Inner Mind

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10 Point Challenge - Fruits and Veggies

Here's your 10 point extra challenge today - figure out your daily recommended fruits and veggies.  From the USDA website:
How Much Fruit?
How Many Vegetables?

Not all "cups" are equal.  For instance, 1/2 cup of dried fruit is equivalent to "1 cup" of regular fruit like "1 cup" of leafy green vegetables is really 2 cups.

Becky's - 1-1/2 cups fruit, 2-1/2 cups veggies
Dani - 1-1/2 cups fruit, 2-1/2 cups veggies

Saturday and Sunday Points

Sunday Points:
Dani:
10/10 points* - Eat your calorie range
3/3 points - Eat your fruits and vegetables for the day (it is not a point per f/v)
1/1 point** - Eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner
0/3 points - Drink 64 ounces of water
1/1 point - No Soda Pop!
1/1 point - Multi-vitamin
0/5 points*** - 30 minutes of exercise
3/3 points - Food journal
3/3 points - stop eating at least 3 hours before bedtime (our summer goal for this is no food after 8pm)

Total:  22
Total this period:  137

Becky:
10/10 points* - Eat your calorie range
3/3 points - Eat your fruits and vegetables for the day (it is not a point per f/v)
1/1 point** - Eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner
0/3 points - Drink 64 ounces of water
1/1 point - No Soda Pop!
0/1 point - Multi-vitamin
0/5 points*** - 30 minutes of exercise
3/3 points - Food journal
3/3 points - stop eating at least 3 hours before bedtime (our summer goal for this is no food after 8pm)

Total:  21
Total this period:  121

Saturday Points:
Dani:
10/10 points* - Eat your calorie range
3/3 points - Eat your fruits and vegetables for the day (it is not a point per f/v)
0/1 point** - Eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner
3/3 points - Drink 64 ounces of water
1/1 point - No Soda Pop!
1/1 point - Multi-vitamin
0/5 points*** - 30 minutes of exercise
3/3 points - Food journal
3/3 points - stop eating at least 3 hours before bedtime (our summer goal for this is no food after 8pm)
1 bonus point - no more than 500 calories for dinner & dessert

Total: 25
Total this period: 115

Becky:
10/10 points* - Eat your calorie range
3/3 points - Eat your fruits and vegetables for the day (it is not a point per f/v)
1/1 point** - Eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner
3/3 points - Drink 64 ounces of water
1/1 point - No Soda Pop!
1/1 point - Multi-vitamin
5/5 points*** - 30 minutes of exercise
3/3 points - Food journal
3/3 points - stop eating at least 3 hours before bedtime (our summer goal for this is no food after 8pm)

Total: 30
Total this period:  100

Friday Points

Here are our points for Friday, June 22:

Dani:
10/10 points* - Eat your calorie range
3/3 points - Eat your fruits and vegetables for the day (it is not a point per f/v)
1/1 point** - Eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner
3/3 points - Drink 64 ounces of water
1/1 point - No Soda Pop!
1/1 point - Multi-vitamin
5/5 points*** - 30 minutes of exercise
1 bonus point - additional 15 min exercise
3/3 points - Food journal
3/3 points - stop eating at least 3 hours before bedtime (our summer goal for this is no food after 8pm)

31 points - 90 total points this period

Becky:
10/10 points* - Eat your calorie range
3/3 points - Eat your fruits and vegetables for the day (it is not a point per f/v)
1/1 point** - Eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner
3/3 points - Drink 64 ounces of water
0/1 point - No Soda Pop!
0/1 point - Multi-vitamin
5/5 points*** - 30 minutes of exercise, only 6 days out of 7 can be counted
3/3 points - Food journal
3/3 points - stop eating at least 3 hours before bedtime (our summer goal for this is no food after 8pm)
1 bonus point - no more than 500 calories for dinner & dessert

29 points - 75 total points this period

Thursday Points

Here are our points for Thursday, June 21:

Dani:
10/10 points* - Eat your calorie range
3/3 points - Eat your fruits and vegetables for the day (it is not a point per f/v)
1/1 point** - Eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner
3/3 points - Drink 64 ounces of water
1/1 point - No Soda Pop!
0/1 point - Multi-vitamin
5/5 points*** - 30 minutes of exercise
1 bonus point - additional 15 min exercise
3/3 points - Food journal
3/3 points - stop eating at least 3 hours before bedtime (our summer goal for this is no food after 8pm)
1 bonus point - no more than 500 calories for dinner & dessert

31 points - 59 total points this period

Becky:
10 points* - Eat your calorie range
3 points - Eat your fruits and vegetables for the day (it is not a point per f/v)
1/1 point** - Eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner
0/3 points - Drink 64 ounces of water
0/1 point - No Soda Pop!
0/1 point - Multi-vitamin
5 points*** - 30 minutes of exercise, only 6 days out of 7 can be counted
3 points - Food journal
0/3 points - stop eating at least 3 hours before bedtime (our summer goal for this is no food after 8pm)

