The Fat Bastard Challenge

I'm sick of being fat...or more precisely in my case "morbidly obese". If you're in the same boat, I've got a proposition. I'm not shilling anything, don't fret.

One of my co-workers said that he was encouraged by what amounts to a losing-weight pissing contest at his old job called the Fat Bastard Challenge. Competitors started a pool, and bet that they could lose more weight than anyone else in the pool. Competitive weight loss. I am not, by nature, either a betting or competitive dude, but what the hell. He lost a bunch of weight and gained some money and bragging rights.

The stakes for this Fat Bastard Challenge will be an online gift certificate from Amazon. Every contestant will purchase a $5.00 online gift certificate from Amazon, and will email the winner with the code at the end of the contest. This has been suggested by the first contestants, and as long as everyone agrees to it, will be the way we go. Valid points have been made that the existence of a prize and the lack of verifiable accountability could lead to cheating...but we're going to proceed as if all of the contestants are honest.

I'm going to make Monday, May 8, the deadline for entry. That gives you time to get yourself a scale, take a before picture, and gorge before the game begins.

This is going to be an honor system challenge, as there is little hope of trying to get all competitors together for a weigh in. So be honest. Here are the rules and particulars (all open for suggestion).

1. Contest will begin 5/8/2006 and end 8/7/2006.
2. Winner will be determined by percentage of body weight lost.
3. Contestants should weigh in every week (Monday) to update the leader board. Some sort of proof would be nice for the initial and final weigh-ins (a picture of you hanging from giant fish scale, etc.) but is not necessary.
4. Each contestant will purchase a $5.00 online gift certificate from Amazon, and will email the winner with the code at the end of the contest.
5. If you are dishonest about weigh-ins, please disqualify yourself and post a self-insulting crude remark.
6. If you feel the need to ridicule, please be brief and clever.
7. This contest if for seriously overweight people only. I reserve the right to keep you normal-sized people out of the competition.
8. Unconventional weight loss methods (bulimia, gypsy curses, etc.) are frowned upon and will result in disqualification.
9. If more rules become necessary, or if I think of something that needs to be a rule, I'll edit the post and put it here.

Please post if you're interested, and we'll see where it goes from there.

In the interest of full disclosure, I'm sitting at 291 pounds as of this morning, down from my high of 315 a few weeks ago. I'll be going from my weight on Monday for the purposes of the contest.

I hope some of you will join me.

--4/26-Edited to emphasized that we will not be betting for money (removed on 4/27)--
--4/26-Edited to exclude skinny people--
--4/27-Edited to update rules, and change stakes to an online gift certificate from Amazon--
--5/04-Edited to update contest dates--

No money is at stake! I'm going to edit the post to bold and highlight that. We'd be competing for some item, but *no* money.

I'd also be more than willing to entertain other ideas for the winners. Homemade prizes, gag gifts, anything really. The real prize is losing weight, and some bragging rights.

Again I repeat, this is not for money!

You do bring up a good point though. I would like to see this as a good clean competition among people who are honestly overweight. I am going to reserve the right to bar skinny people from the competition.

Perhaps taking the prizes off of the table would be the best idea, and make the contest purely for bragging rights. First things first, though. If there are any Chewers out there who are up for the challenge, please voice your preference.

Granted. As I said, I'm open for suggestions. There's got to be some creative solution for a prize or prize-like substance that would encourage competition but not reward embellishers.

I'd seriously like to hear suggestions from people who would want to participate. We could do away with the concept of a prize altogther and do it for prestige, or we could find some other solution.

Basically, I'm looking for people who might enjoy or benefit from a mild competition in their weight loss. The details are not important.

OK! Glad to have thejumbo, FabFunk, and Matt on board. I like the idea of an online gift certificate too. It would be really easy for everyone to buy a $5.00 online Amazon.com gift certificate on their own, and then we could all email the winner the code at the end of the contest.

It's probably a good idea to keep the investment small. Even if we get a lot of takers, the prize won't swell up to the size that someone would spend three months plotting and conniving to win it. Perhaps there could be some sort of trophy (tangible or not) involved as well to formalize the winner's bragging rights.

So if I'm reading the current consensus right, let's go with an online gift certificate from Amazon, that each of us would buy separately. When the winner is announced, we'll all email that person the code so they can spend it.

Thanks for the faith in your fellow overweight persons, Matt. I think that we can all have at least a *little* faith in each other. Besides, if someone wants to spend the time and effort over the next three months to get their hands on $5.00 of my money, they need it more than I do.

I'm off to edit the rules to include the new developments.

