I am in second place.

There is one dude, I'll call him "Slick," ahead of me by... 00.34 percentage points. I think. Unless I messed up the math, which is possible: I lied last week when I said I lost 18 pounds. I've only lost 16 so far. But whatever: out of 35 people, I am second from the top. I shall destroy "Slick." He will not win. He cannot win. I will win. The end.

Here's how to make hard boiled eggs:
Boil a bunch of water.
Gently lower eggs, cold from the fridge, into the water. Use one of those wire baskets on a bamboo handle that they sell at the Asian marts.
Bring water back to boil.
Turn it down so they're just simmering.
Wait 13 or 14 minutes.
Immerse eggs in cold water.

My Greatest Fear
When I get to the farmers' market today, ditchweed guy will have quit selling ditchweeds. Then what? THEN WHAT, AMERICA?

How I Done It:

Preamble

First off, I'm not even sure yet that I done it, the contest not being over, yet. But I think y'all should know some of my methods because even if I ain't done it, I done something purt near it.

I don't know if I done it because I don't know where I'm at in the stats right now. And that's because five weeks into this thing there was a big legal shakeup; the guy running it, I'll call him "Stan," got canned, no one knows why, they didn't update the sheets for a week, and then the bulletin board where they'd been posting our standings faithfully, week after week, was suddenly wallpapered all over with giant, 20-pt-type, "Your Rights As a Weight-Loss Contest Entrant" legal blab. Amusing, since this is week six or seven and up to now we have heard exactly zero about the (obvious) health liability represented by a contest based on how much weight you can lose and how much muscle you can gain in a two-month period after living life like a hibernating grub for the previous six years. Gym people are like this, though. All, "Damn the torpedoes, fatass!" regardless of the danger of lawsuits or getting either fired by administration or kicked in the nads by an outraged "client" driven past civility by the constant heckling to "engage your core."

Here's an example of typical gym-people thinking:

I have a paralyzed serratous anterior muscle in my left upper arm/shoulder/back. It's the muscle that keeps the shoulder blade in tight while you lift your arm so that you can lift your arm over your shoulder. Mine's been out of commission since I was 12 years old, as a result of a demonic summer P.E. session in which the various psych-experiments running middle school gym made everybody, regardless of ability, hang from the chin-up bar and try to do ten chin-ups. Not every 12-year-old can do even one chin-up straight off; some of your weaker 12-year-olds will need to build up upper body strength before they can haul off and do a chin-up. But they didn't take that into account, and now I will NEVER be able to do a chin-up--or at least, I won't until I build up my right arm to Pop-Eye proportions and can do a one-arm chin-up. At 12, I hung from the chin-up bar struggling for two or three minutes or whatever was the coach-mandated torture interval until "blip!" My arm went out. Everybody heard the "blip!" They shielded themselves with their Starsky and Hutch lunchboxes. Now one of the muscles necessary to raise my arm over my head has ossified: it is no longer a muscle. It has become... fibrous tissue. I wonder... if you pay for private school for your kid is that one of the perks? The meatheads running P.E. won't partially paralyze your child out of pure, rocklike stupidity? Might be worth a look-see.

So but anyway, what I've noticed, the meatheads running the grown-up gyms are the same old meatheads, lightly varnished with an all-over layer of Susan Powter blab. There are a bunch of classes that feature the push-up; until such time as I get my right arm to PopEye, I can't do a push-up any more than I can do a pull-up. The gym is plastered with CYA signs encouraging you not to do anything you don't want to do and to modify any exercise until it's no more strenuous than needlepoint. So they can't yell at me to just do the push-ups, wimp, like in the good old days. But every time we get to push up time and I make some candy-ass modification, depending on who it is running the class they either look at me as if I've got the Munchausen's real bad, or they come up all dripping with sympathy and announce that we'll get that shoulder back shipshape in a matter of months. They all think one of exactly two and only two things is the case: either I'm awash in sloth or I have a rotator cuff injury from too much tennis. Very limited imaginations, I'm saying.

Despite them, I have managed to prevail.

What I Done:

I lost 18 pounds; I'm now three pounds under where I was before I began the DeNiro Coke 'n' spuds weight-gain diet. And there are a few weeks to go.

A Very Little Bit about How I Done It:

Besides fattening up beforehand, which was an EXCELLENT idea, by the way, despite the fact that EVERY SINGLE PERSON in the WORLD told me it was stupid, here are a few things I did:
I ignored party line about eating breakfast.
I ignored party line about whole grains.
I ignored party line in general.
I made sure to get a lot of sleep.
Most of all, I did things gradually--I added exercise in increments and I took away calories in increments.

You could do this, too! Anybody can win a weightloss contest simply by ignoring pretty much everything they tell you to do to lose weight and doing what works, instead.

