I’m Tired of Being a Supermodel

(Written By Trent Bates)

3 weeks ago I entered a local “Biggest Loser” competition to win a 32 inch LCD High Def TV. In order to win, you need to be the person who loses the greatest percentage of body weight and attends the lectures that go along with the competition.

I am quite competitive and that has helped to stay motivated to lose weight. It is sad that the standard reasons of having better health, more energy, looking better and keeping weight off of my bad knee, were not enough to motivate me to lose weight. I guess winning a TV and even more importantly, totally dominating everyone else (including my mother-in-law) in the competition is better motivation.

After entering the competition I immediately inacted the “TV Diet” (awaiting trademark) weight loss plan. It mostly consists of not eating much at all and after losing 15 pounds in 3 weeks and needing a new belt, whadayaknow, it works.

I can say that after 21 days of the TV Diet, I am not as gung ho as I was at the beginning. If this is what supermodels do then I am tired of being a supermodel. This lifstyle is lame. I only have to keep this up until Saturday. After that I am not sure what I will do.

You may be interested in the specifics of the TV Diet. I do eat some food on the TV Diet but way less than I used to. It is amazing what you stop eating when you count calories. Cheese and crackers are out. Salad dressing and peanut butter are ridiculous. Any food that measures its “Portion” in tablespoons … run. It just isn’t worth it. I stick to water and leave out the milk and juice because as far as calorie count, water is rather low. I eat a little meat and beans, but I have cut out carbs/grains. Vegetables and fruits is what I usually go for.

The vegetable thing comes from the only diet I ever bought into which is Weight Watchers. And when I say “bought into” I really mean have some knowledge of. And when I say “some knowledge of”, I really mean that all I know about Weight Watchers is that there is some black pamphlet where you move cards from one side to the other and that vegetables are free calories. When I was in University, I can still remember my sister staring at a pot full of vegetable soup saying in wonderment “this is free, this is all free calories”. Now I could very well be wrong about the vegetables are free on Weight Watchers thing and that just means that I don’t know anything at all about diets, but I have still lost 15 pounds in 3 weeks. I guess all those books and diet tips in magazines aren’t worth all that much.

Cutting out the carbs was difficult and still is difficult. I never was into the whole low carb/high protein thing but at least with the Atkins diet the carbs get replaced with meat and cheese. On this TV Diet, I don’t have much to replace it with except vegetables and hunger. For those about to jump on the TV Diet bandwagon, I will warn you that after a while you get sick of fruit and vegetables. That leads me to my most profound observation while I have been on this diet and the only reason for reading this blog post. Drum roll please … you lose weight when you eat vegetables--not because they have low calories and are nutritious--the real reason is that you eat less because they don’t taste very good.

For all of those salad eaters throwing carrots at the computer screen, I want you to do one thing to prove me wrong. For a week, for one of your meals every day eat a large salad and that is it. But make the salad with no salad dressing, no oil, no croutons, no cheese, no nuts, and only some fruit (since it is the vegetables that are supposed to taste good not the fruit). Can you do it? I pretty much have.

Last week I did breakdown a little bit. I was not as strict, and I had a full on meltdown at day 15. I only lost, I mean gained, a pound and a half from my 36 hour breakdown though. That was easy to lose. My goal at the beginning was to loose 25.5 pounds. 20 pounds of real weight and then 5.5 pounds of water. Hey, I figure wrestlers can loose water for their Saturday meet weigh ins, why can’t I. We will see what happens and how close I get. 25.5 pounds would be 10% of my body weight by the way.

A couple of strange things happened while on this diet. I could tell when I started burning fat and losing weight because I started to drink way way more water than I usually do. It was a little weird.

Also when you go without really savory food for a long time it resets your taste buds. At the beginning of my 36 hour break down, I ate a piece of cheese and as soon as it touched my tongue it felt like an explosion of flavor. It really was amazing how much my body loved the food I was ingesting. You don’t get that same feeling eating raw red peppers.

- Trent Bates