How to lose 1.6 million pounds in 6 months

MANILA, Philippines — For most of our professional career, my wife, Coach Toni, and I have been helping hundreds of people, organizations and corporations get more active, eat better, lose weight, and become healthier.

As coaches of the hit TV show, The Biggest Loser Pinoy Edition, we have been constantly bombarded with requests for help from our fellow Filipinos all over the country and even abroad.

So for the past decades and with the help of corporate wellness partners, we were able to create various health and fitness programs all over the country — from running clinics to fitness camps, dance marathons and weight loss challenges. We ended up creating the biggest health and fitness community in the country.

Despite the success of our programs, we have only managed to reach thousands of Filipinos. With approximately 30 million overweight to obese Filipinos, we knew we still had a lot of work to do, and we had to create new campaigns that can reach more Filipinos.

Sometime in May 2017, while going for a run along Roxas Boulevard, Coach Toni suddenly had an idea of how much fun it would be if the entire country were trying to lose weight together. As we have seen in all our fitness camps, like-minded people training together magnify the success rate exponentially.

So an idea was born. However, it was just a hollow shell. “How do we get started? Why will people join? How will they get weighed?”

Then another idea popped up during our run, “How about challenging Filipinos to lose weight?” and “How about challenging the entire country to lose weight?”

As Lifestyle Ambassadors of the Philippine Heart Association (PHA), we have the opportunity to seek advice from our country’s top cardiologists. Without as much as a PowerPoint presentation or even a business plan, we simply invited the PHA to help us jumpstart this campaign we called the The Fit Filipino National Weight Loss Challenge (FitFil Challenge) by pledging to donate weight. After explaining the idea that we had, answering all their queries and taking note of all their recommendations, the PHA Board officially accepted the challenge and pledged a donation of 2,000 pounds from the organization.

The FitFil Challenge was then officially born!

Fortunately, getting the support of one of the top medical organizations paved the way for the news of the challenge to spread. One by one, other medical organizations started to join and pledge weight until the Philippine Medical Association joined and pledged 100,000 pounds.

From there, the physicians of various corporations started inviting their companies to join the challenge as well. Robinsons Supermarket was the very first private corporation to accept the challenge and pledged 5,000 pounds.

Soon a major milestone happened when we were informed that then PNP Chief Gen. Bato dela Rosa will be leading the entire PNP in pledging 500,000 pounds. The PNP’s participation suddenly took the campaign to a national level.

Parañaque City Mayor Edwin Olivarez’s pledge of 15,000 pounds started the participation of the local government units (LGU). Other LGU’s started to join as well, includng Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte who pledged 10,010 pounds. From there, schools, universities, hospitals, government agencies, BPOs, and NGOs from all over the country joined and pledged more weight.

At the end of the campaign, we were able to get the entire Philippines to collectively donate (lose) a total of 1.6 million pounds, a first in the country and in the entire world.

To this day, we still cannot fathom how a simple idea we had was able to spark the entire country to move. It was nothing short of a miracle. — Jim Saret

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Coach Jim Saret shares his passion in sports, health, and fitness science as a teacher, educator, speaker, lecturer and as a coach.