Weight-Loss Wisdom From The Biggest Loser’s Mike Murburg

From the moment The Biggest Loser viewers met former Ivy League wrestler Mike Murburg, we were inspired by his work ethic and touched by the promise he made to his late son to turn his health around.

And when we talked with him last week after his elimination on the show, we were even more impressed. The 58-year-old disability lawyer, who lives in the Tampa, Fla. area, was a veritable font of knowledge and shared a little of how he was able to lose 120 pounds, even while injured a lot of the time on the ranch.

“I’d blown my knee out,” he said. “You don’t see me in a lot of the videos because Mike is in the pool seven hours a day. About the only thing they could do is film me either swimming clockwise or counter clockwise or doing a couple other specialized exercises that I was doing to rehab the knee.”

It was rehabbing in the pool, on the recumbent bicycle and in the physical therapy room that kept his weight-loss strong. What other tips and words of wisdom does Mike have?

Make Workouts a Time to Connect

“If you want to find me and if you want to socialize, we’ll get together at the gym, okay? We’ll do a workout at the gym.”

Progress Isn’t a Straight Line

“No matter when you start or what you do, you’re going to have relapses; everybody gets them. So my philosophy is two steps forward for every step back.”

Confront Your Demons

“Food is just a symptom of a deeper problem. So the poem [read on last week’s show] I would hope helps somebody recognize that — admit your frailty, admit your failings, go for the deeper problem, cure it first and then everything else will go away with exercise, and it does and it did for me and it continues to be that way.”

Every Bite Counts

“I realized that in the 75 pounds I gained before my son died, it took me 25 years to gain 75 pounds. That’s an excess of only 28 calories a day.”

Success Can Happen at Any Age

“When Dolvett comes up to me and he says, ‘Look I want seven hours out of you today,’ I just thought he was crazy, I was like, ‘Look I’m turning 59 soon. Seven hours, really?’ And, you know, at the end of the day I had 7 1/2 in. I mean, what people who are 40 and over have to realize is they can do this, and the only thing stopping them from doing it is their mindset that they can’t.”

If you want more words of wisdom from Mike, he has a great Facebook fan page, where he shares loads of tips on cooking, food prep, motivation and inspiration — as well as quotes from Goethe, Confucius and Buddha.

Oh, and that poem he read to Bob Harper last week? We got a copy of it, and here it is:

Poem: Mike Murburg, Photo: Trae Patton/NBC

What inspires you? —Gail