The return of the Big, Fat, Giant Hippo-Pig-Whale!!!

It’s baaaaaaa-ck!

The big, fat, giant hippo-pig-whale that believes itself to be my alter-ego is trying desperately to take over my body again.

Actually, the BFGHPW was only gone for a week or so.

Regular readers of this column will recall that, back during the frosty winter days of January, I forthrightly proclaimed on these pages: “I am a Big, Fat, Giant Hippo-Pig-Whale”. My girth had begun to exceed my net-worth. My waistline has become a wasteland. I was regularly cheating on my over-eating. (I was an huge-enormous poet that didn’t know it.)

So, given my gargantuosity (a word I have just made up to describe the condition), I did what I always do to shed a few pounds: I challenged the whole world to a weight-loss competition. And… the whole world sent eleven of its stoutest members to accept my challenge.

For eight weeks, a dozen of us were slaves to our chosen diets in a battle of willpower to see which of us would claim the $100 per person prize (which converts to $1200 American dollars, for the numerically-challenged).

That weight-loss contest came to a conclusion last week, on April 6th, which, it turns out, was the Monday before a major holiday: Easter!!!

Here’s an interesting fact which I never fully realized until last week: As it turns out, Easter is one of the Major Food Holidays, along with Thanksgiving and Christmas. The main event of the holiday, other than going to church, is eating a big Easter meal. Let me repeat: A BIG Easter meal.

I have probably sorta taken those meals for granted in previous years. But not this time. I had just come off of an eight-week self-imposed hunger strike – during which I had officially lost 32.7 pounds – and I apparently unknowingly set about trying to see if I could gain it all back at one sitting!!!! I almost succeeded! Hence, about a half-dozen pounds of the Big, Fat, Giant Hippo-Pig-Whale has returned!!!!

But it was great being down 32.7 pounds while it lasted… which was about an hour and a half.

As it turns out, my 32.7 pounds lost was good enough to put me in second place for the competition… just ahead of three other former weight-loss champs. The reigning weight-loss champ Don Gawrys lost 32 even. Three-time champ Kirk Luther lost 26. And the original contest champ Norman Agnew lost 22.

Turns out most of the other contenders – Bruce Holland, Jimmy Carroll, Denis Vaucher, Doug Adam, Shirley Towne, Jim Miles, and Terry Campbell – were merely window dressing whose only role was making the prize money bigger. They averaged losing about 10 pounds.

But the big winner – and new Almost Annual Fifteen Fat Guys Weight Loss Competition Champion – was Tom Boetger, General Manager of Carrabba’s in Harbison. Tom bested the field with a total weight lost of 46.8 pounds, dropping from 267.8 to 221 in eight weeks.

At the big final weigh-in, Tom let us in on his secret: He went on a diet, and stuck to it!!! Brilliant! No… Genius! What a plan!!! Diabolically clever.

So, our congrats to Tom, the new King of the Formerly Fat Guys.

And I hope Tom enjoyed HIS Easter as much as I enjoyed mine: Six pounds!!!