Healthy Dose of Competition

So my entire family is overweight. Even our cat of 13 years, Sammy, who passed away in September was overweight. The new kittens are not overweight yet (to illustrate just how sports-loving our family is, their names are Jeter and Joba), and hopefully won't be because we are all going to be slimming down.

My mother has decided to get the Lap-Band surgery to lose weight. Granted, it's not gastric bypass, which I believe is so dangerous and only worth it if you are so morbidly obese that you have no quality of life or you are in danger of dying very soon. But still, it's weight loss surgery. She's been going through the process to become qualified for it and approved by the health insurance company. Part of that process is to lose some weight pre-surgery. She has 11 pounds to go. To help motivate her to achieve this, and to get the rest of the family started on their own weight loss journeys, we have decided to do a biggest loser-type weight loss competition for 10 weeks. I even bought a trophy (http://www.k2awards.com/) which is engraved:
(Family Name) Biggest Loser
Winner
June 2008
(I got the trophy super fast - and cheap).

So the competition begins on Sunday and goes for 10 weeks. We have 2 women and 2 men, so we'll see if what happens on the Biggest Loser is true in real life: guys have the advantage. We're only keeping track of our percentage of weight loss (to share between us) and not our actual weights. My goal is to lose 20 pounds in the 10 weeks - a nice healthy goal of 2 pounds per week. My brother and I are very competitive in general, but especially with each other. It will also be good because being 20 pounds lighter when summer begins will give me extra motivation to continue.

Speaking of summer.....it's snowing outside. It's March 28. Ugh.