Being a nerd has it perks, Nerds can pickup mad chicks in Second Life, Photoshop acne out of pictures, and if they’re truly 1337, even have a real life girlfriend one day. I know being a nerd sounds glamorous and all, but there are a few major drawbacks. When you’re a nerd, you usually develop a serious case of Big Bonedinitis.
In college, everyone talks about the Freshmen 15, but here at the Gator, we have what’s known as the Hatchling 40. If you come to work at the Gator, it’s usually not a question of whether or not you will gain weight, but instead a question of how much weight you’ll gain and if you’ll ever stop gaining weight. The more Linux you learn, the more weight you’re going to end up packing on.
Big Bonedinitis is no joke. It’s a real disease that destroys lives and is hitting us nerds especially hard. In fact, one of our biggest expenses here at the Gator is replacing furniture that Big Bonedinitis leaves behind in its wake. We’ve broken over 40 leather chairs in the last year alone. We go through so many chairs we now have a room designated as the chair graveyard.
A few of our wall-mounted toilets have even broken off the wall forcing us to reinforce the remaining with stacked bricks. We’ve gone through so many benches that we finally decided to upgrade to a custom built concrete bench reinforced with re-bar.
I have even been a victim of Big Bonedinitis myself! When I started HostGator back in 2002, I was in great shape and weighed somewhere around 190 pounds. It wasn’t until last year that I realized how serious the disease had become. I saw the picture of me below and at that very moment, I decided I was going to do everything in my power to fight Big Bonedinitis. I started the fight by conquering my fear of scales and upon doing so I discovered I had ballooned to over 248 pounds.
The before picture above was taken of me on Christmas of 2008 at my peak. The nerd shirt was a gag present I was arm twisted into putting on and by far the the most embarrassing fat picture I have. The after picture below was taken march 23rd of 2010 for this very blog post.
I stopped eating as much, started working out more, and most importantly, started giving up some of my nerdness. A year later, I’m happy to report that I now weigh 189 pounds, which is great for someone who’s 6’1” and somewhat muscular. I’m in the best shape of my life and believe it or not, I’m eating more food than ever. All it really took was spending less time on the computer and more time out in the great outdoors.
In order to help some of our colleagues who are suffering from Big Bonedinitis, Adam D. helped us to organize our very own biggest loser contest that was based roughly on the TV show.
We had 13 teams of five people each (that’s 65 people, or about 20% of our workforce) that volunteered to compete. The winning team had to have the biggest percentage drop in their weight. Our first weigh in was January 4th and our final weight in was on April 2nd. During this period, we served healthier lunches, gave out gift cards at various checkpoints, and gave out a $500 prize to the winning team.
The results are in and, much to my surprise, no teams gained weight. Below are the results and the percent of weight lost for each team:
1. Team Ramrod – 6.63%
2. The Inglorious Fasterds – 6.24%
3. Team 10 – 4.38%
4. Team 13 – 3.69%
5. Team 8 – 3.32%
6. Team 9 – 2.95%
7. Team 7 – 2.56%
8. Team 1 – 2.08%
9. Team 2 – 1.98%
10. Team 11 – 1.95%
11. Team 12 – 1.54%
12. Team 6 – 0.88%
13. Team 5 – 0.60%
The individuals who lost the highest percentages in weight are the following:
1. Chris N – 18.75% – 48 lbs
2. Keith K – 10.84% – 31 lbs
3. Andrew C – 9.84% – 24 lbs
4. Adam F – 9.42% – 26 lbs
5. Jeff S – 9.41% – 19 lbs
6. Shiraz H – 8.79% – 24 lbs
7. Jennifer L – 8.30% – 21 lbs
Congratulations to all and never give up hope, it is within all of us to defeat Big Bonedinitis!
