Danny Cahill weighed 430 pounds when he entered NBC's "The Biggest Loser" contest. By the time the 40-year-old nabbed the $250,000 grand prize in early December, the Broken Arrow land surveyor had dropped 239 pounds.
An inspirational figure to countless people aiming to lose weight, Cahill is also a married father of a 10-year-old boy and an 8-year-old girl. So he's using his newfound celebrity status to inspire other dads.
Saturday morning, a slim Cahill — now a motivational speaker — stood in front of more than 120 people gathered inside the Owasso Chick-fil-A for an All Pro Dad event. All Pro Dad is a national organization "helping men to become better fathers," according to its Web site.
At the outset of Cahill's 15-minute speech, he said, "One of the biggest reasons why I even decided to change my life was because of my kids.
"I tried to coach my son's football team for a few years, and it was so hard being 430-plus pounds — I was up to 450 pounds at one point — I couldn't give my kids everything that they deserved. My weight was affecting everything. My son will attest to that."
Cahill recalled a poignant pre-weight-loss moment with his daughter. "My daughter came in and said, 'Dad, I want to be just like you. And I want to have a big belly.' I thought, 'What kind of role model am I being to my kids?'?"
Cahill said he was so overweight at one point that he couldn't take his son camping.
"Those kind of things really made me think: 'What am I doing here? What do I need to change in order to make the relationship with my kids better than it already is?' Because it wasn't where it needed to be."
To make that life change, Cahill made himself a priority.
"That had to be the turning point," he said. "I'm worth what it takes to give my kids what they need; to give my wife what she needs and to give everyone around me what they need."
These days, meeting all those needs means Cahill must balance the demands of celebrity — he was on "Larry King Live" Thursday night — with his home life in Broken Arrow.
Cahill said he would turn off his cell phone Sunday morning to completely focus on his family
"Make sure you block some time out for your kids, for your wife, for the important things in your life — the things that need to be stable for the rest of your life to happen," he said. "Without that, everything else is just air around you. It's just air."
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.
