‘BIGGEST LOSER’ | Bartlett’s Michael Ventrella enjoying the ride of his life

For months, he’s been training like a professional athlete on NBC’s hit weight loss reality game show “The Biggest Loser,” and now, Bartlett native Michael Ventrella, who took home the title as the biggest loser last week, plans to celebrate like one with a trip this week to an amusement park.

You can forget about mouse ears; Ventrella isn’t going to Disney World. The 31 year-old has his eyes on the roller coasters at Six Flags Great America in Gurnee.

“I’m looking forward to riding a roller coaster and being a kid for the first time in my life,” he says. “I now have a smaller waist at 31 than I did at 13 or 14.”

He will get a taste of celebrity, too.

“The real cool thing is I just got a call and ‘Access Hollywood’ wants to film me riding a roller coaster,” he says.

Ventrella still can’t quite believe the win, much less the accompanying celebrity.

“I’m just some fat guy who happened to win a reality show,” he says.

Ventrella was the biggest loser in more ways than one. When he began the show, he weighed 525 pounds, making him the heaviest contestant in the series’ history.

He finished the show weighing 262 pounds, losing more than half of his starting body weight to claim not only the show’s top $250,000 prize, but also the show’s record for most weight ever lost.

The runner-up, 28 year-old Ashley Johnston, finished with a weight of 191 (48.93 percent of her body weight lost).

Johnston was more than just a competitor, though.

“When we first met, there was an instant connection,” Ventrella says. “She knows who she is, she’s loud and she’s funny. I had been on plenty of dates with thin girls, fat girls and girls of every color and I could immediately tell Ashley was a diamond in the rough. And now, she is as beautiful on the outside as she always was on the inside.”

Despite a strong connection, Ventrella says a romantic relationship is out of the question for now.

“My love life is non-existent. The only thing I’m learning to love is myself and that’s the only thing I have time for right now. I haven’t done that ever. I never learned how to respect myself, respect my body and take care of me, so before I learn to love somebody else I need to learn how to love myself. And I’m not completely there yet because I’m still not done with my journey.”

A record-shattering starting weight and a potential romance were just several of the hurdles he had to face while filming the show, though. While filming, Ventrella’s grandmother died, and his family –including his mother Maria who had been sent home off the show some weeks earlier– attempted to keep the information from him until after the show was over.

“She wasn’t just my grandmother, she was like my second mom who raised me while my mom was at work,” he says. “I understand why they did what they did. I found out shortly before I learned I was in the final two, and the blank look on my face says it all.”

Just as he was breaking down emotionally, Ventrella says “The Biggest Loser” trainer Bob Harper helped him keep it together.

“He spoke with me here and there and tried to keep me upbeat and positive given the situation,” he says.

His grandmother’s untimely death wasn’t the only loss, either.

“My sister totaled my car. My place got flooded, and everything is destroyed. I don’t even have a bed to sleep on. I feel like so much of me has been destroyed,” he says. “Weight isn’t the only thing I have lost in this whole process. Everything just seemed to crumble down around me while I was competing.”

To keep from falling apart, Ventrella says he did the only thing he could think to –work out.

“All these losses pushed me to win, but especially my grandmother’s,” he says. “I was going to get back every year she lost because of her own obesity and add it to my own.”

And he says he’s not quite done losing weight yet. He plans to start lifting weights and adding muscle.

“I want to eventually pose for a men’s fitness magazine,” he says. “That, and I’d like to put out a healthy cookbook or start a healthy cooking show.”

Jillian Michaels wasn’t born looking like a TV weight-loss coach.

“I know what it’s like to be overweight,” says the “Biggest Loser” taskmaster. “I was at my heaviest after my parents’ divorce when I was about 12 or 13 years old. I was about 175 and five feet tall, so roughly two to three inches shorter than I am now and about 60 pounds heavier than I am now.”

She blames genetics. “Some of us are predisposed to gaining weight when we don’t eat properly while others can get way with murder, which I’m very bitter about even to this day,” she jokes.

On her new NBC show “Losing It with Jillian Michaels,” debuting at 9 p.m. Tuesday on WMAQ-Channel 5, she tries to transform the lives of families with unhealthy habits.

Q. How much weight gain comes from having parents with a “little extra” around the middle?

A. My father was overweight, and I learned the behavior of bonding over food and late-night eating and being rewarded with food. I learned food is love and all that stuff. Then after my parents’ divorce, my mom got me into martial arts. Yes, I was like the loser kid, but martial arts really turned things around for me over time. Mind you, this didn’t happen right away.”

Q. What is the common thread with the families you counsel in your new show?

A. In this show you will see how physical health and emotional health are really symptoms of deeper problems. We deal with “the why,” which we do on “Biggest Loser” as well, but you don’t see as much of it. I think of this show as the behind the scenes of “Biggest Loser.’” We see why they got unhealthy and all the tools we implement for them to use at home. Food has become this thing to comfort the pain because no one is talking.

Q. What was it like to move in with the families?

A. All of these families were ashamed to show me what was in the fridge, ashamed to make the foods they normally eat. That’s when we realized that the show wasn’t about calories and crunches. It was more about what the breakdown is and how come people aren’t living their dreams and pursuing their destinies and living their best lives. After doing the pilot, the show changed and it became kind of a life makeover. I don’t think that I have cried so much in my entire life. I mean, every week I’m hysterically crying.

Q. What is the starting point for anyone wrestling with weight issues?

A. First, identify your source of motivation because this won’t be easy. Identify the why of getting healthy. If you have a “why” to live for you can tolerate any “how.” The how is gutting the house, watching your calories, eating broccoli instead of French fries, going to the gym for an hour five days a week and making that time. Identify something that you enjoy doing as an individual or as a family whether it’s dancing with your husband on Thursday or coaching your son’s basketball team and helping him practice. Make fitness fun.

Q. Who are your favorite celebrity fitness role models?

A. I kind of love Beyonce. She’s got a really beautiful body and she’s not obsessive about it. It seems like she has a very healthy attitude about her shape and her figure. I’ve always admired Jennifer Aniston because I think that she’s fit and she takes good care of herself, as far as I know.

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