Thanksgiving Challenge

 

Today starts Day 1 of my 2800 push up challenge. Each day for the next 7 days, I am going to attempt do 100 more push ups than the day before. So today I am going to do 100, tomorrow 200, Wednesday 300 and so on and so forth until Sunday when I need to be able to complete 700.  It doesn't matter if I do 10 sets of 10 or 100 sets of 1 as long as at the end of the day, I have hit my goal.

As an added bonus to myself, I am going to do some mini-challenges as well. For example, today I am going to do 100 pull-ups. Tomorrow might be 100 body squats or 100 burpees.

There are two reasons I am doing this challenge. First and foremost, Thursday is Thanksgiving and I want to be able to enjoy all the wonderful food that will be prepared. Secondly, I will not have access to my companies corporate gym so weight lifting is out.

So there you have it. My official challenge is out there. If you follow me onfitocracy.com, you can see my updates. If not, then check back here early next week to find out if I completed it.

If you feel like joining in on the challenge, feel free to do so either anonymously or in the comments below.

Have a great Thanksgiving everyone!

 ***** UPDATE *****

Recently I was asked if I completed this challenge. Well....it didn't work out quite as I had hoped. I managed to get through the day after Thanksgiving but them my wrist started to get quite sore and I stopped. I think I managed 1500 over the course of 5 days.

Whole30 Challenge Review

Yesterday marked the completion of the Whole30 challenge that I sponsored at my office. Overall I think it went very well and I consider it a mild success. I, personally, lost 5 lbs and I know of others that lost weight as well. I felt great, had lots of energy and overall maintained a very positive attitude.  On the downside, not many other people actually completed the challenge in the manner that I was hoping. I was hoping everyone would really commit 100% to the challenge and not break from the acceptable list of foods. But no one really did for the whole thing. I, myself, lost 3 points based on my eating habits. Those 3 points came from some BBQ sauce on some chicken I ate and some peas that were in some stir fry that I made. Oh well, I still consider the challenge a success and I look forward to sponsoring another one soon.

Here are some things I learned about myself during the last 30 days.

• Protein Shakes - I really enjoy protein shakes and not having the ability to have a quick shake to increase my protein intake drove me nuts. I miss the shakes so much that I went out and bought a new tub of protein powder last week in anticipation for this challenge being over.


• Coffee – I thought I really needed coffee but it turns out I really don’t. I tend to get so focused on needing coffee for energy that I always find myself pouring a cup. In the last 30 days I have not had any coffee and have felt great. For those mornings its cold and I wanted to drink something hot, I found some great naturally flavored non-caffeinated teas that I enjoyed.


• Soda - I broke the habit of needing diet soda. This was a bad one and I am really glad that I didn’t cave on it. Diet Mt. Dew was my favorite.


• Cheat Meals - I miss having the occasion cheat meal with my family. There were nights were I only ate meat as I didn’t want to deviate from the challenge. Normally I allow myself some deviations from the diet. I really like the 80/20 rule. It’s been my friend and helped me (and my family) keep sane.


• CrockPot - The CrockPot is the best cooking device. I have been able to put stuff in it before I leave for work and have it ready when I get back. Love that!


• Sugar – It’s really hard to find products that don’t have sugar in them. Really hard. Even some spices have sugar in them. That surprised me.


• Dairy – I think dairy was the thing that was keeping me from losing weight. I tended to put cheese on everything.

I have not decided if I will continue the challenge into February. I already had some banned foods last night but have been clean all of today. I think I probably will go as clean as I can and see what happens. I think in March I will sponsor another challenge for my entire company and see where that goes. Stay tuned for details!

**Update** - Found out that 2 of the people that I thought gave up on the challenge actually just stopped logging their daily points. In actuality, they actually completed the challenge and are still eating Paleo. In fact, he has lost 25lbs so far and his wife is down 15lbs. What a great testament to this challenge and how it can really help people to lose weight and feel better.

Whole30 Challenge

On January 1st, some co-workers and I started a 30 day whole foods challenge based on the Whole30.  To make it a bit easier and in an attempt to make sure that everyone put forth their best effort, I gave everybody 100 points to start off with.  Whenever a mistake was made, they had to deduct 1 point for each incident. The person that had the most points at the end of the month will be awarded a $25 gift card to VitaminShoppe.

To make it even easier on everyone (because ease of use is what its all about), I found a great website called The 100 Point Challenge.  You setup an account (or use your Facebook account), create a challenge, and then invite people to join your challenge. Every day you log on and deduct a point based on how many "mistakes" you made in your diet for the day.  We started out with about 10 people and so far there are 3 of us that still have 100 points and no one has completely fallen off of the radar yet.

I look forward to the results of the people that joined and really hope that some of them come out with a new respect for clean eating.

**Update - January 7th. I spoke with two people today about their progress. One is down 8lbs since the 1st and the other is down 3lbs. The one that is down 3lbs has also seen his sleep improve and has pretty much eliminated his issues with heartburn. I would say that is some good progress! **