I won $212 from the first Diet Bet I ever did, "Tales From Team Awesome" It ran from April 29 - May 26, 2013 and there were only 9 players. I was the ONLY person who made the 4% weight loss goal. I also won the other 4 Diet Bets that I was in that month. I was psyched to have received $351 overall that first month for dropping weight that I wanted to anyway. From that moment on, you could say that I became a Diet Bet junkie big time!
A month later, I started hosting my own Diet Bet games and eventually became a Master Diet Bet coach. I inspired many of my friends and family to also join me on this quest.
I also attracted the attention and sometimes the ire of the Diet Bet staff in New York. What can I say....when I'm on fire and sharing Diet Bet profusely with the world, nothing stops me! Eventually I came to know all of them and even had some awesome phone conversations with staff members, offering many suggestions. I was asked to share my success story and be in the Diet Bet Hall of Fame. I also Beta Tested along with other DB veterans, who became my friends, the new 6 month Transformer games, as well as the new Android phone app.
I created tremendous momentum and put my full attention and focus on getting healthy and fit. I joined a new gym and started working out a couple of hours every morning. I hired a personal trainer. I was dropping weight like crazy and felt on top of the world. It was beyond exciting.
To digress a bit...my current weight loss journey began BEFORE I joined Diet Bet at 219.8 lbs. When I joined Diet Bet, I weighed in at 178.8 lbs. I dropped 7.2 lbs during my first set of bets and decided I wasn't going to stop until the scale said 125 lbs....truly a stretch goal for a 53 year old woman who has been "chunky" for the last third of her life.
No matter how hard I worked out, or how little I ate, the scale didn't want to go below 140 lbs. It did briefly, a couple of times with VERY focused energy, but I could never keep and maintain the lower weight. Whenever I would stop Diet Betting, even briefly, the scale would also climb higher and higher. Then I came back to Diet Bet and joined more games and the scale started to drop. I began to really wonder, why I couldn't just maintain my weight on my own.
Well fast forward to TODAY....the weekend of July 18-19th, 2015. I've now played in 75 Diet Bets and hosted 17 of my own Diet Bets. You would think I would absolutely have the whole weight loss / mainteance thing down to a science. But not even close.
Starting around the end of Feb - early March, I started working nonstop, night and day. My focus was on earning enough money to buy my now 16 year old daughter her very first car the coming summer. The first thing to go was my mornings spent at the gym. Then healthy meals and meal prep became a thing of the past. I became a frequent flier at all of the nearby drive-throughs when I could manage the time to even drive-thru at all. I also stopped taking my vitamins, drinking green tea and the gallon of water that I was drinking. I was only sleeping a couple of hours a night because I had so much preparation to do for my day time students and evening tutoring students. I don't know how I even managed to come through it alive. I knew that I was gaining weight, but didn't have time to think about it. My clothes were getting tighter and tighter. My waist and tummy were starting to bulge, my booty was expanding and my thighs were beyond thundering....
It was time to face the music. It was TIME to start Diet Betting again. I was scared because I didn't know how much I had gained. I knew that if the scale said over 200 lbs that I was NOT going to be a happy camper. The final push was when a member of my Diet Bet Facebook group,
Diet Better - "We're Losing It."
asked me if I had any new Diet Bets starting. And then a longtime friend sent me a link about the powerful new moon on July 15th. I couldn't wait a moment longer. I couldn't continue to keep gaining weight. So by popular demand, I created my 18th Diet Bet,
It's No Sin 2 Be Thin - July/Aug.
There was no time to share it or promote it, but I fugured as long as three people were in it, Diet Bet would allow the game to run. I was excited to see so many of my longtime Diet Bet friends and newbies coming onboard at the very last moment possible.
The moment of truth came. It was time to weigh in.....this time the scale said 188.6. Oh my...this was 10 lbs MORE than when I first began Diet Betting over 2 years ago. Had I really gained back that much weight??? Did two years of hard work just go down the drain???
There was no time however for contemplation, self loathing or blame. I had a job that needed to be done. It was time once again to get focused and begin shedding weight. Others confessed to me also that since they had stopped Diet Betting that the pounds started creeping back on. They joined my new Diet Bet with me.
My Latest Diet Bet
It's No Sin 2 Be Thin - July/Aug.
began three days ago. I started drinking water, taking vitamins and eating healthy. The one thing that I have NOT done yet is begin working out. I am truly thinking about it. It's summer vacation....although I am tutoring 4 days a week in a town that's 40 miles away from me, I have way more time than I did in the last 5 months. So, WHAT I ask, is stopping me now???
Even as I write this, I know that I should just GO to the gym as soon as I hit the send button on the computer. I know that I am starting from absolutely scratch. I won't be able to last 3 hours in the gym or do an hour of cardio or maybe not even walk more than 30 or 45 minutes. But even if I just SHOW up and do 10 minutes of SOMETHING...it's more than I would have done in the last 5 months.
And...the take away from all of this is....just like an alcoholic, or a drug addict who will always be craving their next fix....the lesson is when I WANT to stop Diet Betting, or don't have the time or energy for it...that is when I need it the most. Diet Betting has become ESSENTIAL to staying fit and healthy.