The Left Coast Biased

I had an epiphany recently. This was not one of the Thomas Edison kind of epiphanies where you spend hour after hour in the lab slavishly stealing the ideas of other people, but more the Archimedes kind where all of the relevant facts are rolling around in your head, pinging off old phone numbers and cheat codes (Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start) until that moment when the pieces all fall together into a clear singular vision and you jump out of the bath and take of down the street naked as the day is long yelling " EUREKA!!" at the at the top of your lungs. The epiphany I had was this: I am fat.

Now, I am not orca fat. I could probably even pass for in moderate shape if you passed me in the street and were walking too fast to get a good look. I was practicing a fine act of self-deception, squeezing myself into the same clothes I wore a decade ago, hiding my fat face in a beard, sucking in my gut all day long and pretending that was where it was supposed to be. Slowly the hints began to creep into my awareness. People would be talking about finding a place to eat and say, "Ask that guy, he looks like he knows how to eat". My Wii Fit character looked like he swallowed a beach ball. My roommate started trying to force feed me vegetables. We were playing a game where you compare people to an animal and I got a hippopotamus. A girl that I coached started calling me Santa. One day all of these added up and I was forced to deal with the realization that I was overweight, grossly so.

This did not translate into anything resembling immediate action. I don't do immediate action. One time I slept on my couch for 4 months because my room was too dirty to put together my bed. I will live with something being miserable and broken forever rather than man up and fix the problem. See my relationship history. Fortunately for me, a surprisingly high number of soccer coaches in the club that I work for decided that they were tired of being slovenly pigs while screaming at kids daily to run for hours. That is the providence of football coaches. Acknowledging that we lack the discipline to correct this on our own accord we decided to bring the strength of our competitiveness into the equation and make a Coaches Biggest Loser Challenge. We each pitched in $30 and the winner (loser) takes all, because with gambling, everybody wins. The competition is judged on three categories: weight, body mass index, and body fat percentage. The coach who loses the most of the three combined is the winner. The competition began a week ago and runs for a little over 2 months. My opening numbers are 210.4 pounds, 30 BMI, and 27% body fat. This made me the consensus front runner, as the fattest coach and also the youngest. Sad, I know.

This is my plan. For those of you who don't know I work with the women's soccer team at Pima Community College, and teach a class on advanced soccer. As a result I have a good relationship with the whole athletics faculty, who I have convinced to work on my behalf in this endeavor. The fitness instructor has made me the special project for his team of interns, who will function as my team of personal trainers and nutritionists. They are being evaluated on how fit they can make me. At first I was a bit convicted about whether or not this was a violation of the spirit of the competition, but then I realized that the people with money were getting gym memberships, hiring personal trainers, loading up on supplements like Hydroxycut, and whatnot. Well I don't have money, but it should be open game with the things I do have at my disposal, like the team, and you, our beloved readership.

I realize that %90 of the people I know are in much better shape than I am, and not in need of an intervention on these lines, but I invite you to join the competition. Post your numbers in the comments section on a weekly basis and I will put together a data base of how we are all doing, and the winner will get to dictate to which charity I give the prize money. If I do not win our contest then I will put up $150 of my own money to give to the charity of the Left Coast Biased winner's choice. If you happen to be in grand shape, then there are other ways that you can join the fun. Have any weight loss tricks? Work out plans? Post them in the comments. Want to contribute in a more material way? If you want to donate money to the prize fund, or order me supplements, or have a line on some Anavar or Primobolan (steroids), or anything along those lines you can send them to the following address:

Left Coast Biased
c/o Ryan Ringdahl
3448 E 2nd St
Tucson AZ, 85716

Come on guys. Join the fun. It's for charity.