Participants | X-Weighted

As business student with dreams of getting a job in finance, Anthony knows that his size will hold him back. He desperately wants to be able to get healthy for the sake of his family, and their future.
Once a fit lifeguard, Marichu has steadily put on weight throughout her marriage to Anthony. Her health is now her number one priority, even if that puts her marriage at risk.

Marichu These days Marichu’s life is completely different. “Being on X-Weighted was totally life changing, that is for sure. Had somebody told me what kind of effect being on the show would have, I would never have believed them,” says Marichu. Since filming finished, Marichu says that her life has improved immeasurably and she is a lot happier. “I think I had given up on trying to be happy and trying to be me. Through the whole X-Weighted experience, I became empowered enough to make changes to my life,” she says. Marichu continued to lose weight and ended up getting a job at the gym, where she had been working out. She worked the front-desk, then was approached by the gym owner to do nutritional coaching too. “He felt that with my psychology degree and life-experiences, the coaching would be something I would be good at,” she says, “it was hard for me because with my body shape I’ve never exactly fit the fitness industry, but when people walked through that front door and I wasn’t like “Barbie” they felt they could connect with me.” Marichu left Anthony in Spring 2008 and is now in the process of getting divorced. Very soon after leaving her marriage, Marichu met a new man, Troy, and the relationship progressed very quickly. Marichu became pregnant, and gave birth to a son, Jake, in August 2009. “Being on the show was really difficult for our marriage and magnified the problems we had,” explains Marichu, “It was good that it went the way it did and gave us that final push we needed. Things with Anthony were very difficult during filming and I didn’t feel supported by him throughout the journey.” For Marichu, her X-Weighted experience was about so much more than losing weight. It gave her back her self-esteem and enabled her to get the life she wanted. She loves the effect that this has had on her daughters, and feels so good about being a better role model to them. “Having seen what I can do, there is just no stopping them,” she says, “I’m watching them blossom and grow with a whole new attitude.” “The change in my own attitude was probably the most profound thing that I got from the show,” says Marichu, “when you are given an opportunity like that, to change your life in such a public manner, you give it all you’ve got. And you don’t look back, sell yourself short and you don’t make excuses. You have to suck it up and do what you have to do to get through it.” Marichu says that if she’d known her X-Weighted journey was going to be so hard, she’d have never embarked on it. “It was probably the most difficult thing I’ve ever done,” she says, “but it was worth it every step of the way.” Anthony Since separating from Marichu, life has changed a great deal for Anthony. Due to the stress he has been under, he wasn’t able to keep off all the weight he lost while doing X-Weighted (although he is still a lot lighter than when he started his X-Weighted journey). “There’s way too much stuff going on right now, I’ve put myself on the backburner while I look after other things,” he says. Anthony shares custody of his daughters with Marichu, and says that right now, the girls are where his focus is. “I’m just trying to get life straightened out,” he says. He is still one course away from completing his degree, and hopes to get to that soon but was feeling burnt out and needed a break from his studies. He is working full time at a bottle-depot, which he says pays “not bad” but says, “it’s not what I want for myself. I still want a career and to better myself, and be the best person I can.” Anthony says that he learned a lot from the show and is looking forward to getting his fitness back on track once things are more settled in his life. “I just have to find my own personal desire and fire again to want to lose weight,” he says. He is also looking forward to doing Thai boxing again, as it gave him a great deal of pleasure. “I would walk out just feeling absolutely spent, but I walked out with my head high and just feeling really good. I want that feeling back,” he says. September 2009

Valencia

As much as she professes to love her ample booty, this single mom is worried that she’s headed for a stroke if she doesn’t lose weight. Valencia works as a fitness motivator, but is clueless when it comes to motivating herself.

Nicole

After contracting meningitis, Nicole packed on so much weight that she gave up on her lifelong dream of becoming a professional dancer. When she lost her dancer physique, her confidence went with it.

Since filming finished, Nicole has continued to stay fit and healthy. She kept up with kickboxing, training 5 times a week and has just recently had her first fight. "It was a lot of fun, I didn't win and I got a really bad bloody nose but everybody said I did really well," she says. Nicole recently slimmed down further in order to fight at 145 pounds, making her 10 pounds lighter than at the end of her X-Weighted journey. She also kept up with her dancing and while at university was co-captain on the Western Dance Team, and was dancing at least twice a week as well as doing regular performances. "This summer was kind of hectic, what with finishing school and moving back to Toronto, so I haven't been dancing for a couple of months, but I'll get back to it," she says. Nicole has graduated from university and is just about to start full-time work with the federal government. She is no longer with the boyfriend who was with her during filming (they broke up pretty soon after filming finished) and is having fun dating. Nicole says that she loved being part of X-Weighted, and probably wouldn't have been motivated to make such positive changes in her life without it. "I love the show because it got me in to kickboxing, and if I hadn't done it I wouldn't have met all the great friends that I train with. Kickboxing is such a big part of who I am now," she says.  September 2009

Jennifer

Overwhelmed by the demands of the modeling world at age 16, Jennifer gained weight to avoid a modeling career. Now a size 18, her health is suffering and her size is affecting her relationship.

