Fitness Challenge

Anyone who knows me somewhat well, knows that I've got a bit of a competitive streak. And if you don't know me well, you can just ask Glen about the cold shoulder he gets when he cheats and beats me at Scrabble. Whatever you do you don't want to ask Kristina who might tell you some lie about how I clawed her after losing to her in a battle of "defend the closet", but that's all just lies. I would never have lost to her in a battle involving my fake Guess jeans.
So, about 6 weeks ago my sister started excitedly talking to Glen and I about a fitness challenge she was participating in. Since the prize at the end is bigger with the more people that participate, she put a full-court press on us to join in too.

We hemmed. We made excuses. We flatly told her no.

But somewhere along the way she appealed to our competitive natures and we decided to jump in and win the 12-week-long challenge!

The first couple of weeks were ugly with me being all grumpy at the lifestyle changes I had to make, but now half way through the challenge, I'm finally ready to blog about the challenge minus the attitude.

But wait! I guess I'm getting ahead of myself here telling you how hard it was at first. Maybe I should tell you a little bit more about the challenge before we go there.

Here it is in a nutshell:

Everyone sends in $25 to the pot.

We get points for each of the following challenges:

1. Exercising 30 minutes per day
2. No desserts
3. Reading the scriptures daily
4. No snacking after 7:30pm
5. No soda
6. Weekly challenge that changes each week (no sweets at all, keep a food journal, count calories, etc)
7. Weekly FHE

Each daily success is worth one point with a bonus 7th point possible if you are 100% for all 6 days for that challenge (Sundays are free-for-all days). We have spreadsheets and we keep score. Whoever has the most points at the end gets "the pot", which I believe is something like $400 or so. There is also a smaller monetary award for 2nd prize.

Any long-time readers of this blog, know that I'd already been doing the no dessert thing since February, I don't really like soda, and I love FHE. So for me the biggest challenge was making exercise a part of my daily routine and reading the scriptures individually (since I'd been lazy and counting our family scripture study as good enough).

As mentioned above, that first week was exceptionally rough. The weekly challenge was no sugar at all (a step up from just cutting out desserts). School was still in session, so life was totally chaotic. I had PMS and I was waking up early to exercise, which made me exceptionally tired, achy, and grumpy.

We had just pulled into the drive-through of Chick-fil-A at the end of a challenging day and Glen told me that we probably shouldn't get any sweet and sour sauce with our chicken, since it was too sweet for the weekly challenge. Things get a little fuzzy at that point, but I'm pretty sure that after I stopped hyperventilating and muttering curse words under my breath that I yelled a few choice phrases which may not be fit for my dear blog readers to read.

Thankfully, things got better after that. My competitiveness kicked in. I'm in a routine and now for the first time in years I've put 2 and 2 together. Daily exercise AND healthy diet at the same time (plus scripture study).

I only missed one task on one day, which made me lose 2 points (the daily point and the weekly bonus point), so I think that my chances are already ruined for winning, but Glen and I are already concocting a way that he and I together can continue living the challenge's tenets long after it ends.

By the way, if you're interested in following along with the challenge here's the link to the official Fitness Challenge blog.

PS Does anyone know where I can buy any trick Scrabble tiles that you can flip around to become the letter you need?