Fatty Weigh-in: Week 7

Competitor	Current Weight	Tally	Total
celestialspeedster	120 lbs	- 2 lbs	- 9 lbs ( - 7.0%)
Doctor Cook	172 lbs	+ 1 lb	- 8 lbs ( - 4.4%)
Flocons	203 lbs	+ 2 lbs	- 9 lbs ( - 4.2%)
Opiate	180 lbs	+ 2 lbs	- 3 lbs ( - 1.6%)
Royal Pinguo	142 lbs	+ 3 lbs	- 2 lbs ( - 1.4%)
Thorn	167 lbs	- 1 lb	- 9 lbs ( - 5.1%)

Masters of the Veggieverse

Vegetarians, embodied by the crafty, but militant and evil Skeletor, are in a constant war with society's Carnivores and Omnivores, embodied by the heroic, but perhaps not so bright He-Man. No one has ever liked Skeletor, but wow-wee, look how thin he is!

Many a friend or acquaintance over the years has endeavored to convince me of the rightness of vegetarianism, and the cruelty of eating animals whose entire lives are spent living in atrocious conditions.

PETA anti-meat propaganda. Not for the light of heart or the full of stomach.

I question how true their conclusions are of the "factory farming" industry in general, but PETA certainly does a good job of pointing out the worst cases.

Strangely, after watching this, while I definitely acknowledge that the video is appalling, I still find myself craving a hamburger or some chicken wings. My love of eating animals is incredibly powerful. To insulate my meat obsession from any potential "crazy" moral decision, I have built up an armada of reasons and strategies to keep eating meat, ranging from the realistic to the absurd. Here are some of them:

1. Avoid the issues. Don't look too hard, or you might find out something unappetizing. I still have never watched Super Size Me, just in case it turns me off of McDonald's.

2. PETA is simply trying to move a political agenda. Vegans and vegetarians are clearly insane. I mean, they don't eat meat! They are also possibly unbalanced, likely due to insufficient meat in their diets. How can I trust this information? I could investigate other sources, but that would violate rule #1.

3. Chickens can't fly. If I eat their vestigial wings, I'm just relieving them of any foolish notions of even trying. It's true that they are probably killed in the process of extracting their wings, but... well, it's time for rule #1.

4. I don't even like chickens. If they could eat us, they would. Worst of all, they go for the eyes.

5. Plants are also alive. They are just so different than us that no one cares what happens to them. Vegetarians look at pigs and cows and are reminded of themselves. I feel no such kinship. If plants had faces and could make noises resembling speech, particularly sensitive vegetarians would starve.

6. Humans are not genetically designed to be vegetarian. It requires much more work to maintain a balanced diet. And I am lazy. I don't want to die of malnutrition. Therefore, logically, something needs to die.
Movie, or appetizer? *looks hungrily at Babe

7. I will become a pariah among my friends if I stop eating meat. You don't win friends with salad, afterall. Not to mention, I will be in danger if I hesitate to resort to cannibalism (in dire situations, of course, not as an enjoyable past-time).

8. Bacon. Popcorn chicken. Steak, medium rare. Lamb. Goat roti. Mmmmmm...

9. The real reason: I love meat too much to stop eating it.

...

However, for the duration of this competition, I will adopt a half-ass meat-free diet (outside of occasions where it is unavoidable or my willpower is too weak). To be clear, this is not a moral stand, but a further strategy to lose weight. So please friends, do not disown me.

Note: I actually do respect vegetarians. I just love eating meat!

Sleep is overrated...

This weekend: 15k road race, through much of the same route taken during the "Burn to Binge" Challenge, looping from McLeary park out around the Tommy Thomson Lighthouse and back. Ribs and beer, possibly a curried roti and more beer afterward.

Next weekend: huge family BBQ that if last year is any indication I will be pigging out quite literally. It's a pig roast after all. An entire not-small pig slowly rotating for hours over a fire, likely stuffed with sausages and other meats to cook inside. With lots of beer, and yes someone ELSE will be driving. Whichever day the pig roast is not happening I'll be going for a very very very long run through the rural Niagara countryside.

Weekend after: MARATHON!! Oh Montreal, city of my heartbreak. I will destroy you or myself in the attempt. I fear not thine hills and winding roads, signs in two languages and smoked meat restaurants around every turn. I do fear my beer being warm when I get to the finish line. Must find my blue cooler bag and remember the ice packs.

Weekend after that: final Dragon Boat regatta of the season: GWN at Marilyn Bell Park. An all weekend affair that normally leads to a very tired, sore and hungover Monday.

In between on the Monday to Friday area of the calendar there is yoga classes, dragon boat practices, work, training runs I've finally started fitting in, literally cycling everywhere and life in general all keeping me moving. Oddly enough I have not been sleeping a whole lot all summer even as tired as I am from all of this.

Where this all fits in to Thinspiration XXL you may wonder?

I'm hungry. Constantly hungry. A stabbing gnawing hunger that won't go away. It's driving me nuts. I eat, quite a lot actually. But my body is demanding more. I lie down to bed and my stomach grumbles, loudly and with a sinister English accent (FISH's anonymous friend?) and I envision him wearing a black bowler hat carrying a walking stick. And it's NOT John Steed. I fear for my sanity and my yarbles.