Casey

Once fit and active, an on-the-job injury led to Casey becoming seriously overweight and suffering from ill health. Now disgusted with his appearance, Casey is desperate to reclaim his body and his health.

We are happy to report that Casey is doing just fine since we last saw him on the show. There have been some huge changes in his life, the biggest one being that he now has a baby daughter. "Finally a girl after all those boys," he says (Casey has 3 sons). His ex Linda, has moved away but their son Dylan is still living with him in Kelowna. Casey has managed to keep his excess weight off, and maintained a healthy lifestyle - mostly through biking with his son Dylan, who we met on the show, and through being part of the local ski patrol. His general health is really good, although he still has some health issues related to the injury he suffered while on the show (his sense of smell and taste was affected and has never really come back). Casey says that besides the fact that going on the show made him get fit, he also enjoyed it and had a lot of fun on his journey. Still single, Casey is actively dating and having a lot of fun doing so. He is flattered by the female attention that came from being on the show. "I thought it was pretty humorous when I found out my episode was called "Casey: Chick Magnet"," he says. Casey gets recognized everywhere he goes in Kelowna: "It's a pretty small town" he says, "when I took Dylan for his first day of school, the secretaries in the school office recognized me, I get recognized in the gas station and everywhere really." November 2009

Sharla

This burned out single-mom fears that if she doesn’t lose weight she’ll no longer be able to take care of her physically challenged daughter. Sharla needs to make drastic changes in order to keep her family together.

“Life is going pretty good,” says Sharla. Since finishing her X-Weighted journey, she has managed to keep off most of the fifty pounds that she lost. “I’m not as regimented as I was with fitness, but still a lot more active than before X-Weighted,” she says, adding that she does between three and seven hours a week of fitness a week. “Exercising for sixteen hours a week like I did on the show meant I didn’t have a life,” she says. Sharla says that keeping the weight off is hard, especially when it comes to restricting her food intake. “My eating habits are still really good, I have slip ups every now and again because you can’t be regimented all the time,” she says, “I learned that in order to keep my shape, I need to have more exercise in my life.” To keep in shape, Sharla still rides her bike lots and enjoyed doing the boxing she started on X-Weighted, until she injured her knee last year lifting her daughter Toni. After a year of physio, Sharla is eager to step back in the ring and start boxing again. “Because the injury limited my ability to exercise, I had to be pretty strict on my diet during that year to maintain my weight,” she says. Toni is eighteen and has graduated from high-school, and is starting college this fall. Sydney is now twelve, just going in to grade seven. Sharla says that both girls have come a long way in terms of their eating. “Sydney is still pretty picky but we’ve managed to get her eating some vegetables, it's easier now that she is becoming a woman and is a little more conscientious about her weight and her looks,” says Sharla. Toni has lost some weight and has been doing what she can to get fit in the wheelchair, at school she had been doing some light weight training and she has been taking healthier lunches to school. “Toni is excited and nervous about starting college, it’s a whole new life and transition in to adulthood,” says Sharla. Losing so much weight on her X-Weighted journey was a life altering experience for Sharla. “I’ve always had to do everything for Toni. I had her when I was seventeen, so all my adult life has been about fighting for her and looking after my kids. Until the show, I’d never really done anything for me,” she says. November 2009

Ann-Marie

Since having her baby, Ann-Marie has put on so much weight she feels self-conscious with her husband, and it’s affecting her marriage. She wants 4 kids, but worries that her weight will climb with each one if she doesn’t get fitter now.

