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Surrey's 'Biggest Loser' wins $100k

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Jordan Alicandro

SURREY — It's 3 p.m. on a Tuesday and Jordan Alicandro is suiting up for his workout at Surrey's Tong Louie YMCA. This daily after-work ritual is actually his second workout of the day. He hits the gym in the mornings before work, then comes back for another 90 minutes of exercise after putting in his eight hours.

The 32-year-old sales manager of a door-and-window supply company recently lost 143 pounds, coming down to an athletic 180 from 323.

"I've lost an entire Backstreet Boy," he jokes, preparing for a personal-training session.

In person, Alicandro is virtually unrecognizable from the "before" photo handed out by NBC, the TV network responsible for The Biggest Loser, a reality series that depicts morbidly overweight people getting healthier and dropping weight in a bid to be, well, the biggest loser.

"I applied (to the show) three years ago and I made a video," he explains, "and I never heard anything back. Literally two years later, me and my wife were talking about it and I was thinking, 'Should I do this again?'" An ex-baseball player, Alicandro was benched with an injury in his senior year of high school. Then he was hit again with another injury, this time from snowboarding; while rehabilitating that injury, he tore his ACL while playing golf. That's where things slowly spiraled out of control for him.

"It wasn't just like I started eating my life away, but slowly over the next 10 years I put on 20 pounds here, 30 pounds there," he says. "Eventually, it just got to the point where it was just out of control and I just couldn't stop it."

A self-proclaimed strong Christian, Alicandro and his wife prayed about being let on the show, and miraculously got a phone call the next day.

"It was one of those times, you just have goosebumps. We were like, 'OK, did that just happen?'" he says.

"They said, 'We're looking for former athletes and we think you'd be a good fit.' One thing led to the next and I ended up flying down to L.A. with about 50 other possible contestants and just hit it out of the park."

Though Alicandro didn't, in fact, end up being the biggest loser, he was sent home from "the ranch" $100,000 richer in October, and 100 pounds slimmer. He lost the extra 40-plus pounds after continuing with his weight-loss regime at home.

"What happens is, if you watch the show, you get eliminated on the show, you go home and you compete in the at-home challenge," he explains.

Though some have criticized The Biggest Loser for what can be considered an "unhealthy, rapid weight-loss," Alicandro attests he did it the healthy way, and he'd "do it again in a heartbeat."

"What if I didn't lose any weight at all? That's unhealthier. Me being 323 pounds, pre-diabetic, a fattened liver - it was one step away from being foie gras, you know," he says.

"We were watched by doctors and by trainers. That was my full-time job. I was able to work out."

Taking his new vitality for health, Alicando has now cut dairy and wheat from his diet, and works out six days per week. The best thing for him, he says, is being able to model a healthy lifestyle for his four-month-old son.

"I was really blessed to be able to be there for the birth of my son," he says.

"I got to be there and we had the birth at the Peace Arch Hospital and he's been the greatest joy of my life, even more so than the $100,000," he says.

kalexandra@thenownewspaper.com