Thursday, January 08, 2009

Lesson #20: McDonald's *will* make you fat

This week my office started a Biggest Loser contest.

I could say it wasn't my idea, and at the inception, it wasn't, but I just happened to have experience in this sort of thing. My two bosses happened to be talking about needing to lose weight and I happened to hear them and I happened to butt in and say, "Hey, we should have a Biggest Loser contest!"

I got the idea from a cool little paper I used to write for. Three years ago we had an eerily similar contest there, about which I wrote a little blog. It was great fun. I lost around 12 pounds in the contest as I recall.

So, in my new office, we set up the rules in the same vein as the last contest. We weigh in during staff meetings. We track each other's progress (gains and losses) on a white board in a public room. We try to undermine one another with mockery and temptation (one of my bosses' birthday cake sits mostly uneaten in the fridge as I write this).

Weight.

I can't believe I'm blogging about this again!

Three years ago, I weighed 172 in January, the most I'd ever weighed and the same weight I'd clocked in the hospital before I gave birth to one of my sons. After the contest I was down to around 160, and a stressful divorce and move cross country with the kids helped me to pare down some more. I took a summer off and spent two or three hours a day at the gym, until I reached my lowest weight -- 145 -- around December of that year. Though that might still sound heavy to some people, at 145 I wear a size 6, have cleavers for cheek bones and look sickly. 150 is actually my ideal weight.

A year and a half ago I began a full-time load to finish my undergrad degree, and in that time I have put on 25 pounds. You tack on the fact that I adopted an unnatural love of cheap and easy fast food and it's no wonder I am not my blithe self anymore.

It is truly unfortunate. I literally worked my ass off to lose that weight. I turn my back for one second and it all comes piling back on.

So, it's a Biggest Loser contest for me once again. I didn't win the money pot last time, and I might not win again, but it certainly helped get me started.

So here's to another good beginning.

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