Losing to Win by Michele Grant Page A

that the people of America would be interested in watching me packing a cell phone charger and iPad. But hey, whatever. Tossing in my MacBook Pro and a few peripherals, I scanned the room to see if there was anything else I couldn’t live without for a few weeks. Satisfied I had the necessities, I set the laptop case on top of the rolling bag and turned toward the door.
    â€œEveryone ready?” I asked with feigned cheer as I snatched up the car keys. “Let’s get this party started.”

8
    Bad jou jou
    Carissa—Tuesday, May 24—Noon
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    â€œI thought this was going to suck and it really does. And by ‘this’ I do mean this whole reality show experience,” I stated flatly while staring into the camera. Niecy was seated beside me. We were perched in the “confessional,” a small room they had set up with a sofa, a backdrop, and a candid camera so that contestants could plunk down and give their recaps of the action taking place. We were dressed in skintight forest green yoga capri pants and truly unflattering electric blue tank tops that read Losing to Win across the chest. Both Niecy and I were well-endowed in that area, so the letters were stretched and appeared to be screaming in frustration. Not a good look. In fact, the entire town was peppered in the blue and green Losing to Win logo. Good for the town, bad for us.
    Niecy was a natural-born diva from Savannah, Georgia. She ran a successful lifestyle and beauty blog. She believed that a Southern lady was never fully dressed unless her hair was done, her lipstick was fresh, and her earrings dangled. Though Niecy was a solid size 22, she was curved in all the right places and thought it was unladylike for a woman to jiggle in public. She was the kind of woman who was referred to as striking. Statuesque, great bone structure, a smile she kept perfectly white, and full lips generally painted with a shade of mauve pink lip gloss from Lancôme. She had flawless skin the color of toasted wheat and thick hair she wore in long spiral twists that fell past her shoulders. Usually.
    Today, we both had sad ponytails that may have been cute several hours ago but had long since lost the sexy. On top of that, the hairstyles were magnifying every feature of our makeup-less faces. Who looks fresh when sweaty and sleep deprived? Neither of us, unfortunately. This was, I could truthfully say, the first time I’d seen Niecy sans some semblance of war paint. Truly, this experience just kept getting better. Yes, I was leaning heavily on snark and sarcasm to make it through.
    So far today, I’d been yanked out of bed at 4:00 a.m., moved into a dorm room with Mal as my suite mate, and been asked a series of what I considered to be very personal questions with a camera in my face and a fuzzy microphone hovering over my head.
    Jordy and Suzette had the suite across the hall. Niecy and XJ were down the hall. No one was pleased with our accommodations. We were grown folks with real estate of our own, living in housing meant for teenagers. Skinny teenagers at that.
    We were introduced to our nutritionist, Hannah, who spent what seemed like hours discussing the evils of processed foods, sugars, and fat grams. White foods were apparently the devil. White breads, rices, potatoes: all sent by Lucifer to keep jiggly junk in our trunk.
    From there we met with the three trainers attached to the show. Jacob, Darcy, and Paul were the perkiest damn skinny people I’d ever met. They took fitness—oh, I’m sorry, “total wellness”—very seriously. They used words like “amped” and “super-fun” in real sentences. On purpose. This was my life now. Marcy, Darcy, Bliss, Ren—it was a bit much.
    Having met our fitness team, we each sat down with our team and came up with a goal weight. Their goals and my goals were not the same but I wasn’t in the mood to argue. We also came up with a projected plan