Good luck to you too, you skinny bastard. I'd ask what your secret is, but I'm guessing you don't have one. You're probably young and eat what you like. That makes me want to eat ice cream.

Perhaps you can be the trophy. Does your head bobble?

OK. It looks like it's just the four of us. So let the competition begin. I wish you all the best of luck, sincerely. I think all of us just want to get some of this freaking flab off of our bodies.

Matt, I'm OK with a $10/person stake. Fab and Jumbo, let us know your thoughts. We can go down to $5 if either of you don't want to go to $10.

I'll start the weigh-in day at 290. And I've reconsidered encouraging contestants to post a "before" picture. There's no reason we should feel the need to put our guts on display. But it might be good to take one of yourself to compare with an "after" picture at the end of the game.

That said, here's a picture of my feet and my weight.

Five bucks it is! Let the hunger pangs begin.

Gentlemen! I didn't get any other weigh-ins. Do you want to push out the start date until next week?

There's no one easier to beat in a weight loss contest than someone who is not fat. So yes, please do sweeten the pot with your bastardly, skinny ass. Or we could start a new, more gruesome contest called the Skinny Bastard Challenge, and you could compete in weight *gain*. I've got a multitude of pointers for you.

Sounds good Fab, why don't we set the new weigh-in day as Friday. Maybe that would be easier than Mondays. Matt and Jumbo, I hope you'll come and weigh in on Friday. It's no fun with just two people!

Another slight change of plans. A Monday start sounds like it's going to work best. So the new official start date is Monday, May 8. Get on those scales Monday, gentlemen!

And since the start date has been pushed out until Monday, if anyone else wants to get in on the festivities, please chime in.

I've been rolling for a few weeks, but have put in a binge performance a couple of times since. My birthday was a couple of weeks ago and I'll be damned if anyone is going to keep me from cake and ice cream and Indian food on my birthday.

My last stand weekend consisted of a couple of buffets as well. Sort of like a junkie's last trip to the dealer. They are my fucking *downfall*, along with Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey ice cream (oh, the irony). I probably went to three buffets a week at lunch, and then once or twice on the weekend with the family. Maybe I'll hit one this weekend as a second last stand before the competition proper begins.

Enjoy your buffalo ass, Jumbo!

We're going to try an keep things a little less freaky. Thankfully the pot is pretty small, so we should be able to avoid people resorting to horrifying behavior. Eating less and exercising should be a good place to start.

Let's keep this out of after-school special territory guys! If you feel like using extraordinary means that are detrimental to your health, do it on your own time. The whole point is to become *more* healthy, not less.

And don't go around pissing off gypsies either.

Good morning, gentlemen! Here's my official starting weigh-in for you:

MY FIRST WEIGH IN. 5/8/06 5:30AM Nothing but socks (be thankful my scale is non-reflective).

Weight: 283.5
Height: 6'0"
Age: 37
Chest: 54 inches
Waist: 48 inches
Neck: 18.25 inches
Fat: Also very abundant



Thanks for all of the good tips, jumbo. I've been at the weight-loss thing for a little over a month with some very good results, and I'm also looking for some of the accountability that jumbo is talking about without shelling out for something like Weight Watchers. I started out at about 310 last month, and have managed to lose a whopping 26 pounds so far.

To add to the tips, I've basically only done three things to help myself lose weight. The first is to take a walk in the morning before heading to work. Some days its 30 minutes, some days it's an hour. My dog has never been so happy, and it's done wonders.

The second was to get a food scale and start weighing things that don't have a handy-dandy calorie guide on the label. As an enormous fatty, I was blissfully unaware that eating a whole plate full of food (plus seconds) is too freaking much. The portion sizes I was used to eating were nothing short of monstrous.

The third was the kicker for me. I bought a program called Diet & Exercise Assistant that tracks your foods and exercise and what not. Again, I'm not shilling for anyone, but it's working great for me. There are free online things too, but the main thing for me was to essentially write down everything I eat with a fairly accurate calorie count. I let myself eat what I normally do for a weekend early on, and then tracked the foods/calories and it blew me away to find out that I can eat four or five thousand calories in a day easily...and that's on days when I don't go to a buffet!

Since I'm kind of a geek, it was good to get a program that will make graphs for me, and tell me how much I should eat, and how many calories my exercise burns. I *highly* recommend using a program like this, or one of the free online sites like http://www.calorie-count.com/ to track your progress.

Best of luck to everyone, seriously.

P.S. Jumbo, how did you get your picture to show up in the text of your post? I tried the "Insert Image", but got a link.

