LAST POINT REPORT!!!

LAST POINT REPORT!!!

Thank you to everyone for participating in this Sensible Lifestyle Challenge with me.  I have had a very motivated eight weeks, and I hope you've all had a good experience as well.

As you prepare to make your final point report, please remember that you will be reporting points in every category of the point reporting form, including inches and weight loss percentage.  When you measure inches, you get 5 points per half inch (10 points per whole inch) lost since you last reported inches at the four week mark.

Your weight loss percentage is cumulative for the whole competition.  To calculate it manually, take your total pounds lost during the competition divided by your starting weight times 1000.  For instance, if I started at 160 and now weigh 153, I would take 7 (which is what 160-153 equals, so it's my total pounds lost) times it by 1000 then divide by my starting weight (160) and get 43.75.  I would round up to 44 and report that for weight loss percentage points.  I hope all that is clear.  If you have a hard time figuring it out, send me an email or leave a comment when you report points.

3 Nightly routines that will set you up for success

Tomorrow's fitness and weight loss success starts tonight, so set yourself up for success by following these tips:

1) Schedule your workouts--actual days and times you have blocked out on the calendar
2) Get your drinks and food ready the night before--prepare healthy snacks (carrot/celery sticks, banana, granola bar, prezels, nuts, etc), and prepare a lunch.  Preparing your lunch ensures that you eat something healthy, have normal portion sizes, and saves you money.
3) Get your workout clothes and/or workout bag ready the night before.

Try to focus this week on preparing the night before to have success in your eating and exercising the next day.  Good luck!!!

Reporting Inches Points

It's time to take measurements again!  Hopefully even if you haven't seen much of a difference on the scale you will see a difference when you measure yourselves this week.  The way you figure your points with inches, is you will get points for every 1/2 inch or every full inch.  For every inch you lose you get 10 points, or 5 points for 1/2 inch.  For example, if I lose 2 inches off my waist and 1/2 inch off my hips I will report 25 points on the section that says "inches points" when I report tomorrow.  I hope you are all pleased with your results!

Results Week #3

We are getting close to the half-way point of our challenge!  It's gone quickly for me!  The results are again very close.  Many of you are very dedicated and are giving it your all, and it is showing!  We have many who are getting at least 95% of their points each week and several who are still at perfect points.  Congratulations!  The results for week #3:

1st Place: ORANGE TEAM
2nd Place: BLUE TEAM
3rd Place:  RED TEAM
4th Place:  GREEN TEAM
5th Place:  YELLOW TEAM
6th Place:  PURPLE TEAM

This week we have two big weight losers!  Congratulations to Cloe Wilson and Marci Waite for losing 3 or more pounds!  Many of you are maintaining or losing a little at a time.  I truly like the saying "Slow and steady wins the race" because it is by doing things slow and steady that you will be able to keep it off.  I hope more than anything you are feeling good about the changes you are seeing in yourselves.

One thing I'd like to challenge you with this week is to pick one thing you have been struggling with and really work on that one thing more than anything else this week.  If you are not seeing the results you are hoping for look at what could be a possible change you can make......perhaps counting calories, or moving up your cut-off time for eating, making a food journal each day, changing your exercise to something more vigorous, etc.  For me, I know I need to get back to portion control, and that simply equates to stopping before I take seconds.  You need to look at yourself and see where you can push yourselves a little bit more.  You can do it!!!  Good luck on an awesome week 4!

Reporting for Week #2

I apologize once again for how slow I was in getting the results out for week #1!  The good news is I was able to get everything set up to report points on the blog.  However, before week one is completely behind us I need you to do one more thing for me....I need to to report your points for week #1 on the blog.  It will be much simpler for me to keep a spreadsheet and keep track of total points if they are all recorded this way.  What you need to do: click on your team color in the top right hand side of the blog.  You will then fill out all the blanks except for the "inches points" and "weight loss %" boxes.  Those will remain blank until the end of week #4.   When you are done you can either press the "enter" key or click on "submit points" at the bottom.  If you accidentally hit the "enter" key midway through reporting your points just re-start and I'll ignore the partially filled out report.  If you wil please fill out Week #1 by Sunday night we will be on track for reports on Monday for Week #2.

As stated in the rules at the beginning of the challenge, all points need to be reported by 10:00 p.m. on Monday or you will lose 15 points.  I need all points reported by Wed morning when I post results for your team to get credit for them.  If you know you won't be near a computer by 10:00 p.m. on Monday's please contact a team member to report for you.  You can report anytime on Monday after you weigh.

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!!!