Weight race wasn’t successful for every person taking challenge

I don’t fail often, but my attempt at the Community Weight Race was a spectacular disaster for me.


I entered in late January, along with 924 other people in Ministry Health Care’s fifth annual race, with a goal of losing 30 pounds. My hope was to get to a weight I had only been once in my adult life.

Previous to entering, I had lost 50 pounds over the course of 18 months, dropping from 310 to 260 pounds. I ran daily, I ate well and I made good choices. The race would motivate me to do these things better, so I thought.

Not so. The minute I entered a little voice in the back of my head told me to stop trying. “You don’t want to run today, and you want to eat that delicious donut,” it kept telling me. “Mmmm… donut,” I replied.

I’m not a competitive person, so the prizes Ministry was giving away to the people and teams who lost the most weight didn’t motivate me. I was doing this for myself, plain and simple.

“Myself” wanted other things, though, like the desire to bathe in laziness and the opportunity to eat cookies at every chance that came along. I partly blame the Girl Scouts and their annual sale.

I also blamed my graduate studies, and the guy taking my final weight last week, which was 10 pounds more than I started, said it should be a “free pass.” It’s tempting to take the pass, but the blame solely belongs to me. I wasn’t motivated and let other things take precedence.

Another member of my team did much better than me. Matthew Brown, an associate editor at The Gazette, lost 13 pounds during the contest, which was only three short of his 16-pound goal. He worked out, ate right and played a lot of indoor soccer during the duration of the race, noting the soccer was what allowed him to do well.

Overall, most people in the contest succeeded, with the average weight loss during the three-month race being 5.78-percent of body weight.

I have no idea how the other three members of my team did. At the halfway mark, I emailed them to see how they were doing, and none of them responded. Their lack of response indicated to me that they had either dropped out or they weren’t doing well.

It would be easy for me to not write about this, as I definitely would rather write about something else, but, as many of you know, the attempt to lose weight can often be a failure, such as my attempt.

Instead of ignoring it, though, I want people to know that failure does occur, and it should be used as motivation to succeed. I’m hoping my failure will be a catalyst to put me on the right track, especially since I know tomorrow will be a great day for a run.
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Originally published in The Portage County Gazette on Friday, April 27, 2012.