The Game On! Diet

by Krista Vernoff

  Your day off includes a respite from all rules. This respite may be spread throughout the week (i.e., Monday can be your water day off; Tuesday can be your habits day off; Wednesday can be your sleep day off, etc; or you can take one whole day off from everything).

  Bonus Points

  You can also earn a 10-point bonus each week by turning in your scores to your team’s scorekeeper by a designated time (e.g., noon on Monday).

  In addition, each week, a bonus equaling 20 percent of your points earned for the week is awarded for losing 1 percent of your body weight. (Note: If weight loss is not a goal for you, you must set yourself a fitness goal for which you will win your bonus points and inform your teammates and opponents in advance of beginning the game.)

  Penalties

  There is a 10-point Snacking Penalty for snacking between meals.

  There is a 20-point Collusion Penalty. If any player suggests to any other player a compromise of integrity, e.g., saying to an opponent, “If I eat a snack and you eat a snack, then we both lose points and it all balances out!” the player suggesting the compromise loses 20 points.

  There is a 25-point per portion Alcohol Penalty. A portion equals any amount of alcohol up to 6 ounces of wine, 12 ounces of beer, or 1.5 ounces of hard liquor. One portion of alcohol may be consumed with the meal off without penalty. Alcohol may be consumed freely on the day off.

  If during any week of play a player fails to earn their weight-loss/fitness bonus, that player loses the privilege of alcohol on the day off for the rest of the game.

  Winning the Game

  At the end of each week, each player turns in their score to the scorekeeper.

  A maximum-score week equals seven 100-point days + the 20 percent weight-loss/fitness bonus + the 10-point scorekeeping bonus.

  700 + 140 = 840 + 10-point scorekeeping bonus = 850

  A score of 850 points is the (hard to earn!) maximum points for each week.

  At the end of each week, the scorekeeper tallies the total points for the team.

  The total score for the team is then divided by the number of players on the team.

  Example:

  Team A has three players. During Week 1, Player 1 earns 750 points.

  Player 2 earns 850 points. Player 3 earns 780 points.

  750 + 850 + 780 = 2380

  2380 is then divided by 3 for a team score of 793 points.

  Team B has 2 players. Player 1 earns 685 points. Player 2 earns 750 points.

  685 + 750 = 1435

  1435 is then divided by 2 for a team score of 717.5.

  So at the end of Week 1, Team A is in the lead!

  At the end of four weeks, each team’s scorekeeper tallies points for the game.

  Example:

  Team A

  Team B

  Week 1: 793 points

  Week 1: 717.5 points

  Week 2: 760 points

  Week 2: 845 points

  Week 3: 840 points

  Week 3: 810 points

  Week 4: 800 points

  Week 4: 795 points

  Total: 3193 points

  Total: 3167.5 points

  So at the end of the entire game, Team A has won.

  Tie-Breakers

  In the unlikely case of a tie, the game goes to the team with the highest number of 100-point days.

  Results

  As a result of the game, your clothes will be looser, your energy will be higher, and you will be losing a minimum of 1 percent of your body weight per week. If any of these things are not true for you after any week of play, please see Chapter 16, Troubleshooting.

  Okay, those are the rules. And playing is even easier than it looks. And way more fun. And though very few calories are burned by turning pages, there’s a lot of great information in the ensuing chapters. So—after you call all your friends and challenge them to a game—read on. ’Cause then you’ll be sure to win. Especially if you, like, withhold a whole bunch of information from your friends. That would be hilarious. You should be all, “No, I swear, you’re supposed to eat chocolate cake four times a day!” Hee. Evil. Forget it. Just win fair and square. You can do it. I believe in you.

  Chapter 2

  WHY SHOULD I PLAY THE GAME?

  (Or, I Like Myself Just the Way I Am. Except for the Love Handles. And the Self-Loathing.)

  There are two great days in a person’s life—the day we are born and the day we discover why.