--Edit for a P.S.--

The program that I use is at http://www.keyoe.com/. It's made things really easy for me. You have to enter in a lot of foods yourself, as their database seems to be lacking in some areas...but it's great. There's a desktop version and a Palm/Pocket PC version. Being almost as big a geek as I am a fatty, I have both and synchronize them.

Thanks for the encouragement! It's good to hear that a former fatty was successful at both losing the weight and keeping it off. The tips are always good too.

We're having little trouble getting started, but I have assurances from both Fab and Matt that we'll have a wiegh-in soon.

Ideally, I'd like to see everyone weigh in on Mondays so I can post a "leader board" to see everyone's progress. Since we both weighed in on Monday of this week, and Fab and Matt are going to be a couple of days behind us, but I think that's probably the best way to go so we can get this mother started.

Matt and Fab, that puts you at a slight disadvantage at the outset, so speak now or forever hold your peace. A couple of days over the course of a three-month contest shouldn't put you too far behind, and I don't necessarily want to put off the start again.

I think Matt's in Australia, where it is last Sunday or something...so he's probably actually on time! Once we're rolling, I'll update the leader board with weigh-ins when they occur, but I'd *like* that to be on Mondays.

Everybody cool with that? Also, Matt and Fab, I'd just like to get the numbers to start with if you can't get a picture of the scale right away.

Getting started is going to be the hardest part. Once we're rolling, all we really have to do is weigh in at the end. But I'll still be pesky and probably PM everybody on Sunday night to remind you of the weigh-in.

Three down, one to go!

I feel for you Winjer, I truly do...but we have a different set of problems than you do. You say you were formerly chubby, but as you are recovering from anorexia I have to say that I am skeptical as to how chubby you actually were. Anorexia is a serious disorder that affects your body image as well as your health and leads you to believe that you are overweight when you are not, and that is simply not the case for myself or, I believe, the others involved in the competition. We are actually overweight, and can benefit greatly from losing some of the excess tonnage.

For myself and jumbo at least, we have both been *extremely* overweight, to the tune of more than 100 pounds each. By clinical definition, I am "morbidly" obese...which means to me that I'm so fat that it is likely to fucking *kill* me. I have no idea what the statistics are, but I would guess that most people who suffer from anorexia nervosa didn't spend the bulk of their adult life morbidly obese.

I don't doubt that your condition is serious, and sincerely hope that you are getting better. But considering that the prevalence of anorexia in the entire American population is less than .10%, as opposed to a whopping 65% of the adult American population classified as overweight (including the 30% of adults whow are obese) AND more people die in America *every year* from obesity-related illness (approx. 400,000), than there are anorexic people in the country (around 300,000) I'm going to completely ignore your warning, and urge my co-fatties to do the same.

To even classify as underweight, I would have to lose about about 56% of my body weight. And I love ice cream too much for that to ever happen. My realistic goal for weight loss is to get down to 210 pounds, or maybe 200 if I get really serious and then maintain that weight. That is still technically overweight, but for my body frame, you won't be able to tell because you won't be able to take your eyes off of my beautiful ass.

Please forgive my rant, but I needed to address this as it is completely ridiculous to warn someone who is severly overweight about anorexia. Again Winjer, I wish you all the best, and hope that you recover and get your life back on track. But never warn a fat person about the dangers of becoming anorexic. The health risks involved in being overweight completely overshadow the risks of becoming anorexic.

That being said, I feel the need to point out that we all would be best served by trying to lose weight responsibly. Eat less and exercise. For me it's been a matter of cutting my calories down to 1800-2200/day and taking a good walk. That's it...and I'm losing weight steadily. Don't go crazy. If you feel like being a little informed and a lot bored, check out the American Dietetics Association's position paper on Weight Management:

http://www.eatright.org/cps/rde/xchg...2_ENU_HTML.htm

For you, Winjer, I don't want to end on a note where you might feel abused or put down. My wife is a pediatrician, and has had many interactions with anorexic patients in her career, so I'm mildly familiar with your condition. If you're not working with a doctor, you need to be. I'm sure anorexia fills your life as much (or more than) obesity does mine, and it is honorable that you want to warn people about it...but you need to warn the right people. Warn a fatty about anorexia and you're likely to have to sit through an interminably long speech that vacillates between petulance and understanding.

OK! Now we're rolling! Out of curiosity, Matt and Fab, how tall are you? I'd like to add our BMI percentages to the Leader Board (which I'm trying to figure out the best way to post).

Now that we've got everyone's weigh-in, all we really need is the final weigh-in to determine the winner. But I'm sure we'd all like to know how we're doing in comparison with the others. So lets try to get a weigh-in recorded every week so I can post the current status.