My Biggest Loser Competition, An Introduction

BIGGEST LOSER 2012

At my work, April 1st brings the second bi-annual biggest loser competition. Last time, I placed second losing 32 pounds and 12.6% of my total body weight. This coincided with my month of vegetarianism, where I progressively got more strict with my diet. This was something that I already had planned for the blog and I extended out to two month for the sake of the competition. For the first week, I maintained a pescatarian diet (fish but no other meat), the second week I was a normal vegetarian, the third week a vegan, then I juiced for the rest of the time. But, as it turns out, I kept putting off writing about it and I gained back a lot of the weight that I had lost. I had already decided to do this again when there was the announcement for another biggest loser competition. This time,

I am taking the opportunity to write weekly updates on my progress. There were several things that I had wished that I had checked at the beginning of the competition last time such as blood pressure and standing heart rate. These are all things that I will be checking weekly along with my weight loss. First off, let me talk a bit about my last time doing this challenge. As I said, I lost 32 pounds which is something to be proud of. While I didn't win the competition and the $640 pot, I was happy to pay $20 for two months of motivation. During those two weeks, I learned a lot of things about myself and how I eat. 

First, I learned that, despite my Iowan upbringing, it is NOT necessary to have meat with every meal. Or even daily. I also learned that vegan food was a lot better than I had ever imagined, but there was no way that I could ever maintain this lifestyle. It drove me crazy to look at labels for EVERYTHING that I ate. Forget it. Once I started to juice, I was no longer craving meat. I wanted cheese, yogurt and other dairy goods. This was not the first time that had juiced. I had done a week of juicing several years ago, and I had an idea of what I was getting myself into. For the first biggest loser competition, I juiced for six weeks; or, at least, juiced primarily. By the end I was snacking daily but maintaining my vegetarian vow. The problem with this is that while juicing is a low-intake of food, it a high caloric intake. Any snacks that I ate in conjunction with juicing counteracted the positive effects. For juicing as long as I did, I should have lost more than I did if I was more strict. I think that this is why I put off writing about it for so long. It wasn't until later than I realized that losing 32 pounds when my goal was 50 was still an excellent job. 

I haven't quite decided how I will organize my eating for this competition. At this point, I think that I will go in two week cycles where I rotate between vegetarianism and juicing. I believe that this will help my stay focused longer and eliminate the inherent want to gnaw on anything after juicing for too long. During this competition, I will be posting health-related interviews with different people. I will also give weekly updates to my progress. And if I find any good recipes, I will share them at Adam Does Food Porn. Please feel free to give any feedback and/or suggestions throughout the process. I hope that you enjoy reading about my second weight-loss journey.

Have you ever gone through this before (or right now) and would like to tell about it? Feel free to leave a comment, post on my Facebook page, or e-mail me about a guest post.

-Adam