Adam Hurtado and Aaron Thompkins Made Me Cry



Aaron Thompkins (left) and Adam Hurtado (right)
speak at the YMCA's Activate Butler County event.
Jan. 15, 2011



I’ve never watched “The Biggest Loser” before, but I will now. I was fortunate enough to hear Adam Hurtado and Aaron Thompkins speak at a YMCA event yesterday and found myself stunned, inspired, and finally, moved to tears. Here in front of me were two healthy-looking happy young men standing next to life-sized posters of them “Before”.

The publicity statement said Hurtado had started the show at 402 pounds and was able to lose 182 pounds or 45.27 percent of his body weight. Thompkins weighed in at 468 pounds,  and lost 172 pounds, losing 36.75 percent of his body weight.

Hurtado cried as he spoke about watching his mother die from diabetes complications. It moved him to change his life; he didn’t want to let obesity and bad health kill him the way it had her.

Thompkins talked about childhood: his alcoholic father and the emotional pain that he suppressed with food. He’d thought he was so different than his father, then realized that he was an addict, too, using food instead of alcohol. He says obesity was just a symptom of the problem, it was not the problem itself. The problem was the issues he’d never dealt with; the issues that lead him to have low self-esteem and bad eating habits.

“I’d cried maybe twice in my life before I went on the show,” Thompkins said. Then he laughed and said the producers of “The Biggest Loser” knew what buttons to push and what questions to ask. It drove home his belief that obesity is about much more than food.

Hurtado and Thompkins talked a lot about the behind-the-scenes workings of the show and credit the show with getting them healthy both emotionally and physically. They said what the audience doesn’t see is that doctors monitored them through every workout, stopping them if their bodies were becoming too stressed.  They also worked extensively with psychologists on the show, and that made all the difference.

Both Thompkins and Hurtado talked about the psychological and emotional changes that affected them after the show. When Hurtado went back to California a thinner man, he was able to relate to his physically-fit brother in a way he never could before. “He was so proud of me,” he said. He finds their new relationship much more spiritual now that he has the self-confidence he’d lacked his whole life.

Thompkins inspired his entire family. He said sisters, cousins and aunts went to his wife’s house to work-out and then watch the show. They were all in it together and he says he is re-inspired by them.

But what brought me to tears wasn’t the recounting of painful childhoods or yo-yo dieting and weight loss trials and tribulations. It was the fact that they feel blessed that they can inspire others. The YMCA director said that he’d never seen anything like it. They went to an elementary school where Hurtado spoke to 4^th graders and the kids were absolutely starstruck. I can understand that. Hurtado has been elevated to celebrity status for changing his life and getting healthy. And he and Thompkins don’t take that for granted at all. That made me cry. Because they told the crowd that they can't backslide. They have an obligation to stay healthy for everyone who believes in them; for everyone inspired to take steps toward being healthy like them; for their families so that they can continue to be with them; and most importantly, for themselves. Losing weight wasn’t about looking good; it was about staying alive.