Applying opposite tactics to that of Celestialspeedster and Doctor Cook I have placed a whole other level of duress upon my body in a rather short time frame causing my metabolism to respond in kind and as it rightfully should: demanding adequate fuel to burn in ever increasing amounts. It's loud, distracting and ever-present. I was expecting an increase in appetite, but I wasn't expecting a rampaging near-homicidal urge to devour everything in sight. As I make a desperate last-minute attempt to catch up on two months of lost training before Montreal, this feeling is increasing daily and even the "Summer Pig Roast of Gluttony" may not be enough to satiate the hat wearing phantasm.

Doctor Cook and I went for chicken wings this past weekend at an old favourite haunt: All-Star Wings in Markham. Between the two of us destroying an amount of heavily breaded, deep fried and sauce-drowned wings normally reserved for a group of 3-4 people washed down with a pitcher of Rickard's White. That's not the issue in and of itself. The issue is I was absolutely ravenous again less than two hours later.

Weigh in this week can go either way....we'll find out tomorrow.

Headed to the State Fair

Amongst its many culinary delicacies, the Wisconsin State Fair is enticing visitors with the Krispy Kreme Cheeseburger. That's a regular, artery clogging cheeseburger, but with a Krispy Kreme donut in place of a bun. Throw in an extra dollar and you get a side order of chocolate-covered bacon on a stick. (Flocons perks up)

It's a mere 1000 calories, which means that I can have a large glass of milk on the side and call it bupper (breakfast and supper combined).

Survey results: Thinspiration XXL competitors are probably suffering from...

• anorexia - 0 vote (0%)
• bulimia - 1 vote (16%)
• peer pressure - 2 votes (33%)
• Friend Induced by Starvation Hallucination (FISH) - 3 votes (50%)

Memoirs from a bake sale

I spent all of Saturday baking items loaded with sugar and butter. It was all for a good cause, but since I am participating in Thinspiration XXL, I felt a bit like a vegetarian working in a butcher shop. Surrounded by sweet treats for the last 2 days has not been easy. The plus side of it is that I have been desensitized to it all. While the average person may be lured in by the smell of freshly baked cookies, I am immune. (Much like how the inhabitants of Buffalo no longer notice that their city smells like a sewer.) With all the baking and selling, I experienced the strange paradox being surrounded by food, but starving because I couldn't eat it.

Since I have baking on my mind, I'll review what I made this weekend. The key to a good bake sale is variety. You want at least one item that someone will want to buy.

Rice Krispies Squares are really easy to make. It's low-hanging fruit in the world of bake sales. It doesn't have a stigma of being too unhealthy, because the main ingredient is cereal. However, people conveniently forget that the other ingredients are butter and marshmallows. In the world of bake sales, nothing is sinless. Every item has sugar and/or butter.

Chocolate chip cookies are standard issue. People buy them because these cookies are comfortable and familiar. These babies are full of sugar, butter, and chocolate... but in fairness, they don't pretend to be healthy. I can't say the same thing for the next type of cookies.

These are oatmeal raisin walnut cookies. These are aimed at the customers that want to eat healthy. These cookies are less honest than their chocolate chip counterparts. These guys are also full of sugar and butter. There's no such thing as a healthy cookie. (But you should still have "healthy items" for those who would believe that eating a Big Mac is okay as long as you drink Diet Coke with it.)

At the opposite end of the spectrum are brownies. Brownies are always good sellers at bake sales because they are aimed at the indulgent customers. They are unapologetic about their sweetness, and contain a stupid amount of sugar and chocolate. Brownies are very dense, and will contain more calories per bite than any other item at the bake sale.

Cupcakes are essential mini-cakes. Cupcakes use the same ingredients as regular cake, but instead of pouring it into a cake pan, you pour it into a muffin tray. In the "evolution of baked goods", muffins and cupcakes diverged into different branches. Muffins are loaded with butter, while cupcakes are loaded with sugar. There are more differences than that, but those are the only ones worth nothing for the purposes of Thinspiration XXL.

These particular cupcakes are dressed up like Super Mario green mushrooms, which I affectionately call "1-upcakes". In the context of the bake sale, this is an eye-catching conversation item that caters to customers who enjoy novelty and creativity. These items may not sell well because they are different, but they will generate buzz. Customers will come to see it, and end up buying other goods.

This is candy sushi. It's another novelty item that is quite creative but labour-intensive. Royal Pinguo helped me make these, and we had fun putting them together. The base is Rice Krispies square mix, topped with candy mango or gummy fish. The nori is fruit-by-the-foot or any long flat candy you can find. Candy sushi tastes like a bad mix of random candy, but it sells because of good presentation and visuals. The majority of sales were made to children. That is another type of customer you want to cater to.

A few months ago, I made chocolate-covered bacon for a bake sale. This item is in the "I dare you to eat this" category. It's sort of like the ultra-spicy chicken wing challenge at your local pub, or the giant steak that you have to finish in 3o minutes to get for free. These items do not sell well, but they may generate buzz and conversation for your bake sale.

Doctor Cook rose to the challenge and bought my chocolate-covered bacon. I appreciated his support, when others made snarky remarks like "I don't want to eat that because I don't want to die." I wonder if that chocolate-covered bacon is the reason why he is participating in Thinspiration XXL in the first place... So to Doctor Cook, I say both "thank you" and "I'm so sorry..."