Continuing my updates for my local gym's The Biggest Loser competition, here's Week #9.

Week 1 (Jan 14th) - weighed in at 198lbs (original weight)
Week 2 (Jan 21st) - weighed in at 189lbs (-9 lbs)
Week 3 (Jan 28th) - weighted in at 189lbs (0 change)
Week 4 (Feb 4th) - weighed in at 186lbs (-3 lbs)
Week 5 (Feb 11th) - weighed in at 186lbs (0 change)
Week 6 (Feb 18th) - weighed in at 184lbs (-2 lbs).
Week 7 (Feb 25th) - weighed in at 183lbs (-1 lbs).
Week 8 (March 3rd) - weighed in at 180lbs (-3 lbs).
Week 9 (March 10th) - weighed in at 180lbs (0 change).

No change this week, which I expected since I had a 12-day cold and couldn't do any cardio. I was also losing a little bit of my motivation to continue to strive to lose weight since I'm in 1st place for the gym's Biggest Loser competition and I'm close to my goal weight of 175 lbs.

However, I have found a new motivation to lose more weight. A few days ago, a coworker was by my desk and I commented how he looked great from all his weight loss. He mentioned he lost 25 lbs from his participation in TMC's Biggest Loser competition. I thought about joining TMC's Biggest Loser competition as well, but it started 1-2 weeks after my gym's Biggest Loser competition and I didn't really need another contest to motivate myself. Besides, my gym is offering a free year's gym membership which is worth about $800, so that was also a huge motivating factor. I just assumed TMC's Biggest Loser competition with 5 contestants was just for "pride". It was then that my coworker mentioned it was a $75 buy-in to play. Nothing like 5 x $75 = $375 to motivate me even more to lose weight! So I told my coworker I'd like to play as well and he was game to having me join. He was kicking butt himself with his 25lb weight loss and no doubt he thought he'd be taking my $75 as part of his winnings.

A few hours later, he came back to tell me some of the other players didn't want me to play. Bummer. I started around the same time and was willing to have my final weigh-in end date be 1-2 weeks earlier since I started earlier. I know 3 out of the 5 contestants read my blog regularly, so no doubt they saw my Biggest Loser blog updates and saw how well I was doing. I obviously scared them off. No wonder none of them invited me to play when they started their competition after I started mine.

I was looking forward to some inter-office rivalry and collecting my $375 (+ $75 of my money), but alas it was not to be. But that's OK if some don't want me to play, because I'm going to play anyway. No, not for the money pot they're offering, since I can't get in on that. Nope, instead I'm going to offer my own inter-office bet. I'm going to bet each of the 5 TMC participants $100 that I can beat their total body percentage weight loss. If I don't beat a particular person they get $100, but if I do beat a particular person they don't have to pay me anything. It's a one-way bet. This means I could potentially lose $500 if they all beat me.

The gauntlet has been laid.

Oh and to quote Ivan Drago from Rocky IV who said to Apollo Creed - "You will lose"... (video of this quote below)