I’ve probably eaten about 25,000 grape tomatoes in the past three-plus months, part of my now-failed campaign to beat Sean Kelley in the weight-loss smackdown. Yes, I concede: Kelley lost 20 while I lost something between 11 and 12 (you have to shave it finely when you’ve lost), and that’s that.
But it’s turned me into an unpaid shill for the grape tomato.
What’s interesting about the grape tomato is that it defies the "local and seasonal is better" argument about fresh produce. The clothy, pink supermarket impostor has justifiably been the whipping boy of the green-market movement, because bad tomatoes are further removed from the tomato ideal than SPAM is from crown roast of pork. But the little grape tomatoes are often better in the dead of winter than the Jersey beefsteak or cherry varieties I get at the green market at the peak of summer, and I’ve had some gnarly "heirloom" misfires that deserved to be history. Nothing compares to the best garden fruit, but the grape varieties are notable for consistency, and they’re year-round contenders. The only real criticism is that they can sometimes be too sweet.
I have been concerned for some time that my measurements are off. Although I am using an expensive and technically advanced digital scale to measure weight loss, there’s little consistency in the readings it gives. On some mornings it will read 180 pounds; by the evening, I may weigh 187. Sure enough, the next morning I’ll be back down.
Eleven pounds in 11 weeks: At this point, I have to accept the dreary fact that it’s going to take me six months to lose 25 pounds. That’s twice the time it would take my triumphant opponent, 
I own, because I’m a guy and enjoy owning impractical machines, a real Italian gelato maker. It weighs about as much as Toyota Prius and isn’t much smaller. I almost threw my back out the other day heaving it onto the kitchen counter. I then proceeded to dump in a custard made of tangelo essence, heavy cream, egg yolks, sugar, vanilla, light cream, and whole milk. Twenty minutes later I spooned out a creamy, soft-frozen treat worthy of my favorite gelateria in Radda in Chianti, Tuscany. By my calculation the fat bomb delivered 287 calories and 21 grams of saturated lipids per half cup.
Every Tuesday evening I trudge to my healthy-eating class with trepidation. Four things are bound to happen that will make me uncomfortable.
At this point in any failed campaign the loser wants to call the challenger a cheat. My advisers—actually, I have none, except the angry little voices that I’m starting to hear in my calorie-starved brain—are telling me to do that, because Sean Kelley is wiping the floor with me in this weight-loss smackdown. Between Jan. 7 and Feb. 25 he lost 17 pounds, which is 2.4 pounds a week, while I dropped, barely, 10. That’s a humiliating 70% better than me.
For a few days in January I ate really well: Lots of fish and vegetables, a smidgen of dairy, and very few carbohydrates and fat. These are the pages I like to look at in my weight-loss food diary. (I considered putting gold stars on those pages, but my three-year-old won’t let me borrow any from her stash.)
Thus end two plateau weeks on the diet—virtually nothing lost, nothing gained. Probable cause: too much restaurant-hopping and the reintroduction of wine. Or: the old metabolism-adjustment trick, as my body cottons on and turns the pilot light down to compensate for the threat of starvation. In any case it’s not depressing to make almost no progress over the course of 14 days, but I hear it can break the will over, say, 40.