  —William Barclay

  My inner feminist needs to take a moment here to be clear about something: “unhappy” and “fat” do not necessarily always go together even though our culture tries really hard to equate “skinny” with “happy” in the minds of young girls. Two weeks after my dad died, I broke up with my boyfriend of four years. I was the saddest I have ever been in my life. I had some time off, and I went to a yoga retreat for two weeks—mostly because I had promised my dad I would quit smoking and this seemed like a good way to do it. It was four hours of yoga a day, and I lost a bunch of weight and I got a lot of compliments and everyone thought I looked just great, and meanwhile, I was grief-stricken and miserable and pissed that I had quit smoking and that my dad seemed to be staying dead and that I was suddenly single and about to turn thirty. The word “unhappy” doesn’t quite do this era justice. But I was thin.

  Not long after that, I fell in love with the man who is now my husband. He was training for a triathlon at the time and eating like a person who is training for a triathlon—which is to say, he was eating A LOT of highly caloric foods. Being madly in love, I was happily eating with him, but not training with him. I gained weight and he still thought I was sexy and I loved him more and I was so incredibly happy (despite the fact that my dad seemed to be staying stubbornly dead). So, Young Girls, listen up! There is a reason for the phrase “fat and happy.” It’s because sometimes a little extra cush is borne of a little extra happy, and sometimes, that’s a beautiful thing. So please don’t think I’m judging your fat. But if you bought this book, I’m thinking you’re at the point of being unhappy about the fat because when I was a little fat and very happy, I wasn’t buying this kind of book.

  So, the title of this chapter poses a question that I can’t answer. I really don’t know why you should play this game; I only know that you picked this book up off the shelf, which means that you probably know why you should play. I figure the best I can do is tell you why I played—and why I continue to play. And the answer to that question goes back way further than my pregnancy and my weight gain in recent years. It’s going to involve some over-sharing, by the way. It’s also going to involve a little pop quiz for you that goes like this: If you can answer, “Hey, me too!” to even one of my reasons, then this game is definitely for you.

  Okay, the over-sharing shall now commence. Buckle your seatbelt and get some popcorn. Wait. This is a diet book. Don’t get popcorn.

  When I was about four, there was a cereal commercial that asked the question, “Can you pinch an inch?” The commericial made it very clear that the ability to pinch an inch was not a good thing. So I pulled up my shirt and tried it. Oh. Oh no. Panic set in. I could pinch, like, five inches. Now that I think about it, I was probably grabbing my internal organs, but I swear, there were many, many inches of what I thought was unacceptable flab.

  I knew that it was unacceptable because not only had the commercial told me so, but my mom had, albeit unintentionally, told me so too. Again, not on purpose. But after a very angry divorce, she had on more than one very angry occasion ranted to her friends about my “fat fuck of a father” and what a pig he was. And then, on far less angry occasions, people told me how much I looked like my dad, how I had “the Vernoff belly.” They were saying it lovingly. Many of the people saying it were Vernoffs, after all. But I was no dummy. I could put two and two together. If my dad was a fat fuck and I looked like him…I could pinch waaay too many inches.

  Reason #1: I developed body issues early in life. The issues were unrelated to the a
ctual condition of my body.

  The game takes the focus off of the “issues” and puts the focus on getting healthy, winning points, and having fun.

  I play because I am determined not to cross the “40” line wearing size 40 jeans and because I would rather have a six-pack than drink one, but in order for that to happen I need some serious motivation, because no matter how many promises I make at 9 a.m., I will have no will power at 9 p.m. unless there is something on the line.

  —Peter, 39

  Here’s what else: My dad kept the opposite kind of kitchen from my health food vegetarian mom. He shopped—I shit you not—at 7-Eleven. Hot dogs and frozen burritos and Hostess donuts and Slurpees reigned supreme. Kraft Macaroni & Cheese was an impressive cooking feat. And because I got to see my dad only every other weekend, I came to equate the junk food with the good times with my dad and my mom’s health food with the ho-hum every day.

