"The Biggest Loser": Catching up with Season 7's Sione Fa

Contestants on "The Biggest Loser" learn to celebrate their small successes on the road to weight loss, and it's not that Sione Fa doesn't believe in that concept. It's just that for him, personally, failure has been a much better teacher.

Sione gained 60 pounds within eight months of the Season 7 finale, which aired in May of 2009. He stepped off the scale in Los Angeles at 226, down 146 pounds from his starting weight of 372, and plunged back into real life -- a bit too hard.

He found himself at what turned out to be a life-defining crossroads.

"I gained those 60 pounds, and I could either say, 'Oh, I'm not going to go out anymore and tell my story and stay home and pout about this and say, 'Life is crappy. Biggest Loser screwed me. I don't know what to do,' " Sione said. "Or I could say, 'Listen. I've gained some weight, but I am on this journey for the long run.'

"I took control, and I took that weight back off, and I feel like that was the best thing that could have happened to me after the show. That's exactly what put me where I am today."

Sione, today, is one of "The Biggest Loser" franchise's most active and recognizable ambassadors. He works as a trainer at The Biggest Loser Resort in Ivins, Utah, and when he's not leading "Last Chance Workout" classes or engineering emotional "graduation" ceremonies for the guests, he travels the country visiting various health and wellness conferences and expos.

His job is to help others get on the path toward a healthier lifestyle. His most important message to those people is this: long-term success means learning how to fail.

"That's the difference between my life before 'The Biggest Loser' and now, is that I have a plan for when I fail," Sione said. "That's what I tell people, I say, 'Listen, that's great you have a plan now, and you should have a plan. You need those plans in place in order to succeed. But everybody forgets to make the plan for when you fail. What plan do you have to get back on track?'

"Everybody is like, 'Oh I'm going to lose 30 pounds!' 'Oh, I'm going to climb Mt. Everest!' Well, what if you don't? What if you only hit 22 pounds, how is your reaction? Everybody does these timeline things, and the moment they fall off, they give up. They throw away the piece of paper. They throw the plan away and say, 'Oh, this doesn't work.' When really, you have to go, 'O.K., well I fell off track. I'm human. Now what am I going to do from this point on? O.K., I'll just get back on track. Here we go, let's do it.' And that's your plan."

Sione said that since he had that initial 60-pound, post-show wake-up call, he has had to engage his failure plan "hundreds of times." Every time he ate too much, or ate "the wrong" kind of food, or veered away from his fitness regimen, he would feel tempted to just continue down the slippery slope.

But he didn't. He decided he was going to take his journey day-by-day, and if he screwed up one day, he wasn't going to let it bleed into the next.

Sione said it took him seven months to lose the 60 pounds, and "I took it off slow, but I took it off happy. I took it off knowing that I was going to fail, and when I failed...let's say I went out for dinner on a Friday and unleashed the inner beast and chowed down on everything. Well, what happens is, on Saturday morning, I'm in the the gym, paying the price.

"The old me would have said, 'Ugh. I'm just going to eat on Saturday, because I totally screwed up, and I'll start again on Monday.' And then Monday comes and you make it half a day and it's like, 'Oh, forget it.' "

In that sense, Sione definitely can relate to the guests he trains at The Biggest Loser Resort. He also can relate to feeling like a slave to the scale.

So, what does he weigh today? Sione, a married father of a son and daughter, said he's hovering between 245 and 250 pounds. But he can still fit into the clothes he wore post-finale, so "I really don't care about the number. Numbers suck."

"I will forever be attached to my beginning and finale weights," he continued, "and it doesn't matter what I do in life, people will see me eating a cheeseburger and they'll say, 'Oh, you're not doing so well, are you?' And I want to knock them out. People see that you're on 'The Biggest Loser' and they expect this chicken-and-vegetables diet that isn't realistic to most people. I'll be the first to admit that I still enjoy the foods I like, but the difference with me now is that I'm in control, and I get back on track."

His proudest moments as a trainer at the resort are when guests come in talking nothing but numbers -- they want to lose 10, 20, 30 pounds -- and leave talking about what they want to do with the rest of their lives.

That, to Sione, is a successful mindset.

"It's hard for everybody to find that mindset," he said. "It's an individual thing. I think 'Biggest Loser' opened the door for me to be on that path to find that mindset. And that's what I try to tell people, I'm like, 'Listen, you're not going to get cured in a month. You could even lose the weight you want and you still won't be cured. You have to realize that the power is within you. Nobody is going to wake up for you, nobody is going to do the workout for you, nobody is going to do anything for you that's going to benefit you, your health and your physical strength in the long run.'

"...Once you realize that you're in control and you have the power to succeed every day, that's actually when you feel empowered."