Category Archives: Challenges

Mar 5 2013

Join Me in a DietBet!

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Back in January, I took part in a new fun game that’s sweeping the interwebs called DietBet.  The basic premise is that everyone who wants to participate puts a certain amount of money (decided by the game creator) into a pot.  At the end of four (4) weeks, everyone who loses at least 4% of their starting body weight splits the pot.

Interested in learning more about DietBet?  Here’s a video with more info:


Now, don’t worry, as the video points out, there are precautions in place to prevent cheating.  Each participant will be required to submit a starting weight photo and a final weight photo which includes a secret word that DietBet will provide when it’s time to weigh in.  The photos are completely confidential.  By default, your actual weight is also kept private.  If you choose to share it with other players in the game, you can do that in the privacy settings.

DietBet Scale Photoes

Some of the things I really love about DietBet is that it’s not based on any one particular food plan.  It doesn’t matter if you’re doing Weight Watchers, calorie counting, paleo, low carb, or whatever, everyone can take part.  I also really like that it’s based on a percentage of weight loss rather than a hard and fast weight loss number because it helps keep the playing field level.

As I mentioned, I took part in a DietBet game back in January.  I ended up meeting my 4% goal and nearly doubled the money I put in the pot.  Pretty cool, right?!

DietBet Money Jar

I’ve decided to take part in another DietBet game that starts next week.  A group of us who are FitFluential Ambassadors will be participating and wanted to open it up for our readers to join in with us, too.  So, who’s with me?  It’s simple:  just sign up, lose weight, and win money!

Until next time …

Melissa Script Sig

Disclaimer: FitFluential LLC compensated me for this Campaign. All opinions are my own.

Jan 1 2013

Word of the Year: REDUCE

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Word of the Year: Reduce

Happy New Year!!

Here we are … a new year.  It’s a time for new beginnings.  A time to look back at the things from the past year(s) that we’d like to change.  I’m no different.  There are several things I would like to change this year.

Over the past week or so, I saw several friends on Facebook and Twitter coming up with a theme word of the year for 2013.  I’ve decided to use the word REDUCE as my theme for this year.  Pretty much everything I want to change/work on this year fits pretty nicely within that theme, so it seemed like the perfect word.  Here’s my REDUCE plan for 2013:

Weight

As you may remember from my recent Expect Amazing post, one of the big changes I want to make this year is to start taking my weight loss journey more seriously again.  I’ve been playing around with the same 5-10 pounds for far too long, so one of my goals for this year is to make some good forward progress again.  I’m not setting a specific number goal, but I would love for it for be at least 50 pound which would be an average of at least a pound per week.  In an effort to help me meet this goal, I will naturally be continuing with Weight Watchers. I’ve also signed up for a few challenges to help me kick the New Year off on the right foot.

The first is Roni’s New Year DietBet put together by Roni over at Just Roni. In this challenge, participants pay $20 into the pot to join the challenge.  The goal is to lose 4% of your body weight in the month of January.  At the end of the month, everyone who meets their goal will split the pot.  As of this writing, the pot is at over $8,600!

Next up is the New Year’s Weight Loss Challenge we’re hosting over at The Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans.  I’m really excited to be teamed to do this free eight-week challenge with my long-time online pal, Suz.  We’ve dubbed ourselves FitBy50 for our team name.

Finally, I’ve also signed up for the free eight-week Progress Not Perfection Trackstar (#pnptrackstar) challenge put together by Dani from Weight Off My Shoulders.  You can find out the details on her Facebook page or by sending her an email.  This is an individual challenge for tracking my food and exercise.  As the name implies, it’s not about being 100% perfect with tracking, but with making progress.  When I’m on track with my weight loss efforts, I always track.  Tracking only falls by the wayside when I’m struggling.  So, my goal for this challenge will be to track everything for the entire eight weeks — good, bad, or ugly.

