Tonight was my company's holiday dinner at Maggiano's (which, if you'll remember, was where I was just shy of a year ago, when I decided to start the GGA, or Great Gnocchi Awakening Project). The dinner isn't always held at Maggiano's, but it went off so well last year as planned by one of my coworkers at my old branch that when my boss asked me to plan this year's dinner for this branch, Maggiano's seemed a good bed.
The upcoming dinner and the thought of getting dressy for it was what prompted the Biggest Loser Challenge we started a month ago. Yeah...that didn't go so well. The only person who lost more than a pound was my coworker Elias, who lost 17 of them!! That's pretty awesome for one month's work. The rest of us, sadly to say, actually gained about a pound each, hahaha. My boss suggested that had we not been doing the challenge, the damage might have been worse over the Thanksgiving holiday, and that's probably true. So I guess it's a success of sorts, especially for Elias, whose wife is pregnant and who wanted to get a little healthier in advance of his first child's arrival.
Anyway, weight loss or no, the talk around work over the past few days was about what we were all gonna wear. The women were exited to dress up, and the guys went along with it. Being a little spiffed up and all, I thought that--in ordering a drink with dinner--I should forego the very blue collar option of beer, which is pretty much the only alcohol I care to consume these days, aside from the occasional glass of wine, and go with a more, well, girly option.
Today's New Activity: Lemon Drop!
I didn't even know what a Lemon Drop was. I'd just heard of it, and I must have seen somebody order it once because I knew there was sugar around the rim. It looks like this (yanked this image off Google):
And it tastes just exactly how you'd expect something called a Lemon Drop with a sugary rim to taste. Yummy. Oh so girly. It was fitting.
The dinner was a little awkward at the outset, since they put us in a room in the back and we were missing the (for me) welcome distraction of other people to watch and conversation to overhear. But once the food started coming everyone loosened up a bit. Mostly, it was just nice to be with coworkers and not have to be wearing our ill-fitting, synthetic material uniforms for once :)
Somehow, a couple of days ago, these words escaped my mouth at work: "Hey, we should have a Biggest Loser challenge leading up to the Christmas dinner!"
I think what got me thinking about it was my coworker, who lost her mother in May following a long illness, and who simply, understandably, cannot be convinced to do anything remotely enjoyable. While I wouldn't try to force her into pretending she's feeling anything other than what she truly feels, lately I've been trying to encourage her to do things she talks about having enjoyed before, like doing her eye makeup for example. It's been nice to see her take little steps out of her sadness, if only in a "humor me" way for now. I know that sometimes the "fake it til you make it" principle can start to work a little magic.
A few of us were talking the other day about getting a little dressy for our Christmas dinner in December, and she (actually a few of my coworkers) mentioned how nice it would be to lose some weight before then. And it was that moment that gave birth to the idea. Isn't it easier to get motivated to do so many things when you have a group of others to get excited about it and keep you accountable?
It took a little bit of convincing (mostly with my boss, who I think was waiting for everybody to tell her she didn't need to be part of the challenge, which she doesn't, in my opinion), but to my surprise, the ENTIRE branch decided to sign up. Two of the young men who work there are going to do the competition in reverse (they are thin and looking to gain weight), but in the end it's the change in percentage of weight lost or gained at the end of a month's time that is going to determine the winner. At $20/participant, the $220 pot will be a welcome little booster come Christmas gift shopping time.
Not everybody wanted their weight advertised, but none of us trusted each other enough to work on the honor system, haha, so I volunteered to bring my scale in and do weigh-ins, which we made happen today.
To my surprise, by the time I arrived mid-morning, everybody was ready and excited to weigh in. Caught up in the moment, nobody even cared who was standing around when they got on the scale, and we were all pretty ready to get started losing.
Today's New Activity: Kicking off a Get-Healthy Challenge
I am typically one of those people who doesn't like to share my weight (like most women I suppose), and I definitely shy away from anything that asks me to consistently challenge myself when it comes to my physical health. Yes, I go to the gym with some regularity and like to try and keep my weight in check, but I dislike the ideas of challenge and competition in these areas. Weird, then, that this whole thing was my idea.
I was happy to find myself in with the majority, jumping on the scale in front of co-workers male and female alike and not being ashamed of what came up (160.4 pounds, for the record). Yes, I wouldn't mind losing 10 more (hell, 5 more would take me to my high school weight, which I was pretty comfortable with), but I think I've absorbed some of the lessons of the past year in a way that translated farther and wider than I'd expected:
I do, in fact, accept myself exactly how I am. I love myself and am so able to accept the love of those who love me as I am as well. I also don't care as much about the whos and whys when it comes to people who don't love and accept me as I am.
And feeling this way makes my heart open wide and accept others exactly where they're at as well. I want to encourage people to be their best and to do better than they ever thought they could. If a little friendly branch-wide weight loss competition is what that means for the time being, for some of us, there it shall begin.
I could definitely use a little challenge in my life of the non-emotional variety. I don't mind emotional challenge; it makes me feel that I'm truly alive. But sometimes it's nice to get out of your head and your heart and just feel the power and essence of your physicality...to focus on how good it feels to be healthy in flesh and blood. The next 4 weeks should be interesting...and at the end of them I will find myself exactly where I was (literally, since the dinner is again at Maggiano's) a year ago when I decided to start this project. How nice it will be to feel healthy and pretty in my dress when that night comes :)
