I am that girl who never wins anything.

I’m not saying this in an emotional, whinny sort of way either, I am just being honest here, after all I’m about to ask you all for help, so honesty is the best policy.

Alright my Weight Loss friends, here’s the scoop, brutal honesty.

I hate my job. I’ve wanted a new career for about 5 years and really when you weight 420 lbs you’re not exactly the most employable person out there, so I stuck with what I knew and what got my Family through. About a year ago now I started playing with the idea of becoming a personal trainer. At first it was just some fleeting thought, what if I could do that?  That would be cool… But as I got farther and farther into my own weight loss journey, my desire to help others on theirs just kept growing and pretty soon I just knew it was what I had to do. For me and for the people I want to help. When I made this decision almost a year ago, it all seemed overwhelming and I didn’t think that it was even remotely possible. (Read: Crossing Bridges from Dec. 2011) I made a new year’s resolution to tackle 4 HUGE things I would need to accomplish to get this done. As of today, I can say with 99.9{6e74c841b8f362d8aea590534016dc569fd3035eeb9e530df8846b42682c6656} certainty that I have achieved all of those and will have each one marked off my list by the start of 2013.

  • Reconstructive Plastic Surgery – I’ve done 2 of 4 surgeries, the next will be done before the end of the year and the last is just touch-up stuff which will be done in early 2013.
  • A Reliable Car – My car blew up, I bought a new one, bought one specifically to use for my new business venture.
  • ISSA Certification – I’ve not decided for sure if I will go for the ISSA or the ACE but as of 10/15 I have the Money (Thanks to Tora, Colin, Tom and a Savings Bond I won in the 8th grade) and I will be purchasing my certification course as soon as I am ready to start studying when I get home from my skin removal surgery in December.
  • The Equipment – My friends and I launched an IndieGoGo Fundraiser to try to help me raise the funds to start my own business, the fundraiser runs through the end of 2012 and hasn’t done very well at all, but our efforts in doing that did get me my first Sponsor, Northwest Fitness who are donating as much of the Fitness Equipment as they can to my business. Jeff, our contact at Northwest Fitness has been amazing and told us he is pretty sure he can get me everything I need at little or no cost to us.

These were huge goals to take on accomplishing in a year. But I did it. And as I did it, my dream changed. Suddenly I didn’t JUST want to be a Personal Trainer and Weight Loss Motivation Specialist … I mean I do, but I want to do it on even a bigger scale! Suddenly as I got closer and closer to my goal weight, the passion, desire and drive to pursue this just started burning even brighter in me. Before I knew it I was getting more into my blog, social media writing letters to people like Chris Powell and when I actually got a response from him it just made my dream even bigger. (Read: A Letter to Chris Powell)

I started thinking about the things I had dreamed about being when I was a kid. For a while I wanted to be an Actress, then a Talk Show Host, then a Journalist, then a writer. Suddenly I realized that I still dreamed about a lot of those things. The chances of them ever happening and me actually getting noticed enough to do something like that is really slim though.

And suddenly another opportunity presented itself…. I found out about CBS and a new reality show called The Job – CBS describes the show on their website:

From reality show masters Michael Davies (“Who Wants To Be A Millionaire,” “Watch What Happens Live”) and Mark Burnett (“Survivor,” “The Voice”) comes a new reality series, THE JOB, where every week talented candidates are chosen from across the country for a chance to win their dream job at one of America’s most prestigious companies.

Host Lisa Ling guides participants through several rounds of challenges as they compete for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to land the job of their dreams.

So I decided to apply and ask them to give me a shot to win my dream job. I told them my dream job is to have my own Weight Loss Show like Chris Powell … I told them I want to be an Icon in the Weight Loss community.

CBS is the only big network to NOT have a Weight Loss oriented Show and I think it’s time to change that!

But I’m one of those people who enters contests and never wins; that writes letters that never get answered. I always believed before that it was because I was big, big people tend to become invisible to the world as ironic as that is.  For those of you that were overweight as kids you might recall the horror of standing there while teams were picked for some sports game in PE. If you were anything like me you probably wanted to crawl under the nearest rock. All you could think was please don’t pick me last. You just wanted someone to like you, to be your friend, to want you on their team. “Please Pick Me” reverberated through your head. That’s how I feel right now! I don’t want to be overlooked, picked last or end up sitting this one out because of uneven teams! So I am on a mission to make sure that I get noticed here and that I’ve made sure CBS and the Casting Team of The Job has seen me and knows how bad I want this!

Mission #PleasePickMe: Yup that’s right, I’m not that scared “Fat Girl” anymore that is afraid to get noticed or scream to loud and make a spectacle of herself. In fact, I will gladly make a spectacle of myself over and over if it means that I can pursue my dreams of building a new career in a field I love and helping people who I feel especially connected to.  So every day I will be Tweeting using #PleasePickMe trying to get CBS and The Job Casters to pick me for their show and I really hope you will join me. Not just in my mission to get noticed, but in yours as well. Use #PleasePickMe to help you meet your goals and get noticed too. Is this me trying to start a Trend? Is that what this is called? I don’t even know, what I do know is that this is my dream right now, this is something I have to chase, and I’d really appreciate your help. So if you’re feeling like helping that ex-fat girl get noticed, tweet with me, re-tweet for me, and share your own dreams and goals with me using #PleasePickMe