Best. Prize. EVER!

Let’s play the word association game. Just say the first word that comes to your mind. When I say “beer,” there could be several right answers including: belly, yummy, and giver of life. However, if I say “paleo,” there is only one correct answer: faileo. I’m not going to lie, I know nothing that is actually true about paleo. However, I’ll gladly share everything I do know with all (okay… both) of you:

-Paleo makes you talk funny: You wife. Me chubs. We bed now.
-It also turns you into a caveman (which is why you talk funny).
-You can’t eat anything you don’t catch and skin yourself. So add, “Here kitty-kitty” to that caveman lingo.
-You have exactly zero bowel movements while on the Paleo diet (wait… this one might actually be true).

So I bet you are wondering why when my new Crossfit gym announced that they were doing a “Paleo Challenge,” yours truly just happened to be in the 167th person in line. Couldn’t I have more fun by just having another vasectomy or maybe even a root canal? Yes. In fact it was while I was getting snipped for the 6th time, that I happened to stumble across all the cool things that are awarded to the winner of the paleo challenge. It quickly become a no-brainer to enter and my new life mission to win it. Don’t believe me? Go ahead and take a look and see for yourself. Here are the stakes that I’ll be shedding my blood, sweat, tears, and hopefully even a few LB’s for:

1.Undying fame, respect, braggin’ rights and the envy of your peers.
—Sure… This sounds cool. Really I think the winner has earned this. Heck if I win, I might even tattoo my accomplishments on the calf of my leg. Oh crud… I already did that with my darn #Ironman tattoo! What was I thinking!?!?!?

2.BackCountry CrossFit Sweatshirt
—Hmmm…. It would be nice to use my new svelte body to advertise my box, but I already have a permanent fur sweater so this one is not as appealing.

3. A 1 month Free Unlimited Crossfit Membership
—This one is pretty good but I think if I win the 5 week Paleo challenge, I’d prefer a 1 month unlimited buffet membership.

4.Free Pair of Inov-8 Shoes
—Not exactly sure what kind of shoes these are, but I hope they are tap.

5.Free Fish Oil from SFH
—OMG!!! Why didn’t they just skip that other junk and get straight to this jewel??? So just to get this straight, for the next five weeks I am going to limit carbs, ice cream, dairy, ice cream, candy, candy canes, candy corns, syrup, animals that are injecting each other with steroids, the more savvy animals that are just rubbing “the creme” on each other while eating ice cream, and even my beloved Reese’s Butter Cups. On top of that I am not allowed alcohol (NOOOOO!!!!), will be doing a million burpies (excuse me), and risk losing my part in the never to be made movie that I have trained so hard for, “Wolverine attacks the Hostess plant,” all for #%{*#}! FISH OIL???? Heck yeah!

The Paleo (faileo) Challenge starts this Monday so I need to quickly find a bumper sticker that says “I do IT for fish oil.” They also asked me to send them a “before photo” so I think I’ll send them this one:

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The secret handshake revealed (???)

Shhh… I need you to keep this on the downlow. The only reason that I am almost comfortable sharing what I am about to reveal is because my blog stopped notifying my (two) readers who used to actually enjoy reading this thing (Hi Mom!). However, I know with Al Gore’s invention, complete strangers could stumble upon this thing so I’m going to need you to pinky swear that you won’t say anything. Seriously. If you do, I’ll have to kill you. Okay, not really… but we’ll probably have to paddle each other’s bare behinds while asking for another.
Okay, here goes nothing, I joined a cult. The last time people thought I joined a cult was in 2001 when I announced that after studying it for myself, I was leaving my agnostic views behind and committing my broken life to Jesus. In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have shaved my entire head but my ponytail and started hanging out at the airport while passing out flowers. Anyway, this is a real cult. You’ve seen it, you know members, you’ve heard their secret language. I feel like if I was announcing this on a 60 minutes type show, they would have my face shaded and distort my voice for my own protection. So considering this is a blog, I’ll do the next best thing and disguise my writing. Okay… deep breath… here goes: I joined crossfit.
So right now you are thinking one of a couple of things. If you are local and know me, you are thinking, “I knew it! So THAT is why his buttocks look so taut!” On a tangent that I probably should just leave alone as it has nothing to do with me joining my cult (shhhh… on the downlow, remember??), have you ever noticed that the word “taut” can basically only be used to describe buttocks. It’s like “supple” with bosom. I, unfortunately, screwed up and have taut bosom and supple buttocks. Anyhoo, back to me being newly related to John Travolta, most of you are thinking, “You idiot, how could you just join a cult???” Please… give me some credit, I didn’t just sign up… I took advantage of the free trial week first.
On my very first class the head cultmaster (get this, they call him “coach”) introduced me to my new family, “This is Tom, who has the misfortune of taking his very first class during Hero’s week.” The class giggled and whispered under their breath about eating my love handles with fava beans. Well, I wasn’t intimidated! I huffed, and I puffed, and I passed out… about 7 times. However, once the class actually started, I was fine.
When the class was over the “coach” encouraged me to come back the next day to combat the “soreness” that was surely waiting for me the next day. Ha! Shows what he knew, or didn’t know. I wasn’t sore the next day… I was completely numb. It took at least a week until I could even feel my limbs again. And then the pain was much more extreme than “sore.” In fact, I was seriously considering making an appointment to see a doctor (probably my gynecologist to help with my taut bosom), when I overheard a woman that was probably in her 60’s but looked like she could benchpress a bus, mention that she could finally straighten her arms again. If Arnoldina was also “sore”, then I knew that I would be just fine.
Sometime during that first week (probably in a secret subliminal manner), the brainwashing was complete. At the end of the week, I was ready to sign up. I marched right up to the front desk and turned in my enrollment form. Just like that, I went from being Fat Tom to being Ralphie of The Christmas Story fame when he turned in what he was sure to be his A+++++++++++++ essay. I sat there and gazed at my new leader lovingly while I pondered how glorious it was going to be when he taught me the secret handshake. After about ten minutes of me staring at him with a stupid grin on my face, he finally said, “Okay… again, welcome aboard… if I give you a free sticker will you stop staring at me like that?”
What??? A darn sticker! Doesn’t he know that if I added a “Crossfit” bumper sticker to the “140.6” sticker that I already had, I wouldn’t even be able to make it to my local Krispy Kreme without the cops looking at me and saying, “that fatty is driving a car that obviously belongs to some sort of a fitness god, let’s pull him over and beat him!” Anyway, in spite of getting swindeled with an Ovaltine decoder ring, I went ahead and joined the cult. Why do I think it is a cult? I’ll explain that in my next post. In the meanwhile, I’ll tell you that I’m back to about 5 lbs. lost. Taut I say… taut!