How are you both doing?Shay: I'm at 322. I’ve lost 154 pounds. Daniel: I weigh 224.
Shay, Jillian really pushed you so you could stay on the Ranch. What was going through your mind when you were crying and Jillian was yelling at you? Shay: I’m definitely very used to Jillian yelling at me and I’m very used to crying by that point. But what I realized is that for the first time I really got to the point where I was like, 'Wow, this isn’t just me trying to figure it out.' With Jillian there pushing me, and I am so close to losing 100 pounds, this is real. It’s a possibility. It’s tangible. The emotional journey that I took was just very different than a lot of on the Ranch. All the weight you saw coming off every week, I probably cried it out in tears because everything was so emotional. It was just coming out emotionally, and the weight was just coming off, but really, all my workouts and everything, they were just very cathartic for me to deal with my past and everything that had happened in my life.
How hard has it been for you to keep up with your workouts at home?Shay: It is very difficult. I lost 100 pounds in nine weeks. It’s taken me twice or three times as long to lose 54 pounds at home. It has been extremely difficult. I’m working two jobs, I have my family, my kids. I’m back to normal life. Fifty-four pounds for the average American in that amount of time is still incredible, and I have to think about those things -- success -- in that way. But sometimes you think, "Man, why can’t this be like the Ranch?" But the Ranch is not reality, you know? It’s set apart and it’s different and you can go there and you can do amazing things, but when you come home, it’s real life. I’m still doing it and I’m fitting my workouts in and I’ve just changed my lifestyle.
Daniel, what did you do differently this time around?Daniel: I was able to work out even five times harder than I was able to last year. I could actually run and sprint and do all kinds of things that I was just beginning to understand last season. For me, this season was just struggling with issues and really peeling back new layers of myself every 20 or 30 pounds that I lost, and having the courage to go through those things. It’s just struggling with my eating disorder -- I would still use food to cope with emotional issues -- and getting a handle on that is really what I had to learn this season.
Daniel and Shay, what’s the worst bad habit you’ve kicked since you left the Ranch?Shay: Ice cream. I used to eat half a gallon of ice cream in two days, like non-stop. I would go to the kitchen and have ice cream in the morning when I got up. I’d have it at night. Now, I have frozen yogurt maybe twice a week. Daniel: I cut out buffets ... I was just not making a healthy choice there. So that was the first thing. And then from the second season, I cut out snacking while I cooked breakfast, because I’m horrible at ... mindlessly munching on stuff while I’m in the kitchen and just racking up calories.
