News

Bob Harper is in a hotel room in downtown Toronto, giving a "little bit of Bob."

That's what he calls his ability to connect to people in a meaningful way. From Clarksville, a small town in Tennessee, all the way to Hollywood, that "little bit of Bobbing" has helped to turn him into a big fat deal.

A personal trainer to celebrities, including Guy Ritchie, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller, Selma Blair and Jenny McCarthy, Mr. Harper is one of the coaches on NBC's The Biggest Loser, a program that combines one of the United States' greatest attributes (the competitive spirit) with one of its greatest problems (obesity).

In the reality hit that is entering its fifth season, teams of severely overweight Americans compete to see which side can lose the most weight.

"The greatest thing I try to teach people is that diets don't fail. What goes wrong is that people think that when they've lost all the weight, they've won and reached their goal. But I tell them ... there's no finish line here. Life goes on after the wedding dress; life goes on after you have gotten into those skinny jeans that you worked so hard to get into. I want to give them the tools to go back to as opposed to having them think, 'Now I've lost the weight so now I can go back to the way I've always lived.' "

Despite his celebrity, Mr. Harper does not have an overweight opinion of himself, and that can be attributed to his devotion to Kabbalah, the Madonna-endorsed mystical Jewish philosophy.

"My way is very spiritual," he says brightly in his jeans, shirt, blazer and Hermès sport shoes. His new book Are You Ready offers several chapters on how people can work on their "inner compass" to understand what prompts them to overeat.

"I call the contestants [on The Biggest Loser] my kids. To me, it is such a rewarding feeling, such a blessing. I get to take care of them; motivate them. It's extremely intimate. ... I am their wife, their husband, their brother or their sister."

Mr. Harper has never been overweight, but he felt lost in his youth and that understanding of uncertainty and fear, which sometimes led to emotional eating, is what he uses to help motivate people who are trapped in their enormous bodies.

The youngest of three children, he was 13 when his parents divorced. His mother remarried and moved away. He went to live with his father, who also remarried. By the time he graduated from high school, he needed to be out on his own. "I never had a good relationship with my father," is all he will say. With little money and no opportunity to go to college, he set out for Nashville and got a job in a bank, helping people fill out credit forms.

"I was so unsure of what I was supposed to be doing. I never did sports in high school. Fitness wasn't even on my radar." But one day on his way home on a bus to his small apartment, he saw a gym called Exercise Plus. "The sign was always lit up, even at night, and this little beacon would just call to me." He decided to go in and began to take classes. He became a regular, and soon the owner of the studio asked him to be a trainer and part-time manager, prompting him to quit his job at the bank. "The gym became my income and my world." Three years later, he got in his car and headed for Los Angeles.

"It was the scariest thing I ever did. I didn't know what I was driving into. And this is really what I try to talk to people about. I understand about people being afraid to make change, to be paralyzed by fear. I know what it's like to think, 'I am safe working here at the bank.' But I knew there was something more. I teach people that you find the truest clarity in life in the free fall of it."

When he arrived in Los Angeles, he sought out work in the high-end gyms where celebrities work out. His first celebrity client was Jennifer Jason Leigh. "It all came through word of mouth," he says, adding that the issue of trust with celebrities was key. "They know I would never talk to anybody." The work paid well, and for several years he was content with what he was doing. "But just before Biggest Loser started, I was really needing something more. I wasn't fulfilling something in my soul," he says earnestly.

He was contemplating a move to New York to become a photographer. "At that moment, it was like God reached over and tapped me on the shoulder. I got a phone call from NBC about Biggest Loser," he says. The audition process was six weeks; he had to work with various executives at NBC to prove how effective he was as a personal trainer. Still, he intuitively knew that the job would be his, he says. "When I finally got the call to say I got it, I was [thinking], like, 'Duh, what took you so long to figure it out?'

"It all became crystal clear to me when I saw the average Americans coming down the stairs [on the show]. They were these mothers and fathers and I was, like, I get it. It was something that was just in my soul. I knew why God put me here," he says.

Mr. Harper speaks about his life in the manner of someone who adopts and rarely questions popular remedies found in self-help books, on television or in tabloid coverage of celebrity lifestyles.

"I think that when you grow up the way I did in a family that was very disjointed and disconnected, you strive to look for something that you didn't get in your childhood. I think that's what life is about," he says about the purpose he feels in connecting with average Americans.

Has his father come back into his life now that he is such a success? "No, he's nothing if not consistent," the 42-year-old explains.

Mr. Harper has clearly Bobbed himself. There is little that he doesn't seem capable of resolving and accepting within himself - even obvious contradictions.

He finds no irony in the fact that the very things he says people should avoid if they want to lose weight - a negative attitude and a tendency to be self-critical - are what the show encourages in its format of rejecting those who don't lose enough, quickly enough.

And despite his message that inner calm and discipline, which he has worked hard to achieve, are all that is necessary for a fit and healthy lifestyle, Mr. Harper works with a personal trainer. He laughs loudly, tipping back in his chair, as he confesses, "I work with him four or five times a week."