Blog Intro Awesomeness from Daniel

Hi All, Daniel here. Since there's a great chance (based on simple majority-friend-count logic) that most of our visitors here will be Amber's friends who don't know me, I thought it would be vital to start with a quick introduction.

So I'm Daniel Butler, a Brit-born, Aussie-raised ruffian, responds to "Butler", and every now and again I'm even a nice guy.

I have no idea what Amber's intro is going to sound like, so let me lay down some truths about this little competition we've got going here.

Mrs Peel has been on a health-kick for a while now - I think the best part of ¾ of a year and probably more. Well, she calls it a "lifestyle choice" not a health-kick, but eh, potayto, potahto, right? And I think she's lost a fair chunk of weight. One day she is musing how she needs to lose xx amount of weight to meet her birthday goal, and I get to thinking "hey I could do with losing some weight, and that sounds like a good target." And funnily enough, our birthdays are just a few days apart so I mentioned this.

Both competitive by nature (Amber tells me it's because we're both very true to our Aquarius roots), it didn't take much discussion for this to turn into a battle, or a race even. After fighting venomously for about an hour on the details of this (don't worry, fight is par-for-the-course during our discussions) we settled on something simple - actually "settled" is my way of being nice. I was totally right and she TOTALLY caved! :)

Challenge - see who can lose the most weight before our next birthday(s).

Target - if we don't see a loss of 20 pounds (9kgs) before then, then nobody wins.

It's tough to gauge who's got the harder task. Amber's pitch is that it's a bigger accomplishment for her - she's already lost some weight, so each passing pound is harder to burn, she's got me by a few years, and she's a woman so by definition I've got a lot more to lose. But I think the jokes on her - my chiropractor tells me I have the body of a 40 year old, and I know I have to tired-laziness of a 60 year old, combined with the self-control of a 5 year old. So any losses on my end are going to be a massive achievement! So once I win, I can definitely say I had it tougher!

Whichever way you slice it though, you can't really fault the idea. It should be fun, competitive, and any excuse to lose a bit of weight and live a little healthier seems noble enough to me!

- Butler

Welcome from Amber

            For those of you seeking information of a nautical nature, I am sorry to disappoint. This is actually a blog to chronicle a 5-month weight loss competition between myself, Amber Peel (Hi! Nice to meet you!) and my workmate Daniel Butler (he’ll introduce himself shortly). The goal is to lose the most weight between 04SEP11 and midnight the night of our birthday’s, mine – 03FEB and his – 30JAN. However, the winner must lose a minimum of 20 pounds (9 kilograms).

            In the spirit of introduction posts, I suppose I should give a little background on myself. I’m a 31-year-old American expat going on a little over four years now (the living overseas part, not being 31!). Since my early twenties, I’ve been trying to get into the routine of staying fit and living healthy. However, I seem to always manage to fall off the wagon, end up right back into my old habits, and gain back all the weight I had worked so hard to lose.

In fairness to me, my old habits weren’t exactly horrible. But didn’t necessarily prevent the pounds from creeping on over the years either. I’ve never been an athletic person so the “working out” wasn’t very appealing to me. And I’m from the American South and have a weakness for Tex-Mex, cornbread, and Southern fried anything! (And Italian food, Indian food, Chinese food, Thai food, hazelnut gelato… you get the point.)

However, since moving “Down Under” a little over a year ago to the lovely town of Bunbury, WA, I seem to have fallen hard for the “fit” life. The fantastic weather, beautiful scenery, and plethora of activities that are available made the change quite easy. Since October 2010, I’ve managed to drop from 170 pounds to 150 pounds. At 5’5”, my first goal was to simply get out of overweight range.  So… yay me!

            Now I’m ready to take that next step and completely transform from being “normal” to “fit”. Based on my height, bone structure, and age, I’ve set my target at 130 pounds. Obviously, losing the next 20 pounds will require a much different approach to losing the first. Contrary to what Daniel thinks, he has a much bigger advantage over me because of this. But I am relying on my extreme discipline and meticulous planning to give me a bit of an edge. I’ll provide the details of my plan of attack in the next post.

            Until then, I hope you enjoy our silly little way of entertaining ourselves (What can we say? We’re Aquarians!) and feel free to ask any questions along the way. Oh yeah, we haven’t exactly figured out what the wager should be. Personally, I’m just looking forward to saying, “Hey Daniel, I beat you!” But a bet isn’t a bet without a prize. So suggestions?