The Losers' Club

"The thought of 2,000 people crunching celery at the same time horrified me"
— George Bernard Shaw, a vegetarian, explaining why he turned down an invitation to a vegetarian gala dinner

Having seen a definite expansion of my waist as of late — alas, life as the hedonista comes with its own set of perils — I decided to nip this action in the bud and have accepted an invitation to join our office Losers' Club... requiring an entrance fee of $50, a weight-loss goal of 15lbs or more and a dedication to three months of exercise and culinary privation.

If, by January 11, I have lost a greater percentage of body weight than my office mates, I will win the cumulated entrance-fee pot. Tempting.

Realizing that I've embarked upon this project in the worst season (as I crunch celery stalks, my cubemate reminds me that we are approaching the yummiest time of the year... ) and that voluntary deprivation is antithetical to my worldview, I look on this "club membership" as a personal challenge and experiment.

Is it possible to maintain a high-fiber, 1200-1500 calorie diet across the yummiest season? Will the contest drive successes across the board? I'm little motivated to do something like this on my own, but I do thrive on competition, and I'm interested to see how my diet method's results stack up against those of the folks working on Atkins.