Stress

Between working full-time, commuting nearly 300 miles per week, and being a full-time college student, my stress levels pretty much run on over-drive more often than not these days.  One of the things I used to do to help with stress-relief was yoga, but I had to stop doing it about 13 months ago when I injured my knee.  After my knee surgery & recovery, I just never went back to it on a regular basis.  That’s my goal for 2013.  Due to my schedule, I’m not going to set some big lofty goal for practicing several time per week or anything.  Instead, I’m going to set a goal for myself to practice at least twice per month.  It will not only help my stress, but will help my flexibility as well.

Clutter/Stuff

When I split up from my ex-husband back in the summer of 2004, I moved into a new apartment with very little stuff.  I had some very basic pieces of furniture, kitchen basics, clothes, and my computer.  In the eight+ years since then, I’ve accumulated quite a bit.  Ok, ok, quite a lot!  It’s time to do something about it.  It’s time to reduce the amount of clutter/stuff I have.  To accomplish this goal, in the short-term I’ll be following along with Peter Walsh’s #31Days2GetOrganized challenge as well as the Motivorganization Month put together by my pal Christie over at Average Moms Wear Capes. Her challenge is based on the FlyLady principles.  I’ve followed them in the past, so this will be just the nudge I need to get back to following them again and get my place in order!

Spending

This is actually a reduce/increase combination.  The goal is to reduce my spending so I can increase my savings.  I have an amazing transatlantic cruise and European vacation planned for 2014 as part of my 50th birthday celebration.  My goal is to not put any of this vacation on my credit cards.  Well, at least, not any of it that will carry over as a balance.  I’ll use one of my cards during the trip for security reasons, but will pay the balance off in full when the bill comes due.

To help me meet this goal, I’ve pledged to go on a Spending Diet for 2013.  This is going to mean some pretty major changes in my spending habits.  Here are the rules I’ve set for myself:

  • All spending will be scrutinized as a need (rent, food, utilities, etc.) or a want.
  • I will have an allowance for $100 per month for “fun money.”  This will cover things like entertainment, hobbies, eating out, etc.
  • Any purchase over $50 requires a five day “cooling off” period to minimize expensive spontaneous purchases.

Now I realize some folks would say that paying for my Weight Watchers membership is more of a want than a need.  However, for me, it’s definitely a need.  I’ve tried enough times in the past to do it on my own to save the money and it just doesn’t work.  There are times I have a difficult enough time staying on track even with the motivation of my meetings, so dropping my meetings is simply non-negotiable.

Debt

This kind of goes hand-and-hand with the previous category.  Not only do I plan to reduce my spending in order to increase my savings, I also plan to use part of that money to reduce my debt, too.  While my debt-load isn’t ridiculously high, it’s still higher than I would like, especially given I’ll probably be buying a new vehicle in 2014.  I want my credit score to be as high as I can get it in order to make sure I get the best possible interest rate.  That means getting rid of as much debt as possible.

So, there you have it.  That’s my REDUCE plan for 2013.  Here’s to an amazing year for us all!

Until next time …

Image courtesy of supakitmod / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Dec 1 2012

Holiday Fitness Challenges

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Skinny Snowman Challenge

With all the big changes with Weight Watchers 360 being unveiled today on eTools/Weight Watchers online, I never got around to posting my Skinny Snowman Challenge info for yesterday (Friday).  Since today is the end of Week 1 for the challenge, I figured I would just combine that info into my post for today’s info.  I’ve also got information on a couple of different holiday fitness challenges that I’ll be taking part in this month, too

Skinny Snowman Challenge – Week 1 Day 6

Here’s my recap of how things went Thursday for the Skinny Snowman Challenge:

  • Had a serving of veggies at two meals (10 pts – missed breakfast … again no )
  • Had three servings of fruit (10pts)
  • Logged my food on the Weight Watchers website. (10pts)
  • Drank 96 ounces of water (10pts)
  • Write down 5 positives about my day (5pts)
    • Did 30 minutes of walking and 30 minutes of yoga (10 pts)
    • Tried the Spaghetti Squash Marinara recipe from Brooke.  It was yummy!! (25pts – new recipe mini challenge)
    • Texted with a couple of friends I haven’t chatted with in a while
    • Made it home from work in record time which was VERY surprising given it was raining in Los Angeles.
    • Received my gift as part of a holiday nail polish gift exchange group with friends.

