The Santas and Snowmen are holding another Battle of the Bulge this year at the Lee Beran Recreation Center.
The center’s wellness supervisor, Barb Rourk, initiated the contest about seven years ago, when she started the “Project Zero Holiday Maintenance Challenge.”
The goal of the seven-week contest is to help people slip through the holiday season unscathed by the scales.
“Our goal is to maintain our initial weigh-in weight throughout the holiday,” Rourk said.
It’s not unusual, she said, for people to add 10 extra pounds during the two-month period.
Baseline weight was established in mid-November, with a weigh-in before Thanksgiving.
“Every week until the week after New Year’s, they have to weigh in,” Rourk said.
The Project Zero instruction sheet promises participants that a fitness instructor will record each person’s weight and keep it confidential.
Those who maintain or lose pounds from their maintenance weights each can draw a game marker — a regular playing card — to play “Sequence.” The sequence board is made up of a randomly placed deck of cards on which players can stick a Santa or a snowman that corresponds with the marker card.
Once a team has accumulated a sequence of five cards in a row, diagonally, vertically, or horizontally, the team is awarded a Santa or snowman sticker to place on a score card below the board.
Rourk has thrown a wild card into the mix, using jacks instead of jokers to let members manipulate the other team’s stickers. One-eyed jacks, for instance, allow the card-holder to remove an opponent’s sticker and break up a potential or existing sequence.
Participants also taunt and tempt each other with messages posted around the game board.
One such message sympathized with the Snowmen, who would be melting away as the weather warms anyway.
“So why should you deprive yourselves?” the message asked, suggesting that the Snowmen should go ahead and take a cookie from a plate at the desk. “And if she’s not looking, have two or three.” It was signed “The Santas — because we care.”
“This gets very competitive up here,” said Rourk, a contestant herself, who admitted that she, too, uses strategy in timing her own game marker drawings. But the competition provides a lot of fun, she said.
The contest has proven popular, with 120 people participating this year at the recreation center’s fitness room. Participants use the equipment there regularly, most often focusing on cardio equipment.
“That’s the main type of equipment they use this time of year because they want to burn more calories,” Rourk said.
The center has rows and rows of machines, including treadmills, ellipticals and bikes with screens that give riders a virtual experience on 34 programmed trails, as well as a chance to fight dragons and grab coins as they pedal on the game portion of the virtual bikes.
Many of the contestants already are seeing results.
“I know one gal who already has lost six pounds,” Rourk said.
Winners will receive prizes ranging from free locker rent to a three-month membership and other wellness-related prizes.