Reporting Live, Losing Weight: 

When you’re overweight, if feels like everyone is watching you. In Josh DeVine’s case, they are.

 

“It’s actually really irritating when I run into someone on the street or in the gym and they say I look better in person than I do on television,” says the TV news reporter and anchor for ABC-12, a local station in central Michigan. “What it feels like they’re saying is that I look like crap on TV.”

 

It’s said that the camera adds 10 pounds, but DeVine says HD widescreen sets make it look more like 20 or 25. And this Belly Off! member should know: He’s on camera quite a bit, doing field reporting on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and sitting at the anchor desk for the weekend news. He’s chipping away at the camera-added pounds with Belly Off!, but chasing the news didn’t leave him much time to think about healthy living.

 

“That’s the question for me: How do you meet the demands of any fitness program while trying to meet the deadlines of the day?” the 27-year old asks. It’s a puzzle that’s vexed him since college, when his reporting—and rushed eating—began. “I had a very warped sense of what it is to be healthy. I was eating like crap, but thought I could just go to the gym and work it off.”

 

That wasn’t the case, however, and the temptation to eat poorly only grew as his stories got bigger. He’s put pounds on since—up to 225 on his 5-foot-10 frame when he joined Belly Off! in December.

 

“It’s so easy to fall off the wagon when you’re with photographers, who aren’t necessarily as image-conscious as on-camera guys,” he says. “They love to just pull the van up to McDonald’s or Burger King.”

 

When he’s not on the road, his weekend anchor schedule doesn’t help much, either. To be on the air for the morning news, DeVine is up at 2:30 a.m.

 

“In my mind, I feel like I should be having breakfast, but I should really actually be asleep,” he says. If he waits until 9 a.m. to eat, though, he’s ravenous and chows down on junk. That—and the subsequent weight gain—can leave him feeling down on the air.

 

“When you anchor a morning show, you’re supposed to be upbeat, positive, and cheerful,” he says. “There have been mornings when I sat down and I haven’t felt that good. [The unhealthy eating] makes it that much more difficult to ramp up my energy.”

 

On other days, DeVine got self-conscious about the bulge: “I’d sit down to the anchor desk and notice things were puckering a little with my suit. I’d do this cover-the-waist-with-the-forearm move when the camera was on me.”

 

Carrying a few extra pounds can do more than just affect his confidence and job performance at the station, too: It’s directly related to his ability to advance.

 

“If you don’t think a news director who is hiring is going to think about how you look, you’re delusional,” he says. “The industry is so competitive that you really need to look at how you look. You’re not going to find a lot of overweight people in the larger markets.”

 

Since starting the Belly Off! program, though, DeVine is feeling more chipper at the anchor desk: He’s curbing morning cravings with a handful of almonds in the wee hours, making better decisions in the news van with Eat This, Not That!, and updating a tired workout regimen with Craig Ballantyne’s bodyweight challenges.

 

“I used to be a guy who just ran on the track,” DeVine says. “I’ve started to implement some of the exercises from the Belly Off! program into circuits with cardio. I’ll do some jump rope, then mix in some squats, pushups, and lunges. I’ve merged the program with what I was doing to help tone up.”

 

In his first three weeks, DeVine didn’t step on the scale, but he felt measurable changes in his body, anyway: “My clothes have started to fit better, especially my suits around the waist.”

 

When he did jump on the scale, his results—6 pounds lost—were seriously encouraging. His response? “Rock on!”

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