22 points - 46 total points this period

Points for Wednesday

Here are our points for Wednesday, June 20:

Dani:
10/10 points* - Eat your calorie range
3/3 points - Eat your fruits and vegetables for the day (it is not a point per f/v)
1/1 point** - Eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner
3/3 points - Drink 64 ounces of water
1/1 point - No Soda Pop!
0/1 point - Multi-vitamin
5/5 points*** - 30 minutes of exercise
1 bonus point - additional 15 min exercise
3/3 points - Food journal
0/3 points - stop eating at least 3 hours before bedtime (our summer goal for this is no food after 8pm)
1 bonus point - no more than 500 calories for dinner & dessert

28 points total

Becky:
10 points* - Eat your calorie range
3 points - Eat your fruits and vegetables for the day (it is not a point per f/v)
0/1 point** - Eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner
3 points - Drink 64 ounces of water
0/1 point - No Soda Pop!
0/1 point - Multi-vitamin
5 points*** - 30 minutes of exercise, only 6 days out of 7 can be counted
3 points - Food journal
0/3 points - stop eating at least 3 hours before bedtime (our summer goal for this is no food after 8pm)

24 points total

Mother and Daugher Starting Together

Well, I'm starting up again, only Dani and I are going to do this adventure together!! We are both going to track our calories, exercise, etc.

Point System - I'm adapting this from the HWHL blog that I participated in about a year and a half ago, when I lost 50 pounds:

10 points* - Eat your calorie range
3 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
1 point - No Soda Pop!
1 point - Multi-vitamin
5 points*** - 30 minutes of exercise, only 6 days out of 7 can be counted
3 points - Food journal
3 points - stop eating at least 3 hours before bedtime (our summer goal for this is no food after 8pm)

This is a baseline of 30 points everyday.

*You get ONE free eating day during the challenge period. It's a calorie freebie day, one day to blow your calories. This means you can claim your 10 points for eating in your calorie range only once during the two week period, even if you exceed your calorie range.
**1 point - no more than 500 calories for dinner & dessert
***1 point - each addt'l 15 minutes of exercise

10 points - Random surprise challenges
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, wake up and exercise by a certain time everyday, or cleaning out the garage. Your choice, it's completely personal to you.

Challenge period - Typically this is two weeks. What used to be done on the HWHL blog is that whoever racked up the most points, got bragging rights on the blog for 2 weeks. If it's just me and Dani, that's not really going to cut it. Besides, I'm really into incentives, just a generic weight loss goal isn't a strong-enough motivator for tracking and controlling myself on a daily basis. What I'm going to do is a reward system - earn this many points, get this prize. That way, everyone can get a prize, period. None of that working-really-hard business, then getting beat out by the one training for a marathon. Please! This point system is hard enough as it is, thank you.

Reward System - Dani wants to work for clothes, so I'm going to award a dollar value for points earned. A Challenge Period is 2 weeks, so an excellent point record would be 14 days times 30 points a day is 420 points. Remember, there are ways to earn more than 30 points a day average, so you can make up for "bad" days (or those 2 days where you can't count your exercise.) So, here's the sliding scale:

420 points - $30 towards clothes
370 points - $25 towards clothes
320 points - $20 towards clothes
270 points - $15 towards clothes
220 points - $10 towards clothes
170 points - $5 towards clothes

Whatcha think? If you want to participate with us, let us know by commenting here on the blog. But you gotta do your own rewards. I can only be Dani's Sugar Momma, sorry!

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...

Sorry, Girlfriend...

I posted over at HWHL, but I don't think anyone is paying attention over there. We all got distracted, or something. Anyway, here's my post:

My conscious mind has not set a goal this summer for my body and health. However, my bathroom scales have informed me that my unconscious-mind/hormones/general-psychology have decided that my summer goal is to Gain 20 pounds. Ummm... does anyone else out there need a big kick in the rear, too? I'm sitting here, knowing I need a drastic intervention, something to motivate me to get my act together, and right now I'm sitting at the I-am-a-stubborn-2-year-old stage, where I feel like I need to be bribed to get back on track. Where's the Magic I'll-pay-you-a-thousand-bucks-if-you-lose-50-pounds Fairy when you need her? Does anybody else want to get back on track, and could we get some kind of contest or something going?

Aaaack!!!

Day... um... what the?!!

When you eat enough food to gain 10 pounds in 2 weeks or less, there is an unending stream of deliciousness parading its way into your mouth, and you are eating the same amount of food that people used to eat during 8-course meals in high-falutin' sit-downs, then you know you need an INTERVENTION. And that means tracking your food intake again. GROAN!! No, not that!! Anything but that!!! Saaaaave me!!