The Fatty Challenge gets personal

Meet Chuck:

Doesn't Chuck look thrilled? It's the kind of look a guy who doesn't enjoy taking gratuitous pictures makes when he's asked to take a picture in shorts and a T Shirt for his best friends blog. But it's his own fault, and if I have my way, it won't be the most embarrassed he'll be to appear on this blog.

You see yesterday, after reading about the Fatty Christmas Weight Loss Challenge, Chuck issued a challenge of his own. I quote:

Want to make it interesting?  Want to see who can lose the most weight by 1/1?  I need to drop about that amount just to start feeling better and I figure if we make it a competition it will make it that much more...enjoyable (we're both competitive).  It might be enough to get you out of your funk and to get my fat ass off the sofa. 

A few things about this:

1. Chuck's an incredibly mild mannered, polite guy who is easily the first person I would call if Rach and I were trapped somewhere and needed someone reliable to help us. When I asked him to be the Best Man at my wedding, I told him "For you it isn't a job, it's simply a description". But when he says he's competitive, he isn't kidding. He owns several unofficial penalty minute records in the Columbus Adult Hockey League, and when he's getting beaten at video games (a rare feat for me to accomplish, unless it's an NHL title), he could easily be replaced by a 10 year old kid and you wouldn't know the difference.
2. His "fat ass" is not nearly so fat as my ass.
3. I simply cannot resist a challenge like this.

With Christmas fast approaching and each of us saving for out of state trips in early 2011, a large financial bet doesn't make sense for either one of us. Besides, I don't want his money; I want to see him make a fool of himself. Being mild mannered and all, Chuck isn't known to make nearly the fool of himself as I am (often at the drop of a hat). But at the occasional get together at his house, Chuck has been known to put together an epic sing-along performance of say Blondie's "Call Me". Our mutual friend John was kind enough to send me the link to the above mentioned performance in order to give everyone a taste:

As you can see, This is YouTube gold, and the ideal prize for when/if he loses this challenge. I've chosen Lady Gaga as the artist and Rachelle will pick the song this week. I'm thinking it's going to be Bad Romance or perhaps Poker Face, but there are a couple other choices. If only Disco Stick was available as a DLC for Rock Band 2, that would be truly awesome.

So now you're wondering what happens to me if I lose? First, you shouldn't worry about that because it ain't gonna happen. But if as in a scene from one of the Saw movies, Chuck opts to cut off a body part in order to win, I will be forced to record myself dancing along to Ke$ha's "Tic Toc" from the game Just Dance 2.

I too was supposed to take my own Tshirt & shorts photo (cue the singing of "T-Shirt Time" by those whack jobs on Jersey Shore), but it just so happens that I got an even better photo op last night. One of my Christmas presents for this year arrived yesterday; a new XTERRA wetsuit for our 2011 racing season! It's going to be wrapped up and put under the tree, but I wanted to try it on and see how close I was to being able to wear it.

When did Sea Lions learn to take pictures of themselves?

Now I don't expect the suit to fit properly by 1/1. I need to lose more than 20 pounds to even get it to zip up, I'm sure. But the fact that the Neoprene stretches as much as it does means that I'll definitely be able to lose what it takes to use this suit for the season opener. 

For our official first weigh-ins, I was a stout 321.6, and Chuck was a sprightly 255. We've already both started off with good first steps; Rach and I did a mile in the pool last night, and Chuck walked his dogs a combined 3+ miles this morning. We're going to try to incorporate using our Wii Fitness boards as the official scale of our contest for easy sharing of official weigh in pictures, but I'm waiting for mine to come in before we can do that.

It's going to be a fun month.

Notes:

- 54:43 seconds to do 1700 yards in the pool last night. I did it as a series of 200 yd reps, with 30 second to 1 minute breaks between. My first long swim in a while and I wasn't really sore after.

- After 1 day, Wheelworks Multisport is leading the Div III clubs in the NCC. I've put it Rach and I's swim totals from yesterday, and that's it so far. Will be interesting to see where we are next Wednesday.

- We ALMOST got up to swim this morning. Need to start heading to bed sooner. I'm not sure whats on the schedule for tonight, but whatever it is, I'm looking forward to it.