Our Fittest Loser

Daily Herald editor Gerry Alger is our own Fittest Loser

I was incredibly grateful that my most recent birthday didn’t involve renewing my driver’s license – and not because of the lines at the Secretary of State’s office. No, for me, the worst part is when the gruff guy behind the counter asks if the information is all up to date and I have two equally unpleasant choices: Lie, or change the weight.

When I was issued my first license at 16 years old, I really did carry 115 pounds on my 5-foot-4-inch frame. At least until I started driving to fast food restaurants. I changed the weight once, in the late 1990s. I figured I’d be 140 pounds for the rest of my life and would never have to confess again. It’s shocking what a difference 20 years of denial can make. No exercise, an eat-whatever-I-want diet and a determined attitude that I would not be one of those women who obsessed over her weight has brought me to more than 180 pounds.

Enter Push Fitness. For the last couple of years, I’ve been viewing the Fittest Loser Challenge from my cubicle chair. My role as editor of the Daily Herald’s Niche division until now has been logistics for the competition. I’ve handled a variety of tasks from scheduling a writer to interview the contestants and trainers, to assigning a photographer to follow their journey and working with the copy desk to produce the front pages and special sections. But the best part by far has been meeting the contestants and hearing their stories.

For one week in January the trainers from Push and a few of us here at the Daily Herald, read every entry that’s submitted, narrow it down to 15 finalists to bring in for interviews, then spend 30 minutes with each of them. It’s nothing short of inspiring. Thus began my fantasy of having a personal trainer of my own.

“What are you thinking?” said the voice in my head. “You haven’t darkened the door of a gym in 20 years, your heart races at the top of a flight of stairs, not to mention the panting as you struggle to catch your breath.

“What are you, crazy?” the condemning voice continued.

Ultimately, the answer was yes. Go ahead and call me crazy but that wasn’t going to stop me. So, I got up the courage to ask the trainers at Push if they’d consider allowing me to participate alongside the contestants and find out first hand what it’s like to have an opportunity to change my life.

They said yes.

“Now you’ve done it,” the voice shouted.

And so my journey begins.