Before: 227 lbs.
After: 132 lbs.
Program used: reality TV

Suzy Preston may have come in third on the hit reality show The Biggest Loser (missing out on the $250,000 prize), but she won big anyway: She shed 95 lbs. and gained an adoring husband — the grand-prize winner himself, Matt Hoover. And thanks to reality TV, Suzy finally “got real” about her lifelong struggle with food.

Until she submitted her audition tape to NBC in December 2004, this five-foot-four, 227-lb. hairdresser from Seattle was in serious denial about her weight problem, so she didn’t do anything about it. “I was big all my life,” she explains. “I became settled with being the overweight girl in the group.”

Her job didn’t help either. Suzy styled clients’ hair in their homes, meaning she lived — and ate — out of her car. “I’d consume entire boxes of Triscuits driving to appointments,” says Suzy, 30. “By nighttime, I may have eaten more than 1,200 ‘empty’ calories, but I’d arrive home famished and eat more in front of the TV.”

What’s With This Guy?!

Suzy figured she would overhaul her fattening habits on the show. After all, for 10 weeks she would be working out with a trainer up to six hours daily while consuming a mere 1,200 calories a day. But she never imagined she would fall in love — let alone with a 340-lb. ex-wrestler with a chip on his shoulder!

“Matt was this sweaty, hairy guy with a Hawaiian shirt and a scowl,” Suzy recalls. “My first impression was not good.” Iowa native Matt, also 30, had an only slightly more positive take on his future wife: “She was cute, but I thought her upbeat personality was annoying.”

Maybe He’s OK…

But one day, while taping a “makeover” segment in which Suzy tamed Matt’s unruly hair and beard, her feelings changed. “When I cut his hair, he became a different man,” she says. “He let his defenses down and we became friends.”

Off-camera, the two opened up. While Suzy admitted that she gave herself short shrift, Matt shared a startling revelation: He let himself go to keep people from getting close. Until Suzy sheared away his armor, that is: “When she cut that hair,” Matt says, “it felt like pieces of the old me were cleared away.”

I Do!

Before long, Matt also cleared away 157 lbs., making him the top loser. He promptly asked out his new confidante, who was down to a svelte 132 lbs. With the show behind them, the couple’s romance bloomed. In March 2006, Matt got down on one knee on the Today show to ask Suzy to marry him. Since walking down the aisle in September, the newlyweds have set up house — minus junk food! — in Seattle.

And they may soon be setting up a baby’s room: At press time, Suzy was reported to be pregnant, though the couple prefers to remain mum about the happy news.

But Suzy is vocal about how the pair are keeping off the whopping 252 lbs. they shed together. Mornings, they work out at a nearby gym. Come mealtime, they whip up yummy low-cal treats (see page 6 for recipes). “We know how important keeping our weight down is to our self-images, so we have a terrific bond. We found our niche together — and it’s being happy and healthy.”