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Last October, when Shauna and I were in Las Vegas doing research for the WSOP Final Table, we had dinner with Andy Bloch. Andy was in the process of trying to win a bet with Chris Ferguson. They bet $1,000 with Andy getting 10-to-1 odds that Andy couldn’t get “six-pack abs” by the end of the year. This led me on a venture that had the potential to make me two separate fortunes. Three months later, I’m lamenting the loss of two sweet opportunities while choking down a flavorless bread stick.

Andy would go onto win his bet with Chris.  Bloch, apparently, at some time in the past had well-developed abdominal muscles so it was physically possible. All he needed was the motivation to shed some pounds and poker habits. It wasn’t as if he needed the $10,000, but watching Chris Ferguson have to reach into his pocket to pay that amount seemed more than worth it. At the time, Andy mentioned that his weight was (I think) a little over 200. He had lost 20-some pounds by changing his diet and exercising.

When the light bulb went off above my head, Andy and Shauna must have seen it. What a great deal, I thought. Get some sucker to pay you to be healthy? All these years, I’ve been trying to exercise and lose weight and I’ve just been giving it away. Worse still, I’ve had to PAY for health club memberships, personal trainers, drugs, nutritionists, retreats, specially engineered foods, and surgery. Time to make someone else pay!

Andy Bloch is a good friend and a good man. Out of no motive I could imagine other than the goodness of his heart, he agreed with Shauna’s suggestion that he and I should make a weight-loss bet. We didn’t discuss amounts of money or weight or any other terms but I think he said something about doing a cross-weights bet.

A cross-weights bet, essentially, is a bet about whether two people will cross weights, either during a certain period or over the rest of their lives. We left with a general idea, at Shauna’s instigation, that I would get weighed the next day, Shauna would send Andy the number, and we would take it from there.

I am 51 years-old and the last time I weighed less than 200 lbs. was in high school. I weighed about 240 when I graduated college in 1981 and got married.

The next twenty years was really one long diet. Like millions of others I periodically took up and gave up exercising. (At one point, I had devoted at least 20 minutes per day to exercise for 700 consecutive days. Unfortunately, I followed that by NOT exercising for the next 700 days.) I also tried every conceivable means of losing weight, nearly all of which were successful – until I stopped following them and returned to my old habits. By 2003, I weighed over 300 pounds and, even though I was living in Arizona and golfing over 100 rounds a year, I was not in good health or happy with myself. That is when I signed up for gastric bypass surgery. One I made that decision, I REALLY started to eat. By the time I had my tummy tucked from the inside I weighed 325 pounds.

That surgery was life-changing and I recommend that any eligible candidate consider it. From top to bottom, I lost over 100 pounds. It’s extremely difficult for me, even 7 years and 30-40 pounds later to eat large meals. Over that time, however, I went from being a “problem eater” to a “problem snacker.”

After I went through the surgery, I resolved never to diet or even weigh myself again. Regardless of how the experience ended, I wanted to be done, permanently, with concerned about my weight. My weight got down as low as 213 lbs. I still had a ways to go but, coupled with regular exercise, I was looking better and feeling better than I had since High School. With that success can inertia. Where I previously had to simply EXIST to lose weight, it started becoming work. So I stalled and, of course, slowly began gaining.

Over the last several months, my family had been making a concerted effort to lose weight and live a healthier lifestyle. They were constantly bothering me to join the effort. It wasn’t until that dinner with Andy and Shauna, however, that I committed even to standing on a scale.

Ugh. 258 lbs.

But I wasn’t depressed about it. Now I was not only going to do something about it but I was going to get paid for doing it. I started to imagine using my winnings to pay for my buy-ins in at the 2010 World Series of Poker. I even started to consider trying to get a few bets going and entering some of the $10,000 buy-in championships.

We never got around to working out the terms, but I figured that was just a formality, after all, Andy Bloch had a lot more important things to do than set out the terms of a bet that would surely make me a boat load of money.

As I started contemplating diet plans and weight loss projections, I developed the scheme to my second fortune, a new book called THE GAMBLERS DIET – PROP BETS, WEIGHTY MATTERS, AND HOW PROFESSIONAL GAMBLERS CAN HELP YOU DROP POUNDS. The book would combine all the gambling lore about weight-loss bets with the diet and exercise plans that will presumably cause me to lose a bunch of weight and win a bunch of money. Weight-loss books are a huge part of the book market and this has the added benefit of appealing to men. I couldn’t wait to lose the weight, pre-sell the book, and make acres of cah.

I got so excited that I actually started dieting – the one part of the plan I hadn’t much considered. I hate dieting and even focusing on my weight as much as ever, if not more. But there’s nothing like the prospect of making TWO fortunes to provide motivation.

On December 20, 2009, I weighed 255 lbs on my home scale and started my diet. I figured the bet would soon get worked out and I wanted to be ready. In fact, I didn’t want to be ready only for losing weight. I wanted to be ready to negotiate with a professional gambler of Andy Bloch’s caliber.

It was time for me to engage an expert in such matters.

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2 Responses to “#945 – How to Lose Pounds, Money, and Dreams, Part I – The Andy Bloch Initiative”

1. todd Says:
   January 15th, 2010 at 5:29 pm

   I was trainer and transformed in body for life many times.

   Love to help you out, please feel free to email me.

   Thanks,

2. Aka Fitness Pro Says:
   January 17th, 2010 at 4:49 am

   Sounds what you need is establishing some habits. Im a KettleBell expert and I can help you!!

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