Fit Happens Chapter 8: Participant Profile 4 (B-Bo)

What better way to close out the participant profile section of Fit Happens than to interview yourself and talk in the third person in the process.

File photo of B-Bo. He has since gotten a lot skinnier and his tan has decreased significantly.

As the last official member of Fit Happens (a name he helped coin), B-Bo knew he had a good chance of winning this contest based on his previous attempts of losing weight when joining his gym (then called Cardinal Fitness) in 2008. In his first three months of working out there, he lost over 20 pounds.

However, unlike last time, B-Bo needed a little extra push, some motivation to work out. He had tried to get back into going to the gym last year, but he was never fully able to motivate himself to go the gym as frequently as he used to, at least not enough to see a health impact from it.

The contest came a callin' and B-Bo answered. Today, he shares his story in the third person to tell us about his motivations and goals for Fit Happens:

1.       What made you decide to do Fit Happens? In December, I was emailed by Chris about this idea that they had about a weight loss contest. I had been dragging my feet about working out, despite having a pretty decent gym in the basement of our building. I've also wanted to lose a little weight for a while, but I had no motivation and drive when trying to restart my workouts last April. Thankfully for this email, I had the proper motivation. After we bickered a little bit about the layout of it, the contest was all set and ready to begin on January 1^st.

2.       What were your goals to come out of this? I won’t lie and say having a chance to win some money wasn’t a little motivation before we started the contest. But once I went to the gym on the first day of the year and weighed myself, it was all about my health at that point. It made me realize I needed to go back to Brian circa 2008 and started working out and eating a little better. I forgot how good it feels to listen to some music, dripping with sweat as I toil away on the treadmill. There's a sense of accomplishment from it, and plus, it's helped with increasing my overall energy on a daily basis. I actually look forward to my work outs because of it.

3.       What changes have you made to your daily habits during the contest? I am now way more active than I have been since starting my current job in July 2010. I try going to our basement gym about 4-5 times a week. And if I know I’m going to a bar within a couple miles, I’ll walk there instead of taking a cab or other form of transportation. Diet-wise, I have been eating a lot less. I can’t say I’ve eliminated bad foods (don’t think I ever will), but when Jen and I do order out, I will order chicken Caesar salads more frequently than I used to. The diet is probably the thing I have to work on the most—I have no problem motivating myself to work out anymore.

4.       Have you ran into any difficulties during this contest? If so, how have you overcome them or trying to overcome them? To be honest, I haven’t had any difficulties during the contest. Maybe at the beginning, it was difficult to accept that I had gotten so out of shape that walking on the treadmill at 4 miles per hour was a challenge. Now, I’m back to running my 6+ mph pace and have signed up for the Warrior Dash in June, the second time I will have participated in the race.

5.       When the contest is over, do you think it will be hard to keep up this level of intense workout and/or diet? Being a numbers guy, I will miss the weigh-ins once or twice a week and seeing how everyone has progressed and how I compare to them. Outside of that, I think this contest has done exactly what it was meant to do. It has gotten us into better eating and workout habits.  And I believe all of us are fully capable of living long, healthy lives. If this is the start of it for all of us, then I’m glad to be a part of it.

6.       Entering the second half of the contest, what are your goals for the next three months? Have you had to adjust them as time has passed? I’d like to keep losing weight at the rate I have been the past couple months (around 5-6 pounds per month). I know the first month’s output of 13+ pounds is likely unattainable again in the course of the contest. And I’ll be the only one who says it, but hell, I want to win this damn thing. It’s something I would be very proud of—even if I don’t win it, I plan on keeping up with the work outs and eating better.

As far as my goals go, the only way I’ve had to adjust them is to expect more of myself. My original goal was to get under the 200 mark (losing 35 pounds). Now that I am over 25 pounds lost at the halfway mark, I feel like readjusting the goal to a lower number (like 190 or 195) would be a good thing to do.

7.       What do you expect your final weigh-in to be? Originally, I would have been happy to be at or near 200 when we reached the end of June. Now, I’d like to be around 190 but am expecting something closer to 195.

8.       In your honest opinion, who do you think is going to win the contest? All of us are capable of winning the contest if we do the right things to our body—eating the right food, getting the proper weekly activity, etc. That being said, I think my motivation to get into shape is just as strong as these gentlemen. And with the small lead I’ve built at the halfway mark, I believe I’ll be able to carry that over into the last three months and come out ahead as the Fit Happens Champ.

Not to go cliché, but at the end of the day, we’ll all be winners as long as we continue to reach the goals we set out to reach when we started in January.