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This week on The Biggest Loser, contestants had to jump through hoops — literally — to avoid being sent home just two weeks before finals.

In a double elimination, Daniel Wright, a student from Willow Spring, N.C., was immediately sent packing after falling below the newly introduced red line. After a heart-wrenching decision between Liz and Shay, who both fell under the yellow line, the contestants decided to send home Shay Sorrells, a social worker from Newport Beach, Calif.

After appearing on The Jay Leno Show to show off their new slimmer selves (watch a clip), Daniel and Shay spoke to reporters about the changes in their lives and what bad habits they’ve kicked since leaving the Biggest Loser Ranch.

Shay, last night Jillian really wanted to push you to get to stay on the ranch and you started crying What was going through your mind at that time??

Shay: Well, I was definitely used to Jillian yelling at me and very used to crying by that point. I think what I realized is that for the first time I really got to the point where I was like, I can do this.   When you’re 476 and you lose 6 pounds, you lose 7 pounds, you’re like, okay, I’m still 400 pounds. The mindset hasn’t clicked in yet.

With Jillian there pushing me and I am so close to losing 100 pounds – this is real. It’s real. It’s a possibility. It’s tangible. It’s so different. And the emotional journey that I took was very different than I think a lot of people on the ranch.     All the weight that you saw coming off every week was so emotional. It was coming out emotionally and the weight was just coming off.    All my workouts they were just very cathartic for me to deal with my past and everything that had happened in my life and just taking it off so that I can run into my future.

Shay, how hard has it been for you to keep up working out, eating healthy, all of that?

Shay: It has been extremely difficult. On the ranch I lost 100 pounds in nine weeks. It’s taken me three times as long to lose 54 pounds at home. It has been extremely difficult. I’m working two jobs. I have my family, my kids. I’m back to normal life. But 54 pounds for the average American in that amount of time is still incredible and I have to think about those things and success in that way.

Daniel, how did the opportunity to go back to the ranch arise and were you worried you’d be targeted because you already kind of had your chance there?

Daniel:   The opportunity came up when I was at the ranch in Season 7.  The producers approached me about doing it – they wanted to offer a second chance – and do a second chance season. They asked if I would you be willing to go and we start filming in three days. I was like, wow. First I’d like to rest but why not. I’ve got so much more weight to lose and I need to go, so absolutely.

I knew that I could be targeted for having the opportunity beforehand and I had internal struggles with that, struggling whether or not I deserved to be there with, you know, 15 other people who had just started a journey rather than me who had already got a head start on his.

What I had to realize to come to the place of understanding was all of us have a journey and they’re all equally important. And when you start comparing yourself with (other) people, you then rob yourself of your joy. So I had to come to terms with it. I have a journey and it’s just as important as everybody else’s.

Daniel, now, do you feel the second time around you did anything different?

Daniel Wright: No, the only differences as far as intensity was as I was able to work out five times harder than I was able to last season. I could actually run and sprint and do all kinds of things and I was just beginning to understand, you know, last season.

This season was just struggling with issues and literally peeling back new layers of myself every 20 to 30 pounds that I had lost and having the courage to go through those things and then targeting the numbers on the scale. And just struggling with my eating disorder,, I think that definitely played out on the show. I would still use food to cope with emotional issues. Getting a handle on that is really what I’ve had to learn and come to terms with this season.

How do you both feel about being a role model to so many people?

Daniel: It’s weird and amazing at the same time because for us we were just normal people when we started. And now to have so many people who have watched our journey and related to all the struggles that we’re going through and have taken our victories and applied it to their life and realize that they can make the same victories and the same strides and the same healthy decisions.

Shay:Wow. What about you Shay?

I had watched Daniel last season. So he was a role model to me. I never thought about how my story would impact other people but I just knew that I needed to change my life.

There are those people who are hopeless. They’re 500 pounds, they’re 450 pounds and they’re thinking it’s impossible and they have to either go get something cut out or do something drastic or, you know, they just have no idea of how they can do it and then they watch us and they watch our stories and they find hope.

And they’re able to do it and they go out there and they start walking and they’re doing these things.

What do you plan to do to give back to other people now that you’ve lost all that weight?   Is there any thought about going into the fitness field or becoming a speaker?

Daniel:  I really want to do speaking.  That was my main motivation for starting Season 7 was that I really wanted to be a pastor in a ministry in some capacity.  Having  two seasons from the Biggest Loser  has given me such an opportunity and such a gift.  Getting my life back and getting an understanding of health and fitness, I’m really looking at changing my college plans to studying for exercise science and sports nutrition and doing speaking hopefully faith-based.

Shay:  Childhood obesity is a big thing on my heart.  Daniel and I have talked a lot about this, just because we both grew up obese children.   Just really tapping into that and getting to parents and families and kids and teaching them.  what’s going on with the kids, the behaviors and what’s really happening with these emotional eating kids and things that are happening in their lives so that they don’t grow up to be 400 pounders like Daniel and I.

The other group for me is foster kids who don’t have direction, who don’t where they’re going, who don’t know what to do and where to turn and a lot of time they turn to food and they turn to emotional eating or other emotional addictions.

And knowing that addiction is addiction, I definitely want to reach out to that population, as well and inspire to them that they don’t have to be a slave to their addiction, you know, and that’s something that that they can break and they can live healthy and recover from even a food addiction.

What is the worst bad habit that you’ve kicked since you’ve spent time on the ranch and you’ve come back home?

Shay: Ice cream. I used to eat half a gallon of ice cream in two days like non-stop. I would sneak in the kitchen, have ice cream, a couple of spoons in the morning when I got up, I’d have it after dinner. I’d have it at night. I’d have it all the time. And now I have frozen yogurt maybe twice a week

Daniel: My first big one was just from the first season, I cut out buffets because I was not going to make a healthy choice there. So that was the first thing I did.

From the second season for me I cut out snacking while I cook breakfast because I’m horrible at just being tired and while my breakfast is cooking, mindlessly kind of just munching on stuff in the kitchen and that just racks up calories.

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