Planning is Key for Biggest Loser Season 16 Winner Toma Dobrosavljec

Toma Dobrosavljec confidently strides on stage Thursday night at the Biggest Loser season 16 finale. Credit: Vivian Zink/NBC

When the confetti fell on Biggest Loser season 16 winner Toma Dobrosavljevic, we couldn’t wait to talk to him and ask him how he plans on maintaining his 171-pound loss, how he plans on spending that quarter of a million bucks, his plans for his fitter life and any words of wisdom to pass on.

We learned that he ascribes to the adage “fail to plan, plan to fail.”

“I’ve kind of blocked off 90 minutes a day for myself to concentrate on health and wellness,” the Chicagoan said in a conference call. “It’s going to be my time to work out, exercise, plan my days, make sure I have basically a good plan in place.”

He admitted his concern over maintaining his weight-loss but his daily planning time will help keep him on the straight and narrow.

“If I don’t do that, I think there’s a good chance that I could fall back into my past things,” the 33-year-old former teen soccer player said.

Those “past things” included a lot of drive-thrus.

“Before I was eating a lot of fast food, nothing really good,” he said. “I’ve kind of cut all of that out of my system now. As far as foods now that I like, I love breakfast foods. I really look forward to breakfast. I used to skip breakfast a lot and now it’s my favorite meal of the day.”

So we asked: What’s for breakfast, Toma?

“I love having an egg white omelet with some lean ground turkey in there and some onions and some different seasonings,” he said. “I love avocado. I just feel like since I’ve removed a lot of sugar and stuff and processed foods from my diet, I feel like a lot of vegetables have become a lot more sweet than I realized and even fruits now — you know, I never really thought I’d love fruit as much as I do. But it really, truly is a treat when I do eat it.”

Aside from exercising and eating well, Dobrosavljevic said that getting a good night’s sleep is another skill he learned at the ranch.

“[Sleep] was the one thing that I was really, really surprised with,” he said. “Obviously eating well, working out — those are two really important things. Getting enough rest is also the third part of that whole pyramid. I’m definitely going to try to get into a schedule where I can get my seven-and-a-half to eight-and-a-half hours of sleep and there’s no reason why I shouldn’t, especially if I lay out my schedule for the week and, you know, plan accordingly.”

As for that $250,000 prize, don’t expect Dobrosavljevic to blow it on gold-plated running shoes or anything.

He’s planning on repaying his bosses at work for the money they loaned him while he was working to win that prize. “I wouldn’t be here today without them,” he said. He also wants to take care of student loans and help his mother pay down her mortgage. But there is one thing he’s going to set aside cash for.

“Definitely a new wardrobe,” he said with a laugh. “I think I’m a little short on some clothes.”

Let’s take a power walk down memory lane and look at Toma’s Biggest Loser journey.