  My mom cooked delicious soups and kept fresh fruits and veggies around at all times, but junk foods had the lure of forbidden fruit. I remember racing to my friends’ cupboards and shoving cookies and candy into my mouth at every opportunity. When I was eight and my sister was ten, we saved up our allowance and went to the grocery store and bought a box of Cookie Crunch and a box of Froot Loops and kept them hidden in the garden shed and would hide out there every day after school, eating it by the handful. (And when our stepdad found the cereal and asked us about it, we said it belonged to the Mormon kids down the street whose parents didn’t feed them enough. Hehe. Hee.)

  I also remember that for several months before we got caught, my sister and I would walk across a six-lane highway to get to the gas station on the other side and buy candy. We were playing a death-defying game of human Frogger for Whoppers and Milk Duds. As a parent? This story is less funny to me than it used to be.

  Reason #2: I formed very unhealthy food habits very early on in life.

  The game empowered me to begin to replace those habits with happier, healthier habits (and still let me have candy sometimes).

  I played because I’m a workaholic and I needed desperately to do something different—something that prioritized me and my health for once. I’m not gonna lie—the game takes time and energy and at first I thought I didn’t have it to give. But in the end—actually, after only a few days—it was so worth it.

  —Katy, 42

  Around puberty, I went on my first diet. And then I went on another diet and then another. All of them failed and/or left me heavier than when I’d started. This is not surprising, because I did not understand what I was doing and I was making up many of the “diets” myself. “I will eat ONLY watermelon because I like it and I heard it’s super low-calorie!” “I will eat ONLY grapefruit.” (Man, that one wreaked havoc on my skin.) “I will eat ONLY spaghetti. It’s fat free!” And eventually: “I will eat nothing and become anorexic like that chick on the track team who’s in the hospital!” That lasted seven hours. Thank God, I am not nearly type-A enough for anorexia.

  Reason #3: I tend to go to extremes—all or nothing.

  The game teaches and rewards balance.

  I played because I had no clue what I was doing when it came to health and fitness. I knew what I wanted to look like, I just didn’t know how to get there. After playing the game I feel confident with food and exercise choices.

  —Kristen, 19

  That was high school but things didn’t get much better in college. Set free from my mom’s healthy kitchen, I gained the Freshman Fifteen and then some. Late night chicken wings in the dorm were my undoing. And every time I got on the scale, I’d be all, “But I only drink DIET Coke!” Then after my junior year, I tried the “all booze and cigarettes” diet. That one was fun, and I lost a bunch of weight, until I landed in the hospital with a kidney infection that went into my bloodstream and almost killed me. Sepsis! Not fun! I do not recommend it!

  Reason #4: I have a very sneaky mind. I can justify almost any behavior and convince myself it has health benefits.

  The game teaches and reinforces the body basics you need to make healthy, life-sustaining, weight-dropping, self-esteem-building choices.

  I played because I have been thin my whole life until this past year when I gained so much weight that I laughed every time I looked in the mirror…I truly did not recognize myself! None of my clothes fit. I tried many diets and only got fatter. The game looked like a lifestyle change not just a fad diet and I was willing to try anything. I lost ten pounds and it has stayed off. In fact I have stayed with the diet and I have lost an additional five pounds. The best thing that came from the game is the fact that my blood pressure has continually gone down. I have cut my medication in half and it is still going down. I look forward to eventually doing away with the medication altogether. The game wasn’t just the answer to my weight problem but it has turned out to be the answer to my health as well. Thanks!

  —Chris, 54

  Now let’s talk about numbers for a minute. REAL numbers.

  I am 5'7" with hefty Ukrainian bones. When I graduated high school, I was about a size 8 at 150 pounds. Healthy. My freshman year of college, I topped out at 166. The summer after my junior year, I waited tables on a three-story harbor cruise ship, burned a ton of calories going up and down the stairs (and smoked a lot instead of eating), and got down to 140 pounds (which is about a size 6 and as thin as I should ever be). When I graduated from college, I was in the range of 150 again. Waiting tables in New York and eating pasta for free every night, I put on a few pounds. Living in Portland after that, I naturally struck a pretty healthy balance between eating and exercise and my weight held steady at about 155.