Holiday Polish Exchange

This gives me a total of 80 points for Friday.  Adding that to my previous total, as of Day 6, I was at 370 points out of a possible 450 points for the week.

Skinny Snowman Challenge – Week 1 Day 7

Here’s my recap of how things went today:

  • Had a serving of veggies at all three meals (15 pts )
  • Had three servings of fruit (10pts)
  • Logged my food on the Weight Watchers website. (10pts)
  • Drank 72 ounces of water (10pts)
  • Write down 5 positives about my day (5pts)
    • Did 30 minutes of walking (5 pts)
    • Spent about an hour looking around the newly revamped Weight Watchers website and then published a blog post with my thoughts
    • Even though I had absolutely nowhere to go today (naturally), I had a VERY good hair day
    • It didn’t rain today!!  After three days of intermittent rain, it was quite welcome. )
    • Enjoyed checking out the blogs of some of the other Skinny Snowman Challenge participants.

That gives me a total of 55 points for today.  Adding that to my previous total, I’m finishing Week 1 with 425 points out of a possible 450 for the week.  Not too shabby!   I missed out on full points due to missing a veggie serving at breakfast four days this week.  I also missed out on 5 points for exercise, so I definitely want to rectify that next week!  Hopefully all of my hard work this week will pay off on the scale tomorrow at Weight Watchers. )   Now, on to Week 2!

Holiday Fitness Challenges

Speaking of working on my exercise, I found a few challenges to help get me through the month.  Here’s the lineup of what I’ll be doing:

  • Walk Through December – The goal for this challenge is to walk at least 20 minutes per day every day in December.  If you have Weight Watchers eTools or are an Online subscriber, there’s an a Walk Through December challenge group set up there.
  • Christmas Squat Challenge – The goal for this challenge is to progressively increase the number of squats one does per day.  They don’t all have to be done at one time.  They can be broken down into multiple sets throughout the day until the cumulative total is reached.  You can find more details about this challenge on my Facebook page.
  • O’Fitness Tree {25 Days of Exercise} – This is a create your own fitness challenge/advent calendar put together over at The Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans.  Since I already have two challenges I’ve joined, I’ll be using my O’Fitness Tree to keep track of those.  For each day when I complete both challenges, I get a cute little snowman on my tree.  I took the photo earlier in the day after I printed out my tree, but my Day 1 snowman is already on there for day. )

O'Fitness Tree

Are you participating in any challenge this month to help stay on track?  If not, do you have any plans in place to keep yourself on track during the holiday season?  Leave me a comment and let me know either way.

Until next time …

Nov 30 2012

NHBPM Challenge Recap

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NHBPM Challenge

Wow, I can’t believe it.  November has come to and end which means so has my participation in the National Health Blog Post Month challenge.  This month has just flown by!

NHBPM Challenge Recap

Even though I started this challenge with the best of intentions for meeting the challenge, I honestly had no idea of I would be able to do it.  The challenge included two “get of of posting” free days, but I still wasn’t even sure if I could blog for 28 days.

Well, I did it!  In fact, I only missed one day during the month, so I actually made it for 29 of the 30 days.  There have been many days (much like today) when I don’t get my post up until after 9pm PT, but I got them up.  There were many days I didn’t follow the suggested prompts, but I pretty much always kept my posts health-related in keeping with the theme of the challenge.

