Brothers complete remarkable weight transformation to win $150K bet
Professional poker players Jamie and Matt Staples won $150,000 after a friend bet that the then 304-pound and 135-pound brothers could not weigh the exact same amount.
Just a year ago, Jamie Staples tipped the scale at 304 pounds while his younger brother, Matt Staples weighed in at only 135 pounds. Now, the pair both weight the exact same: 188.3 pounds.
Their weight transformation was spurred by a $150,000 bet offered by Bill Perkins, a fellow poker player and friend of the brothers, with the challenge of getting to the same weight in one year.
"There is so much incentive to start taking health seriously and to learn how to live a better lifestyle," Jamie Staples said of the bet. "I don’t know about you, but for me, I was like, 'Here we go.'"
The brothers hit the gym together: Jamie focusing on burning calories, and Matt focusing on building muscle mass.
"I fell in love with it," Matt Staples said. "I enjoyed putting on muscle, putting on size."
Both brothers also dramatically changed their diets.
"A year ago," Jamie Staples said, "I was eating whatever my heart told me I wanted to eat."
After the challenge began, however, he started trading fast food for healthy smoothies.
Jamie Staples said that his diet consisted of "No sugar, very low carbs, protein and vegetables."
Meanwhile, Matt Staples added pasta, rice, and lots of protein to his diet.
"The food part of this bet was a lot harder for me than the workout part of it," Matt Staples said. "Eating 3,000 to 3,500 calories for the last three months of the bet when I had already put on a ton of size got really tiring."
Maya Feller, a registered dietitian nutritionist told ABC News' that both brothers' transformations were totally safe.
"They really spent some time saying, you know, 'How are we eating, how are we exercising,'" Feller said. "And said, 'Let's make this conscious effort to not only win but to make sustainable change that's based in reality.'"
In addition, their transformations "brought them together, which I think is really wonderful," Feller said.
At the brothers' final weigh-in, Jamie Staples lost more than 115 pounds. Meanwhile, Matt Staples bulked up by more than 50 pounds.
At the end of their year-long journey together, the brothers' reset their health, and became $150,000 richer.
