despite bursts of activity, a lot of her time travelling was spent in transit on buses, trains and planes, which is one of the reasons Jannette thinks she regained some of the weight she’d lost on her X-Weighted journey. “Also, in South and Central America, the diet was lots of potatoes, white rice and fried chicken, and finding a salad was seriously challenging,” she says. Eight months after the show Jannette had put 20 pounds back on, and since then another ten pounds has crept back too.

Putting weight back on has meant that Jannette’s fibromyalgia is getting worse (it was better when she was more active and not so heavy). “Because of that I’m getting started again right now,” she says, “It’s annoying for me that I’ve done this to myself, but what’s really annoying is that Paul gets to be right about me putting some of the weight back on.”

Jannette is forming a weight-loss support group with friends in the hope that it will motivate her. “Doing it on my own just doesn’t work for me. I’m externally motivated, that’s why I did the show – there’s nothing like being on national television for keeping a girl on track!” she says.

When strangers recognize Jannette from the show, which even happened when she was in Honduras and Guatemala, she says that they always ask the same two questions. “First they ask is Paul really such a jerk, and the second is, what happened with Chris?” she says, “well right after that date with Chris that you saw on the show, we had quite a long talk about the age difference and what that translated to, and he was a very sweet guy but it just wasn’t going to work, although we are still good friends.” Jannette is still dating and looking for love.

September 2009