Cupcake Eating Competition

It all started with a bet.

Back at the beginning of December, Nick and I were sitting around the Skritter office one evening. He and his girlfriend were using this website Healthmonthly together, and Nick was picking his goals for the next 30 days. After a while, he decided that he was going to go whole hog and created a mega-list of self improvement activities for himself. It read like this:

Read a book for at least 20 minutes 3 days a week.
Walk at least 2 miles a week.
Only eat fried food 1 day a week.
Only eat white flour 2 days a week.
Meditate for 5 minutes at least 6 days a week.
Study Spanish every day.
Go to bed before 11:30pm at least 6 days a week.
Only read hacker news 1 day a week.
Study Chinese every day.
Write 3 pages in a private journal every day.
Exercise for 30 minutes at least 3 days a week.
Only eat white rice 1 day a week.
Only eat pasta 2 days a week.
Get enough Vitamin D every day.
Only eat processed food 1 day a week.
Eat raw nuts, legumes, beans, and seeds every day.
Take a multivitamin every day.
Eat greens every day.
Eat raw fruit every day.

Well, he read it to me and I promptly called bullshit. I mean, look at all that! No way could he maintain all of those goals, especially over Christmas holiday. He said he could do it though and so a bet emerged. The hows and whys of the prizes won't be discussed, but it worked out like this: if he won and completed all the goals for all thirty days without a single exception, I had to compete in a cupcake eating competition with him. If he lost, however, he had to drive up to the candy warehouse up in Cleveland buy me $40 worth of candy.

As the title suggests, he won this bet. Improbably. And so it came to be that I was implicated in the most intense eating challenge I have yet faced. Thinking ahead, Nick sensibly positioned our DSLR on the theater of operations and the following photos were created:

The initial spread. All 6 dozen of the suckers.

Scott has eaten 10 cupcakes and puts on the face to prove it.

Nick hits #10 without slowing.

Scott thinks my nausea is hilarious.

Nick puts on his attractive face for #15.

Scott glories in his fifteenth calorie cake.

I hit critical nausea levels at 15. Nick is unimpressed.

For those of you that don't know Chinese, that's Nick's 20th.

Scott finishes 2nd with 17 cakes. He hides his face in shame behind the guy fawkes mask.

Nick stuff down #25. Good god.

With Scott and I out, Nick just keeps binging. Here he contemplates his incipient fat rolls with #25.

He has suffered dearly, but his efforts yield #30.

Having long since started storing the partially digested cupcakes in his lungs, we see Nick here considering sepuku to end the nausea and shame of his accomplishment: #35.

A stunning success for Nick: 36 cupcakes, 5700 calories, and 36 hours of discomfort are all yours!

I guess we learned a valuable lesson that day: don't challenge Nick to an eating competition.