  In 1998, at about 155 pounds and the age of twenty-seven, I moved to L.A. to be a writer. And by the time I got pregnant at the age of thirty-four, I weighed 185 pounds (and this was after spending a week at a juice spa to “cleanse” in preparation for pregnancy). Why the huge jump? Because of the physical complacency of a writer’s life. Most days, I sit in a room talking for ten hours, which burns way fewer calories than I wish it did. Also, lifting your arm to hoist cookies into your mouth? Doesn’t burn so many calories either, and that was my main other activity in the writer’s room. When I’m not in the writer’s room, I’m in an easy chair in my office with a computer on my lap. Many days, if I’m veeeeery quiet, I can hear the cellulite growing.

  Reason #5: I had become complacent and complacency had led to laziness. I was unable to even imagine a world in which exercise was a daily possibility.

  The game motivates you to come up with exercise time every day and teaches you how to maximize the time you have.

  I played because after a few years being married and lazy I had become a fat bastard. When I jumped in the pool, kids ducked for cover.

  —Kevin, 41

  Of course, by the time I got pregnant I didn’t even know how much I weighed, because I had not stepped on a scale in years. The first time I went to the obstetrician and she wanted to weigh me, I faced away from the scale. I thought that if I avoided the number, I could avoid the self-esteem crash. (In the end I found that all I was doing by avoiding the number was perpetuating the denial that allowed me to get that big to begin with.)

  So how do I know now what I weighed then? Around week 35 of pregnancy my doctor accidentally left the scale in place instead of zeroing it out before I could see it. And so I was lying on the table, and I looked over and saw that the big weight was on 200. If that wasn’t enough to make a person cry and pretend she’s having an allergy attack, the little weight was at 28. 228. TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY-EIGHT POUNDS. I stopped breathing. How on earth could I weigh 228?? The last time I had actually checked I was around 160! Still, by the end of my pregnancy I weighed 235 pounds. Twenty-five of those pounds fell off that first week after giving birth. The rest lingered. The “before” picture you’ve seen in this book is me at around 210 pounds. I look at it and I don’t recognize myself. (And if you’re thinking, “Holy crap! I can’t believe she put that pi
cture in this book for all her ex-boyfriends and the world to see! That’s, like, the bravest, craziest thing I’ve ever seen!” You are correct. Brave and fucking CRAZY.)

  Reason #6: I had spent years lying to myself about my actual weight.

  The game asks you to dust off the scale and give yourself all the information. Having all the information is empowering.

  I play because I am a vain gay man. No, seriously, I play because in my twenties, my body played cruel tricks on me and allowed me to eat whatever donut, fat burger, or fried piece of goodness that my heart desired. But as I entered my thirties and my habits remained the same, I suddenly realized that every extra calorie made an appearance around my once-tiny little waist. So I had to train my body to actually work for me instead of against me. It was extremely tough at first, but let me tell you, I am loving my new thirty-year-old healthy body.

  —Brad, 32

  What’s funny is, a lot of years of therapy and the incredibly life-changing event of having a baby healed a lot of what was broken for that “fat fuck” of a four-year-old. At 210 pounds, I was speaking to myself far more kindly than I ever did at 150. It became abundantly clear to me that self-esteem has veeeery little to do with the number on the scale or the size of the clothes. It is, as they say, “an inside job.” At 210 pounds, I was happier—truly happier—than I had ever been. I had a baby. An amazing, hilarious, giggly, farty, burpy bundle of happy, healthy baby. And a wonderful husband and a job I loved (and a lovely eleven-week maternity leave).

  I was exquisitely blessed.

  I was also obese.

  When I asked Az for help to lose the weight, it was primarily because I did not feel well physically. My knees hurt and my back hurt and my energy was low and I felt older than my years despite all that happiness. So when Az taught me the five-meal-a-day plan and the interval training exercises you’re about to see outlined in this book, I really thought, hell, yes, I’m gonna take this on!