You made it through week one! Good job!

Well, how is everyone feeling after your first week of the challenge???  I've had some feedback and it's all been positive, so that's exciting!  One person had lost 2 1/2 pounds after only 4 days, I'm excited to see the results from everyone this week!  Another person said one day she got little sleep but got up and first thing read her scriptures and said her prayers and exercised and had a super day, the next night she got much more sleep but skipped the scriptures and prayers and went right to exercising and found she didn't have nearly as good a day.  So her conclusion is that truly an overall lifestyle of good habits is more helpful than just health habits.  I hope that has been your experience as well. 

I've found my two biggest challenges this week were 7 hours of sleep and journal writing.  I really enjoyed the results of more sleep, and also the satisfaction of writing in my journal, those are just two areas that are not strengths of mine.  Hopefully establishing these habits for eight weeks will help them become permanent.

I hope everyone was able to think of some goals that will stretch them and yet be attainable.  I know I tend to be a bit unrealistic, but really tried to set goals that I could reach.  I also hope that even if you were put on teams with people you don't know you are getting to know them and have felt comfortable sharing your goals and potential rewards with them.  I truly have found the key to success in these challenges is working together as a team and encouraging each member to do their best.  That's why you are doing this as a team instead of individually, to be a strength and encouragement to each other. 

I have also found the key to winning in this challenge is not necessarily in weight loss points but in getting all your points!!!!! Yes, if a team member loses 5 pounds one week they will get 55 points for weight loss, but honestly "slow and steady" wins the race.  I hope you are not rationalizing not getting your points.  Every point counts. 

However, just having said that, it's also important not to beat yourself up if you do miss a point that's legitimate!  You need to work at jumping right back on the wagon when you fall off rather than letting it get you down.  A quick example....2 challenges ago I set the goal of getting perfect points, and I reached it!  Even though it was during Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years I DID IT!  Well, with the last challenge I did I again set that as my goal.  The very FIRST day of the challenge I accidentally missed eating all my veggies and didn't even realize what time it was until 9:30! Aaaarrrrggghh!  That was so frustrating!  Unfortunately, I didn't do very well with my disappointment and allowed that to really affect the whole rest of the challenge for me.  Don't get me wrong, I didn't just give up, but I didn't give it my "all" in every situation like I had in the challenge before when I was going for perfect points.  So please be kind to yourself and to your teammates and offer encouragement rather than criticism.  Everyone give it your best effort!!!

I know some of you took this as your "free" week.  If you did, you still need to report your points.  You will simply put in the maximum amount of points possible in each area.  However, in order to get your bonus points this week you actually needed to do all the different parts of the bonus.  You don't need to let me know it was your free week, it's on your honor and I trust everyone not to take more than one free week.  We are supposed to report our points by tomorrow night at 10:00, but unfortunately I haven't gotten the reporting system all set up yet.  I had to get public access to make the reporting possible and haven't been granted that yet so for this week only we are on hold for reporting points until Tues or Wed.  I will send out an email with an update when it is all ready.  Sorry about the delay.

One quick note on counting your 7 hours of sleep.....some of you may suffer from different degrees of insomnia and cannot control when you fall asleep.  I will count your sleep time if you are laying in bed, in the dark, not watching a movie, or reading or listening to a book on tape, but truly just laying there trying to get to sleep.  If you have further questions or comments please let me know.

Good luck on week two!!!