As an IT manager, my natural inclination is to now do a bit of a postmortem/lessons learned from the challenge.  I go through this process with any large project at work, so it just seemed like the thing to do now.  With that in mind, here’s what I’ve learned from participating in this challenge:

  • I’ve missed writing.  Don’t get me wrong, as a person who works full-time and is also a college student, I do lots of writing.  It’s just not the same as when I make time to blog on a consistent basis.  There’s just something powerful about taking time to write about my life, my health/weight loss journey, etc.  It’s so much easier to stay focused when I take time to reflect and write.
  • I like variety.  While I tried to give some variety in my posts from day-to-day, I still felt very confined by sticking to only health-related topics.  I like to write about a lot of different things.  I like to write about my hobbies.  I like to write about things I’m doing with my friends.  I like to just write about whatever is on my mind on any given day.  Sticking to just health-related posts every day for a month made me feel constrained and I didn’t particularly care for that aspect of the challenge.
  • I have awesome readers/friends!  You guys have been so awesome as I’ve been going through the challenge by sending me little notes of encouragement.  Some of you have left comments.  Some of you have sent emails.  Some of you have hit me up on Facebook and Twitter.  I appreciated each and every one of them, and each and every one of you!  Thanks!!

Skinny Snowman Challenge

Skinny Snowman Challenge – Week 1 Day 5

Here’s my recap of how things went Thursday for the Skinny Snowman Challenge:

  • Had a serving of veggies at all three meals (10 pts – missed breakfast … again no )
  • Had three servings of fruit (10pts)
  • Logged my food on the Weight Watchers website. (10pts)
  • Drank 72 ounces of water (10pts)
  • Write down 5 positives about my day (5pts)
    • Even though I’m still a bit sore from my fender-bender, I took 30 minutes to do some yoga (5pts)
    • Received a case of Yoplait Greek 100 yogurt that I won in a giveaway from Jennifer at It Sux to Be Fat
    • Got to spend some time talking on the phone last night with one of my BFFs.  She had been out of the country on business, so we didn’t get to talk for a few days.
    • Got a new high score of 789,400 in Bejeweled Blitz.  Yeah, I know.  It doesn’t take much to make me happy. lol
    • Signed up for Earndit which is a really cool site where you can earn rewards for exercising.  Thanks for telling me about it, Marisol!!

This gives me a total of 55 points for Thursday.  Adding that to my previous total, as of Day 5, I’m now at 290 points out of a possible 450 points for the week.

Until next time …

P.S. – This post is my final installment of my on-going participation in the National Health Blog Post Month challenge.

 

Nov 29 2012

Goal Setting for 2013

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Goal Setting

I hope no one faints or anything, but I’m actually going to use one of the writing prompts that were suggested for today as part of the National Health Blog Post Month challenge. lol   I know … I know … why start now when there’s only two days left for the month, but I just really liked this particular prompt because it’s all about goal setting.

“If I could accomplish one thing (anything) in 2013 it would be…”

Of course, when it comes to goal setting, my mind starts going at about 1000 miles per hour.  I immediately think about about 5-6 things without even batting an eye.  I start thinking about how much weight I would like to lose next year, what walking events I’d like to finish (5k, 10k, 15k, half marathon) professional certifications I’d like to earn for my career, finishing my degree, paying off my credit cards, etc.

See, I had no trouble coming up with a laundry list of things from which I could easily select one goal.  This is what I tend to do every New Year.  I set a crap load of goals and then end up actually accomplishing very few of them because I’m trying to do too much, so I knew narrowing this down to just one goal would be great for me!

After spending a few minutes trying to think of the perfect goal to set for myself for 2013, it hit me.  THAT needs to be my goal.  I need to start learning to let go for the perfectionism.  It leads me down a road of all or nothing thinking and that doesn’t serve me well AT ALL.  It leads to lots of frustration, self-loathing, and traps me into a lot of negative thinking.

So, if I could accomplish one thing in 2013, it would be to learn to let go of the perfectionist ideals to which I hold myself.  I don’t have to be perfect at everything I do.  One meal off track from my Weight Watchers eating plan doesn’t have to turn into two weeks of out of control eating because I’m feeling down on myself for “messing up” at that one meal.  (NOTE: From what I’m hearing, I think the new Weight Watchers 360 plan might help me quite a bit with this one since it’s all about behavior changes!)  Falling short of my goal pace in a 5k doesn’t have to turn into days of doing no activity.  I just need to learn to “forgive” myself and move on without getting completely derailed.  I think so many of the areas of my life that I want to work on hinge on tackling this issue.