Since filming finished, Ann-Marie has had another baby, Charlie, who is now eighteen-months-old. She finished her diploma in business administration. Ann-Marie continued to do triathlons after X-Weighted finished filming – she did five that year, completing her last when she was twelve weeks pregnant – and recently tackled another, her first since having Charlie. "I finished in 1hr33mins, which is my personal best, and I might add not bad for being newly pregnant with nausea!" says Ann-Marie, who is now expecting a 3rd child, due on May 1st 2010. Although some of her weight did come back on with having another baby, she was able to lose most of it before getting pregnant again. These days, Ann-Marie cooks dinner for her husband five-nights a week (this was an issue in their marriage on the show). “My cooking is phenomenal,” she says. She does meal plans at the start of every week before hitting the grocery store to get everything she needs, because she is by nature a planner and says that as long as she knows what she is going to prepare, cooking dinner is no problem. “I love to cook and am the wife of the year these days,” she says. September 2009

Rae

An extreme binge-eater who stuffs down her emotions with food, Rae has put on a serious amount of weight since her mother died. She can no longer fit in to her motorbike leathers, so no longer participates in the road-trips she used to share with her husband.

Since filming finished, things are going really well for Rae. This coming spring, Rae and her husband are about to go on the trip of a lifetime on their motorcycles. "We're going to fly the bikes from Calgary to London, ride through Europe and down through Africa," she says, "we are planning on being gone for a year right now, but we'll see how it goes, it's going to be pretty wild. It's really thrilling and really scary all rolled into one." At the start of Rae's journey, she was going through some tough times. Not only was she dealing with the death of her mom, but she was also having real problems in her marriage. "Things weren't so good, but being on the show actually brought us back together," she says. After filming finished, Rae did regain some of the weight that she lost. "I'll be honest with you, after X-Weighted finished I kind of took a big breath and relaxed and some of the weight did go back on," she says. Rae is working hard to lose it again though - "Knowing that we were going on this trip is part of the reason I've had to stay fit and now we are really getting serious, because riding for that long is grueling," she says. Rae gets recognized all the time. "I was in the emergency room recently and the nurse recognized me from the show. Funnily enough everyone always asks me the same question when they do recognize me - is Paul Plakas really that big a jerk?" she says. Although her relationship with Paul was strained, Rae said that she got a lot out of working with Fred. "He helped me face some of the stuff I was going through with my mom passing, because I was not willing to deal with that. He was so good with that, because he was so gentle but then he really gets to you because he hits the nail on the head as to what is really going on," says Rae. October 2009

Nikki

Because of abuse issues in her childhood, Nikki never felt worthy of being thin. Now that her engagement has ended, and she is back in the dating world, she wants to become healthy at last.

Almost 3 years on, Nikki is doing very well indeed. She has kept the weight off (and lost more). "Right now I waver between 163 and 165 pounds, I am super active and I no longer let the scale determine my happiness," she says. Nikki loved being part of X-Weighted. "It was a beautiful process and I'm so grateful that I had that opportunity. My life changed 389°, it was ridiculous how much my life changed from that experience," she says. Nikki says that she feels that her best when she is active. "I am the captain of my own soccer team, so I play lots of soccer. I do lots of running and right now I am training to do a triathlon. I do my thing about four or five times a week for sure, and there's not one day that goes by where I'm not active in some way," she says. You may remember that Nikki split with her fiance Erich while on the show, the two only met once after that so that she could get her stuff back. "It was just a brilliant end to something that was causing me so much grief," she says, "and I learned a lot about my own self-worth and what I wanted to put up with and what I wanted in a relationship." Nikki is a happy single girl, who is having lots of fun. She has an active social life and is very busy setting up her own business. "It is called Authentic Image, and it works with women around the physiological, sociological and emotional components of their relationships with food," she explains. Nikki says that being on the show taught her to eat right and the importance of exercise, but says that for her, "the maintenance comes from really going in and doing the emotional work". At the end of her journey, once the cameras stopped rolling, Nikki took all her bigger clothes to a consignment store and says that doing so gave her a sense of closure. "At the end of the 6 months I took what I learned, and I moved forward," she says. "I am extremely happy," says Nikki, "people watching my episode can see the physical transformation, but for me it was the emotional transformation that had the biggest affect." Nikki's relationship with her mom was something that was dealt with on the show, and happily Nikki says that her relationship with her mom only got better after filming finished. "I love my mom dearly. We just cut the BS, we really got real with each other. It was really good for her to see my episode actually, she realized it that what I needed from her when she watched it was not perfection but just her time and her interest in me," says Nikki. October 2009

Amy

Once a slim size 7, Amy is now a size 22. She bemoans the fact she has to shop in the men’s section to get clothes that fit. She desperately wants to lose weight and join in activities with her family.

Gary and Rayna

Once athletic, Gary has gained weight since he was the victim of a violent crime that almost killed him. His weight makes him too tired to enjoy his life after work.
Dealing with chronic pain from a car accident, and an increasingly sedentary lifestyle, have made Rayna overweight and unhappy. Her partner, Gary, calls her a heavy-weight lover, but it’s the last thing Rayna wants to be.

