A New Challenge

It's been a while since I've posted, but I just haven't had the desire. My running was off, my workouts were basically non-existent. I didn't feel like doing anything. And because this is a fitness blog, I guess I didn't feel like posting anything because it would all be negative. Well, this is a new week and with new weeks come new challenges and opportunities.

Antone Davis Before and After

See, I'm the trainer at a local credit union, and twice a year we have all staff training days. Since Monday was a federal holiday the credit union was closed and we brought all the staff in for training. It's way more exciting (for me) than it sounds. In our preparation for this day, my boss, VP of HR, formed a wellness committee and created a new contest for the employees of the credit union. We also brought in Antone Davis, former UT Volunteer football player and recent runner up on Season 12 of Biggest Loser, to inspire the staff. He was amazing and did a great job at inspiring.

The contest is the reason I wanted to write this post, though. When I started this blog I was doing our holiday challenge of Maintain, Don't Gain. I succeeded in that challenge and plan to succeed in this one as well. This challenge is called the New U Wellness Challenge (I think). Regardless of what it is called the whole premise is this: you can earn points for doing certain things in a day. We get 5 points for walking 8,000 steps in a day; 5 points for eating 5 servings of fruits and vegetables in a day; 5 points for doing more than 30 minutes of cardio; 5 points for more than 20 minutes of strength training; 5 points for yoga; 10 points for losing 1% of our body weight; and bonus points for doing extra activities like 5ks, marathons, and other stuff.

There are awards that can be won based on how many points you earn. There are three tiers and then a grand prize. The contest runs for 10 weeks, until April 29. My 5k is April 1. While I think it would be awesome to win the grand prize (a Wii Fit and some games), I just want to get to the top tier. I would have to get 800 points roughly to fall into that category. In two days I've racked up 30 points. As long as I stay on this route I should be okay, right?

The other thing that is causing me to hope a little is that if I lose even 5% of my body weight that is 12 pounds. I know, I'm a lard ass, but at least I'm doing something about it! When I lose those 12 pounds (see how I'm staying positive!) I will be down to 240. 240 will be a total loss of 40 pounds, too. That would mean that I only have 40 more pounds to lose (another 2 years?) before I'm at my goal weight. That's quite exciting! See, I'm just trying to see the good/positive side of things today. Tomorrow may be completely different, but as for tonight, I'm going to be a positive girl!