What about you?  If you could accomplish one thing (anything) in 2013, what would it be?  Feel free to blog about it and link back with a comment.  You can also just leave your thoughts in a comment below if you don’t want to blog about it.

Weight Watchers 360

I found some more teaser information for you guys!  David Kirchhoff, CEO of Weight Watchers International, wrote a bit about the new program a few days ago on his blog, Man Meets Scale.  BTW, if you’re interested, you can also follow David on Twitter (@dkirchhoff)

 

Skinny Snowman Challenge

Skinny Snowman Challenge – Week 1 Day 4

Here’s my recap of how things went yesterday for the Skinny Snowman Challenge:

  • Had a serving of veggies at all three meals (10 pts – missed breakfast today)
  • Had three servings of fruit (10pts)
  • Logged my food on the Weight Watchers website. (10pts)
  • Drank 80 ounces of water (10pts)
  • Did 30 minutes of stretching (5pts)
  • Write down 5 positives about my day (5pts) – I decided to be a bit more creative today and put my five positives into an image.  I had kind of a crappy day, but I’m trying to make the best of it by turning some of my negatives/potential negatives into positives instead.

Lemons Into Lemonade

This gives me a total of 50 points for Day 4.  Adding that to my previous total, I’m now at 240 points out of a possible 450 points for the week.

Until next time …

P.S. – This post is part of my on-going participation in the National Health Blog Post Month challenge.

Nov 28 2012

Weight Watchers 360° – Welcome New Readers!

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I want to start off by sending out a HUGE welcome to all of the new visitors who stopped by my blog yesterday.  Apparently my post about the new Weight Watchers 360° program was extremely popular.  lol   I received about FIVE times the number of visitors I have on an average day.  I’m not going to delude myself into believing all of you will keep coming back, but I hope at least some of you will stick around and become a regular reader of my blog. )   I share quite a bit about my journey on Weight Watchers, so hopefully it will be something that would interest you as well since you were searching for info about the new program changes.

More Weight Watchers 360° Info

In case you didn’t happen to read the comments on my post yesterday, my online pal Suzi pointed out in her comment that the new plan rolled out in Canada beginning today.  She also tweeted about it a few times yesterday and it sounds like she really likes the changes.  I took a peek over at the Weight Watchers Canada website and it looks pretty cool.  I’m looking forward to my meeting on Sunday even more now!

UPDATE Dec. 1:  If you came here looking for information about Weight Watchers 360, you might want to check my other Weight Watchers 360 posts!

Skinny Snowman Challenge

Skinny Snowman Challenge – Week 1 Day 3

Here’s my recap of how things went yesterday for the Skinny Snowman Challenge:

  • Had a serving of veggies at all three meals (15 pts)
  • Had three servings of fruit (10pts)
  • Logged my food on the Weight Watchers website. (10pts)
  • Write down 5 positives about my day (5pts)
    1. Went for a 30 minute walk (5 pts)
    2. Did 30 minutes of stretching/yoga (5 pts)
    3. Hit an all-time record number of visitors to my blog in a single day. Thanks!!
    4. Was able to stock up on my favorite Hickory Farms Sweet Hot Mustard that is only available this time of year.
    5. Started the ball rolling to have a meet-up with several blogging friends in a couple of weeks.
  • Drank 80 ounces of water (10pts)

This gives me a total of 60 points for Day 3.  Adding that to my previous total, I’m now at 190 points out of a possible 450 points for the week.

I also wanted to give a special shout-out to Brooke.  She emailed all 125+ participants of the challenge today just to make sure everything was going OK and to find out if we had any questions.  That was so sweet of her and I’m sure took quite a bit of time!

Until next time …

P.S. – This post is part of my on-going participation in the National Health Blog Post Month challenge.