Fitness Challenge, Week 1

Next month, Natalie will be 2.5 years old. Here is my big confession: I have still not lost all the pregnancy weight.

When she was three months old, and I was still adjusting to motherhood and not sleeping a lot, it was okay. When she was six months old, and I had started to lose some of the weight, it was good. Then she was nine months old, and I passed the "nine months on, nine months off" official stage, it wasn't great, but still sort of okay. When I she reached her first birthday, I knew I was out of excuses.

Now, at almost 2.5, it clearly is my lack of effort, and nothing else. It's time to step it up. Dean also has some fitness goals he wants to meet. We have both recently started to get more exercise, and I've been focusing on cooking more healthy meals. Dean found a great way for us to have some fun while kicking it into high gear. In true Dean-style competitive spirit, he bought us a copy of The Fitness Challenge Game.

Game On!

The game works like this, for eight weeks, two players set a goal for number of weekly workouts (we went with recommended 3x/week) and you put a star on the chart for each workout, worth 1 point. When you complete your third workout for the week, you get a 3 point star. So the goal for any week is 5 points. We put the chart up on the fridge to track our progress.

Each player picks 15 wager coupons. At the end of each week, the winner gets to hand over one of the coupons. These are for things like:
- Get up early with the kid
- Clean out _____
- Give me a massage

And then there is one big stakes coupon the overall winner gets. Basically, one of us gets to go on a shopping spree for a set $$ amount. I so want to win!

The weeks run Monday to Sunday. We have just completed week one. Every Monday you can check in for the weekly update. I figure, if we go public, we'll stick to it. So if you read this blog, please post a note to cheer us on!

So now... drumroll please, here is our chart with this week's winner:




Can you guess who is purple and who is orange? I'll let you know later. But if you can't read the chart yet, we tied! So it was a great week. In fact, we both ran 4x/week. This is great as I've been averaging about 2x/week for the past few months, and that just wasn't cutting it for weight loss purposes. So no coupons handed out for this week. Dean is out on a run as I type this. Miss Natalie is napping, so I'm off to do Pilates. Stayed tuned...