But she resisted the urge to take her habits to an extreme, one way or the other. She incorporated as much of what she learned at the ranch into her daily life as she could, in terms of clean eating and regular exercise. Slowly but surely, as the year went on, Irene started to even out a little bit. I look like &%#$' (there's the Irene we know and love!) And he would be like, 'No, you don't!' But I had this distorted idea of myself, like I had gained 10 pounds, but I felt like I was right back at 255. I would tell Jason 'I don't want to go out. I was, like, consumed by what people thought about how I looked. "And then just being on the show, and being on a show like that, it magnified it. "I was already neurotic about what I looked like," she says. She says she was so self-conscious that she was afraid to go out and have fun with her friends. She feverishly followed every little fluctuation on the scale, weighing herself multiple times every day, and let the numbers mess with her head. Irene, like the vast majority of her "Biggest Loser" sisters and brothers, gained some weight in the months following finale. Or, more specifically, the tag of "Silent Ninja," which was given to Irene by affectionate viewers. On the other hand, most of us don't have to muddle through while also wearing the tag of "weight-loss reality show contestant." Finding balance is one of the most difficult things to do in life. It just took me a while to get it, you know?"
There's a time and a place for everything.
"So, I just had to figure out a way to balance everything out. That's one sure way to get back to where I was. So when I got home, I wasn't working out 10 hours a day, but I was up two or three days at a time writing papers, and it's like, that's not how I'm supposed to live my life. All along, what I really needed to work on was balance. "My personality, as it is, is all or nothing. "I was programmed to be eating minimally and working out 10-12 hours a day, and that's not real life," says Irene, 28, who's finishing up her degree in anthropology at Portland State University. She says she went on the show with an extremist personality, which on the one hand helped her thrive in the extreme ranch environment, but also made it difficult to readjust once she left that environment.