Thoughts

Hey, Katy, just some thoughts I'm having after reading your comments:

1. Roundup - Yes, let's feel out our family members and friends and see if anyone else wants to get on a healthy living kick and participate in an online blog.
2. Point System - To me, there's got to be some kind of tracking or accountability, otherwise what's the point? I'd adopt nearly verbatim the point system used over on the HWHL blog:

"10 points - Eat your calorie range
2 points - Eat your fruits and vegetables for the day (it is not a point per f/v)
1 point - Eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner
3 points - Drink 64 ounces of water
2 point - No Soda Pop!
1 point- Multi-vitamin
5 points- 30 minutes of exercise *5 days out of 7 only
1 point - each addt'l 15 minutes of exercise
3 points - Food journal
5 points - Post or comment on this blog
2 points-posting in addition to commenting (6 max per week)
3 points - stop eating 2 hours before bedtime
10 points - Random surprise challenges


**You get ONE free eating days for this challenge. This means you can claim your 10 points only once during the two week period, even if you exceed your calorie range.***

30 Point Bonus - Set one meaningful goal for this two week challenge. If you reach your goal, you get to add on an additional 30 points. This can be anything that will be a challenge to you, but attainable. It could be, for example, to lose a certain amount of weight, have all the dishes done before you go to bed every night, or reading your scriptures every day. I leave it up to you.

But set a goal and then focus on it. Make it happen. Change your life."

My one gripe with the HWHL point system is that you get someone in there who's training for a marathon or something, gets a bazillion points every day or every week for exercising hours and hours, and everyone else gets left in the dust as far as points go. It gets very discouraging. Come on! There are days when 1/2 hour of exercising seems like an awesome I-climbed-Mt.Everest accomplishment. But I still like the idea of extra credit for more exercising, so I'm not sure how to do that. Maybe there can be extra points for doing more than one kind of exercising, or maybe a max limit for extra points given on the time spent on any one exercise session. Plus, I'd kick it back to 6 days out of 7 in a week allowed to claim exercise points. It used to be 7 days in a week allowed, but some of us (yes, that was me included) were a little nuts about earning points and had all this agonizing over exercising on Sunday and if that was kosher on the Sabbath or not. After much debating, Audrey decided to discourage that by only allowing a certain # of days in a week to claim points for exercising. Besides, a body needs some rest, a reset day anyway. But, dude, if I exercise 6 days, I want my points! I'm greedy that way.

Also, I've often thought stopping eating 2 hours before bed just wasn't enough to have the best effect. I think it's got to be three or four hours, especially if you are a night owl. Stopping eating well before bed was a big factor for me in losing weight last year. The days I stopped eating at least 3 or 4 hours before bed, the scales were definitely kind to me the next morning. If I'd exercised and stayed in my calorie range, and ALSO quit eating well before bed, I saw results, guaranteed. Especially if I drank lots of water, too.

3. Challenges/Incentives - Okay, this is the JUICY & FUN part. On the HWHL blog, you won the 2 or 3 week challenge by accumulating the most points and your prize was bragging rights, getting your picture posted at the top of the blog as the challenge winner. Which is cool, but I'm totally a slacker right now and I need more than that. What I'm thinking is something even more, something long term that puts it over the top in a good way. And this brings into your idea of a sprint triathalon.

It would be cool if there was a big event we could all prepare for, a sprint triathalon or 10K run or something. I'd also want to combine that with a reunion/get-together weekend where all the participants could join together to celebrate. Over on the HWHL blog, there was a lot of wishful thinking when it came to a reunion for all the participants, but it never came to fruition, mostly because everyone was so spread out all over the country and coordinating busy schedules is always an issue. But maybe that wouldn't be such a big problem if we prepped far enough in advance. I'd really like to see a blog dedicated to working towards a really BIG goal for everyone. And the bi-weekly challenges could help everyone earn rewards towards that weekend. What would the rewards be? Free t-shirts, scrapbooking kits, jewelry, gift certificates of some kind, etc., that we would award at the reunion. Okay, some of those rewards were definitely on the girly side and we might get some of our men family/friends want to participate, so maybe we should throw in some guy stuff, too. I don't know where we'll get the dough for all that (do we all donate to a big $$ pool, get sponsors?), but I defintely feel the need for some concrete incentives. Okay, there are my thoughts. Now I've got to go send out an email...