Larry McMurtry

When you're eating to win, you have to cook all day. The way I manage, I listen to Larry McMurtry books while I chop and chop and chop and chop and dice and mince and sauté and bake and stew and steam and blend and stir and eviscerate and wash and spin and rinse and drain. It is just verb verb verb verb verb when you're in the kitchen, and it's hot and dull in there. And in my kitchen they put the sink and counter in a stupid place nowhere near the window, so you're trapped standing in the same spot for hours, staring at tile. Also the lighting sucks and I lack the inclination to do anything about it. But for Larry McMurtry, I would die in there. Unfortunately, the version I have of All of My Friends Are Going To Be Strangers isn't read by Wolfram Kandinsky, if that is how you spell it. I hope it doesn't mean anything happened to Wolfram K. I would cry.

I've developed a rhythm with this. I lose weight Wednesday through Friday, hold steady Saturday through Tuesday, lose more weight the following Wednesday through Friday. So far it's working a treat. I was in fourth place last week because of all the Red Stripe you have to drink when you're on vacation, but I expect to see some movement this week.

Hey-Wow Things To Do With Kale!
You know, it turns out kale soup blows. But there is another hey-wow thing you can do with kale that doesn't. You can chop it up coarse, flash fry it 'til it's bright green (it's inedible at this point because it's still all fibrous), then snatch it out the pan and throw it in the food processor. It will be much reduced in bulk. Grind it all up, add basil, nuts, garlic, olive oil and cheese, grind some more, and you have pesto with greater food value than pesto without kale. It tastes mighty fine and is jewel green. These days I'm actually doing this with collards and the various weird ditchweeds sold by Ditchweed Guy at the farmers' market, not kale, because it's so hot nothing but collards and ditch weeds will grow. There's still basil, though, so I'm good.

Thank you, Larry McMurtry (I know you're reading this). I love you.

Somebody said, "Have you been working out?" today.

Then he said I was "cut." Sounds so violent.

Meanwhile the clueless personal trainers running the weightloss contest are harrassing everyone about keeping a "food journal" and attending the group rock-climbing jaunt. This weekend they are taking us to the grocery store for a good old fashioned label-readin' sesh. They are going to lead my hapless competitors direct to the Kashi and rolled oats aisle. We are going to learn about Splenda and stevia!!! I hope there's time for an independent study jaunt. I'll come back with my cart full of pomegranite juice and get all kind of extra credit. Everyone will copy me, drink the stuff and gain five pounds. Meanwhile, I'll use it to brighten up my fishtank and dye my socks. My numbers will continue, inexorable, to fall.

I'm going on vacation again, but here's a diet tip: the reason we don't eat oysters in the summer is not that they will give us the listeria but that they spawn in the summer. Do you like to suck cold undiluted mushroom soup direct from the can? Then you will love oyster spawn.

Diet Challenge

I consumed a gigantic bottle of beer at a pub that prides itself on stocking beers of all nations and that has the kind of proud and knowledgeable waitstaff I've come to fear, all wielding the right kind of glass for each beer and serving them at the right temperature and bla bla bla. The menu had six or eight closely printed columns of beers to choose from and I went for a Bock beer from the oldest still-beer-brewing monastery in the world (extant since 1050 and just brewing their hearts out the whole time: I learned all this later, from the label the monks had chiseled into the pre-cambrian stone bottle). I also learned that Bock is the Manwich of beers. You see, it is specifically formulated to provide the calories to fuel all the pre-dawn ablutions, prayer and self-flagellation performed by monks during Lent. Monks who, in that holy season of deliberate deprivation, would otherwise starve to death since they consume nothing but Bock beer the whole time. So fantastic: I chose the sweetest, densest beer on the entire thousand-beer menu. It was good, too, but a little on the Aunt Jemima side. When you get down toward the bottom of the bottle it starts to cloy a little if you haven't just spent a long day a-flaggelatin' of your hindside.

The Porkalogical Congress

According to a highly reputable source, I am in second place, with an 8 pound loss in one week.

It was not my intent to show my hand this early: this is a marathon, not a sprint. I can only hope that my (apparent) jackrabbit start will cause some sensible turtle contestants to panic and try to become hares. A slim chance: they seem an unflappable bunch.

So I'm worried. On the other hand, at the weigh-in I heard some very encouraging talk about "free days."

"This is my free day! I'm going to Moe's!"

HEY, GOOD IDEA!

Now, today I ate at the poly-Latin place. I had the awesome pork chunks and vapid salad, of which I ate the tomatoes. There is no point in eating that stuff they call lettuce. There's no point ordering salad at the poly-Latin place in the first place: you need to get yucca or plantains or beans. But I'm not tryna lose my edge over no plate of fried Spanish bananas, I tell you what.

Fourth of July I had ribs and ribs plus ribs.

I'm going to make pork stock out of the bones and out of that I'm making kale soup. It's my own recipe that I wrote last night. I may share it if it turns out not to be pizen.

(I frikking hate Moe's.)

Hooraaaay!

It worked!

The contest people calipered my various flab, and they told me I'm 33.8% lipids. Wikipedia assures me that's solidly obese.

I thought I would have a lot to say, but I'm still so overwhelmed. I want to run and jump and put my arms around the whole world. $750, you are mine!