Men's Large Contingent

It's on! This past Monday, my friend's Ralph, Stephen, Tim and I agreed to a weight loss competition. Now that all of us are in our mid 40's we felt the need for additional inspiration and motivation. In what seems like yesterday when Ralph and I were in our 20's, we used to affectionately refer to some of the middle aged woman we worked with as the "Lady's Large Contingent" not realizing that the ongoing years, gravity and the influence of the Italian American (and just a touch of French) diet would unwillingly nominate us to begin a men's chapter. Such is Karma.

Our weigh in took place in my office, and we each took a turn stepping on the scale that I borrowed form our upstairs bathroom (Don't tell Deb). It's one of those electronic scales with the digital read out. I feared that when my turn arrived that it would read, "One person at a time, please." Unfortunately for me the actual read out didn't make me feel much better. Once we all weighed in and established our ground rules, our conversation moved on to the incredible amount of snow that has been hitting our area. There was some discussion of global warming and Stephen mentioned something about the Earth's axis being changed. Thinking about this and our collective poundage made me wonder which side of the Earth we were standing on and were we partially responsible for throwing things off?

Working out and eating right has been a recurring theme in Ralph and my friendship. I remember that when I first met him, he was just finishing up a diet plan that seemed foreign to me. He was avoiding carbohydrates and sticking to healthy proteins like, steak bacon, salami and gabagool. I also seem to recall our intent to begin "lifting." We had great plans to meet at the weight room located in one of the North End schools. We lifted for a few hours, then proceeded to eat the lasagna his mother Anna had made for us, and that's where our program ended.

We're now five days into our competition and things seem to be going well. I've hit the gym a few times this week and I've been using the Paleolithic diet to kick start my weight loss plan. If you're not familiar with the Paleolithic diet, the basic concept is that you eat like our ancestors did for thousands of years. It's also referred to as the Cave Man diet. My friend Dave has had great success with this and he's taken off quite a few pounds. Funny though, that when you think of the Cave Men, they may have been thinner, but wasn't there life span like 34.5 years?