Michael Ventrella came as the Biggest Loser contestant in history and left as the winner of the show. To weigh half his body and win $250,000 was not that easy. Despite Michael having 526 pounds as his starting weight, his willpower and competitive nature made him stay up to the finale and won after he lost a the highest percentage of bodyweight (50.19 percent) between his competitors Ashley Johnston and Daris George. He said “As an Italian family, we use our food and eating as a social way of staying close. And being able to go there and change my habits and changing my mother’s habits ripples into our family and friends because that’s our way of celebrating.”
The 31-year-old is now down to 262 pounds and states that the biggest lesson he learned was that in order to help other people, he needed to help himself. He said, “I was always putting other people before me, [but] I couldn’t really help anybody if I was sick or I was dead. I learned how to focus on me, what my body needed and what I needed to sustain life and live happily. Look what happened from me focusing on myself and setting an example. … I can’t articulate how amazing it feels to be able to get that return. On top of everything that I’ve done for myself, I’ve been able to help other people.”
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