Nima

As a medical health professional she should know better, but Nima just can’t say no when it comes to food. She has an excuse for everything, but knows that she has to change or her health will suffer.

Nima is still eating healthily and has an active lifestyle. After the show she did initially put a bit of weight back on, but over the past six months has been good about eating healthy and is now back wearing the same size clothes that she did at the end of the show. “I’m proud of how I’ve progressed in terms of the amount of fitness I do,” she says. After picking up good habits from the show, Nima has gone on to work out what works for her lifestyle in terms of being fit and healthy. “I’ve learned it’s not really about my weight, it’s about eating healthy and keeping active. I try to eat all natural foods, use as little processed food as possible and try to buy local foods and organic produce,” she says. Nima has made peace with herself, and her body. “The size that I’m at feels like a good weight for me. Is it a size two? No, but I’m okay with that now. I like cooking for people, and I like eating. I like it a lot. If you are going to be a size two you have to eat very little, and when I think back on all the times I’d been that skinny I was quite sad.” Nima soon realized that running wasn’t her thing. “Training for a marathon trashed my knees and I had to wear two bras to stop my breasts from bobbing around and giving me a black eye, it was uncomfortable,” she says. Instead, she does interval training and weights at the gym with a trainer twice a week and goes once more either with her husband, Claude, or alone. Finding the right trainer was important to Nima, and being on the show helped her decide what didn’t motivate her, namely Paul’s style. “If someone starts yelling at me and saying negative things I just stop paying attention and shut down. My trainer now is funny and quiet in the way he motivates me, and I like his style,” she says. Becoming a healthier person has improved Nima’s already great marriage. The couple goes biking together as well as to the gym. “My husband is awesome, he’s the one that keeps me in-line. If I don’t work-out for a couple of days he’ll say “Come on, let’s just make a healthier choice today,” she says, “Claude has always been super healthy, he’s always worked out and he always tries to eat right, so when I started to do that it was one more thing that brought us closer together. I was actually turning into someone who was more like him - so it worked out well.” Nima says that being on the show was a good learning experience and she enjoys hearing that the success she had on her journey motivates others. She still cooks delicious East Indian meals, but has modified the recipes to make them healthier and cooks everything from scratch. Claude helps with meal prep by chopping vegetables, and together, they are loving their healthy lifestyle. September 2009

Jen

Life at home is absolute chaos for Jen. She has 3 young boys, a rocky new marriage and turns to food for comfort. Jen dreams of being a strong female warrior - the role she plays in her online life.

A lot has changed for Jen since the show finished filming, and she says that she has never been happier. Her divorce from Steve is almost finalized, and she is in a new relationship, but is taking things slowly this time. Her boys are happy and healthy and the youngest is starting school this year. Although Jen kept up with the capoeira for a while, she decided it just wasn’t her thing and instead found two new activities that she is super passionate about: Burlesque and belly dancing! “In January I got into burlesque and realized I have a natural talent for it! I won Miss Burlesque Fest 2009 in Calgary earlier this year,” she says. You can check out her winning performance here. The first year after the show was pretty tough for Jen, not only was she going through her split from Steve, but there were also family issues that led to her brother moving out of her house. “I kind of fell apart for a year,” she says, “and after six months I started binge eating, put the weight back on and then some.” Jen started seeing a therapist and faced her demons, which enabled her to get to the point where she is now, which is slimmer, healthier and happier. Jen says that being on X-Weighted really did change her life. “The show was a blessing, because it allowed me to focus on myself, which I hadn’t done because I’d been too busy being a mom the past ten years,” she says, “I realized that you really have to focus on yourself if you really want these changes to happen.” Jen also says that being on the show helped her realize that she had hidden talents, such as henna and body painting, which she does for two companies in Calgary. “Last year I was doing body painting at the sex show, which was really fun,” she says. While there, a fan of the show recognized her for the first time: “A couple of ladies came to the booth and one said “X-Weighted! You’re female warrior!” At the time I was still quite big, so I thought oh no, don’t recognize me now,” she says. Now she has put herself in the limelight as a burlesque dancer, Jen gets recognized regularly and quite enjoys it. “People start off by complimenting my performance, then they’ll add “Oh by the way, weren’t you on X-Weighted?” This year I’m happy to get recognized because I’m back to my smaller size,” she says. “When I did put the weight back on, I just had to refocus on what was important,” she says, “I learned that it’s not just about the weight loss, that part was easiest. The part that was hardest was dealing with the root problems that cause you to eat.” September 2009