With every step, a move toward victory

Each second of every day, Toeutu Faaleava racks his brain to solve complex formulas.

He contemplates a route to and from the Goose Hallow MAX station, where he rides to work at Portland State every day, in order to maximize the number of steps he takes. He considers how much of a workout he could get by strolling over to a colleague’s office instead of shooting them an e-mail. He parks his car as far away from store entrances as possible.

“I try to create new ways to lose weight, and integrate them into my daily routine,” Faaleava said.

Faaleava, the director of the McNair Program at Portland State, is using these strategies to help him defend his title in Portland State’s Biggest Loser competition.

In the inaugural PSU Fit Club competition last year, a weight-loss challenge modeled after the hit NBC reality show The Biggest Loser, Faaleava lost 27 pounds, the largest weight-loss mark among the nearly 100 competitors.

Unfortunately, over the course of the last year, most of the weight came back.

With a new competition partner, Mark Gregory, at his side, the former champion is competing in the challenge to get back into shape.

He’s competing because Faaleava, 52, said he frankly stopped thinking. He let his guard down, taking shortcuts to the transit stop and writing e-mails instead of commuting to a co-worker’s office.

The result: Faaleava gained about two-thirds of the weight back. He says this is the reason for his constant thinking and supreme determination.

“I can tell you, Faaleava is phenomenally intense,” said Gregory, associate vice president for planning, partnerships and technology at PSU. “He is going to be pushing me in this competition quite a bit.”

Faaleava and Gregory’s team name is “Five pounds a week,” the amount of weight the duo aspires to drop each week.

Scott Fabian, strength and conditioning coach for Portland State athletics, believes incorporating a workout into the rigors of one’s day is an excellent idea. He suggests taking the stairs whenever possible and maintaining a high activity level throughout the day.

However, Fabian stresses that this brand of workout may not be effective for everyone.

“It’s like different strokes for different folks,” Fabian said. “Usually you have to try two or three different workouts first. Once you find something that works for you, go back to it.”

Faaleava, a stout man who is typically seen smiling on campus, said he remembers being in good shape up until about 10 years ago. An avid athlete, Faaleava participated in an array of sports such as rugby, football, baseball and soccer during his younger years. And, as if playing sports was not enough, he also used the military to stay fit.

At 23, Faaleava moved from his home country of Samoa to the Bay Area in California. Shortly after, he enlisted in the military, where he was assigned to the Marines and spent four years as a corpsman.

When his stint in the military ended, Faaleava went back to school, attending the University of California, Berkeley, for his bachelor’s, law and doctorate degrees, finishing up with the public management program at Harvard.

But it was after Faaleava graduated with his multitude of degrees that he began to gain weight.

“I was still eating like I was 20-something, but I wasn’t anymore,” Faaleava said. “When you’re young, you don’t think about it.”

Faaleava’s life had changed significantly, but his eating habits had not. Now he was married to his wife, Sarah, and was a father, after they brought their daughter, Lel, into the world. This prompted another change. With his daughter around, Faaleava said, he was unable to work and was a stay-at-home dad for a couple of years, which he says was the best time of his life.

All of the new family obligations meant a reduced amount of time for his usual sources of exercise: playing sports and practicing martial arts.

Fabian, who has been a conditioning coach for 10 years, said it is common for individuals to continue with the same diet despite a significant decline in exercise. And Fabian has a simple solution for the problem.

“You just have to burn more calories than you take in. This ensures that you are not storing them,” he said.

Faaleava estimates he has lost about 70 pounds in the past decade, and is determined to slim down by partaking in the Biggest Loser competition. He has already won the title of biggest loser once, and has his sights set on doing it again. But this time, his ultimate goal has changed slightly.

“This time I just want to lose the weight and keep it off,” Faaleava said.