OK, OK, so I left the blog waiting breathlessly for the results (ha - no one even reads this, but that's alright). I have excuses for not posting but they don't really matter so I won't spell them out. On to the real post . . . .
I got second place in the competition! I'm very happy with the results. I lost more than 22 pounds, a lot of inches, and won 3 months of personal training and 3 months of gym membership. It doesn't sound like a lot but the prizes add up to more than $500 so that's cool. I was right about it being close. In terms of percentage of weight lost, if I had lost another 1.5 pounds I would have won. For a while I regretted not sitting in the sauna for a bit before weighing in but I really do think the woman who won deserved to win. She was much more devoted to eating right than I was. I'd rather punish my body to sweat off the calories than simply eat less of them. But that's my Achilles heel. What's crazy is that the two men who placed first and second didn't lose anywhere near the same percentage as myself and the woman who won. They lost around 7%. How pathetic is that? And here I was thanking my lucky stars that they were separating the men from the women because it wasn't going to be fair! What's even more amazing is that after the "ceremony" was over, my trainer told us that we (me and the woman who placed first) lost the most of any of the other gyms who participated in the contest! While I'm proud of that, I think that deserves more than 3 months of comped stuff, right?
Reading through my previous posts on the contest, you'd think I would never do it again, and yet I'm going back for more. The gym is holding another contest, this time for 3 months (instead of 2), with bigger prizes like vacations, etc. I hadn't planned on participating but my sister saw how "easy" it was for me (she only says it looked easy because I still had cheat meals and didn't have to totally deprive myself to do well), and she wants to do the competition. My sister is only 17 but is overweight like I was. In order for her to do the contest, I have to take her to the gym and she's also asked me to be in charge of her nutrition to help her make better choices (little does she know that when it comes to other people I'm a food Nazi). I figured if I have to take her to the gym and eat what she eats, I'll probably drop more weight so I may as well enter again. My trainer agreed - he's only encouraging a few of his clients to sign up but wanted me to. If I can drop another 22 pounds during the 3 months of the competition, I'll be in the upper 130s which is like holy grail territory for me - heck, if I can get down to 132 I'll officially have lost half of my body weight. So those are my new goals - lose at least 22 more pounds during the competition and the dream goal of getting down to 132. I'm a little apprehensive about being able to reach either of these goals. I know that some of my weight is muscle because I'm wearing about the same pant size as I did when I weighed 135 taking phen-fen. During that time I never worked out and was pretty weak. Anyway, I think I'm starting to get down to those tougher pounds and my body could really start to fight me. Also, after the contest ended I didn't let up on the amount of cardio I've been doing. I'm still doing roughly 2 hours a day/ 5 days a week. I worried that since my body was used to this that I wouldn't see much in terms of changes once the contest started. My trainer agreed and he actually told me today that I should take the two weeks prior to the contest completely off - no gym whatsoever. If I got antsy, he said I could take a TurboKick class or have a maintenance session with him, but other than that to take it easy so my body could rest and heal and get ready for the competition. I couldn't believe it. Although it will feel great to give my body a break, I know I'll start to feel guilty for not going. I have to make a decision about whether or not I'm going to take the full 2 weeks off soon because the contest starts April 1 (I think). He did say that taking time off meant I had to be more careful with my eating - BOOOO! I'll have to do that during the competition anyway, why start being restrictive 2 weeks before the contest even starts? Hmmmm, there's definitely some pros and cons to evaluate in deciding how much time to take off.
I think this post is long enough. I still plan on tackling the other topics I mentioned in the previous post, especially how to deal with people treating you differently once you've lost weight. I've had a lot of experience with that since the contest ended.
Missy
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