Biggest Loser

Way back in June, someone at work decided that it might be ‘fun’ to run a biggest loser competition around the office. It was something of an incentive given that I was headed in the direction of trying to drop a few kilos anyway. After all, I seem to perpetually be chasing the weight loss in varying cycles.

I did something similar in Canada a few years ago and was successful to a moderate degree.

I threw my money in the ring and decided to see what happened – even if it was going to start just before my birthday. I made some good inroads for the first 3 weeks, recognising some early gains and then at the half way mark was surprised when I was told that I was near the front runners. I’d lost 6.3% of my starting weight and was only 0.2% behind the leader.

I went a bit sideways at that point though and bounced around over the next 3 weeks without losing any more weight whilst the leader shot ahead. It turns out that she had some added incentive given that she’s due to get married in the near future.

I decided that I wasn’t going to give in and plugged away as much for the personal satisfaction of starting to see weight numbers that I couldn’t recall seeing (which is the whole point after all) rather than any glory of financial reward at the end.

Slow updates from those that have run the competition meant that coming into the last week, it was something of an unknown as to where things stood. I decided to smash myself and see what happened.

Every day this week I’ve dragged my sorry arse out of bed at 6am and hopped straight onto the elliptical trainer and spent an hour there watching episodes of Big Bang Theory and pumping the legs. Then after work, back on it for another hour or alternately off to soccer.

Today was final weigh in. The leader was being pretty cagey about her final weight and giving answers like ‘my final percentage is between 10 and 15%’. Consequently I followed my pattern of the last couple of weeks. Fast all morning, run at lunch, weigh in when I am nice and dehydrated and at the lowest point of my weight cycle for the week.

At the end of the process, I stood on the scale and have to admit to smiling. I managed to drop 11.8% of my starting weight and have apparently in doing so managed to win the competition as well. 3.25 kgs came off in the last week. Apparently all that pain was worth it.


It feels damn good.