Fitness/Weight Loss Challeneges at Work

It’s amazing when you decide to make a positive change in your life how other positive changes start to happen around you.

I’m participating in two fitness challenges at work!

One involves my entire team at work and includes a health and fitness portion each day of the week. The other is a weight loss challenge with two other co-workers.

Fitness Challenge w/ All 

• Fresh Start Monday’s
• Health: Give up your guilty pleasure for something fresh.
• Take the Stair’s Tuesday’s
• Health: Eat breakfast by 8:30am
• Fitness: Take the stairs all day
• Workout Wednesday
• Health: Eat breakfast by 8:30am
• Fitness: Stairwell workout: step-ups, squats, dips, crunches 4x30 seconds (roughly a 12 minute workout)
• Thirsty Thursdays
• Health: Drink 1.5 liters of water today
• Fitness: Park in the far corner of the parking lot today
• Fitness Friday
• Health: Eat breakfast by 8:30am
• Fitness: 23 minute group walk or cycle. Go for a walk outside or use the treadmills/stationary bikes in the gym.
• Saturday/Sunday (think about including your family)
• Fitness: 20-30 minutes of your favorite activity….(the wii counts)

We have a point system for the lifestyle challenge which will be tracked using a sticker board (yeah! Think Kindergarten style).  The winner will get a free one hour massage!  This challenge starts on Monday, January 25th.

Weight Loss Challenge

There are three of us at work that have decided to ramp up our efforts and challenge each other to a weight loss goal. The goal: 10 weeks to lose 20 lbs. We are each chipping in $20 and going to ask our manager to chip in an additional $40 for a total of $100 prize for whoever gets the closest to the goal. The idea here is that the money would be a good start for some new clothes (which we would surely need after losing 20 lbs). We weigh 180, 190 and 209 lbs - of all varying heights are between 5’5” and 5’10”. I should note here that this was wearing our work clothes which are heavier then when I weight myself at home.

We are going to do a group weigh in each Wednesday until the final Wednesday, March 31, 2010.

Wish us luck.

Stair Master!

I'm not the master of the stairs just yet, but I think I'm probably hiking - on average - 24 flights a stairs a day now.  I used to mayyybe do 6-10.  I'm hoping that in a few months I can walk the six flights without feeling complettely out of breath.  It's slow going - but I beleive it will come in time.

on another update - my mom has no more diet coke and has promised not to buy/drink anymore as long as I continueu to walk the stairs at work.

Headaches....

I've had one since I woke up this morning 6.5 hours ago - yuck!

A Deal...update

Phew!

No more elevators equals sad face.

Monday I did 18 flights of stairs, and Tuesday I did 40 (half up & half down).  Not all at once of course, but throughout the day.  The most I ever do at a time is 6 (as I'm on the six floor).

I find that the first floor is pretty easy, the second one is doable, but by the third I'm winded.

I've started doing slow breathing, in and out, as a I walk up the stairs.  I try to coach myself through the breathing rather then focusing on how many more steps I have to walk.

I think it's helping.

A Deal

On my last post, I mentioned some learning from a recent Health & Safety meeting we had at work. In one of the comments, my mom issued a challenge.

Does this mean that the diet coke and chocolate bar theory is busted? Oh no! And I shouldn't buy diet coke any more? I do know that it hasn't helped me lose weight. If you do the stairs I will stop buying diet coke. ( but I can't waste or waist what I have)

Mom, I accept your challenge. I will stop taking elevators if you stop drinking diet coke.

I work on the sixth floor, and this morning - walking hurt. I hope that in a few months, it doesn't hurt so much and I get to the feeling good part.

Health & Saftey Meeting

Yesterday we had a health and safety meeting that lasted 4 hours!  In it we had some group exercises, a guest speaker, and some interactive conversation.  The key things I learned were:

• You should drink a liter of water for every 100lbs of body weight 
• 2 liters of water for me = 8 cups of water
• When reading nutrition labels, take care to read the serving size - it can be very misleading
• Meal planning can go a long way to save you money, time, energy, & stress
• Simply by increasing the amount of Omega 3 in your diet (via supplement) you can decrease your chance of heart attack and decrease joint swelling, and help your body manage it's insulin levels
• People, on average, eat their body weight in sugar every year
• Our ancestors ate less sugar in a year, then we do in a day
• Aspartame, commonly found in diet products, was originally created as a chemical weapon
• It also makes our body thing there is sugar when there isn't which can numb our bodies ability to tell when their is real sugar to process.  This messes with incline levels and often results in a weight increase not decrease
• The number one symptom of heart attack, is death
• most people don't survive their first (and therfore their only) heart attack to tell about it's symtoms - they just die

I think I might start walking up the stairs in the morning and drinking some water...also going to pick up some Omega 3 pills at Costco next time I'm there.

What is your ideal weight?

As I start to think about this post, I’m not sure what mine is – I just know that it’s not 210lbs. 

During my annual family Christmas shopping trip, the subject of weight and body types had come up. I believe that my number one problem is portion control. I eat too much. I also probably don’t exersize enough as well.

To figure out my ideal weight, I’m first going to look at my stats and then go to a few online calculators.

Please know that I do understand that muscle weighs more then fat, and you can be fit, in shape, and strong – and weigh more because of muscle – this is not my problem. I have some muscle, but that isn’t where the majority of my weight comes from.

I am 5 foot, 10 inches tall, I am a 25 year old female and I have a medium frame. 

• According to devine.ca, my ideal weight is between 150-165 lbs. 
• According to bodyandhealth.canada.com, my ideal weight is between 120 and 174 lbs. 
• According to shape.com, my ideal weight is between 142 and 156 lbs. 
• According to halls.md, my ideal weigth should be between 132 to 174 lbs. 

Based on the websites I mentioned above, I think I will set my ideal weight goal at 165 lbs. To achieve that, I will need to lose 45 lbs.

I know that part of my plan will be to watch my portion control, and to start moving my body more. I haven’t figured out my exact plan yet – I think the first step is to identify the problem.

Headaches....

I have a ripper of a headache this morning... it seems only to be on the right side of my head and behind my eye. How strange.

I thought getting my new glasses with an updated prescription would help eliminate most of these.  Apparently, it's not normal to get headaches several times a week. I took three Tylenol for this one (about an hour ago) so I'm hoping it will go away in short order.

Perhaps this is something I should keep track of.