Fall For Fitness

My company is launching a fitness challenge - Fall For Fitness. Over the next 12 weeks employees across the states will join teams and compete for most weight lost, most steps walked and most exercise minutes.

I created a team, the Lake Center Loser Corps, to get people from my building to encourage each other and compete against all the other teams in this challenge. The website we're using will have a calorie tracker and allow us to enter our daily activity. Every 2 weeks is a round; round 1 starts on Monday, September 13th and ends Sunday, September 26th.

My goal for this challenge is to walk more (yay free pedometer from the company!), exercise every night after my daughter goes to bed (well, except Sunday night cuz that's just insane after Bible study ends at 10:00 PM), and lose 1-2 pounds per week. If I keep it up (which I should, since I'm the team leader), I should lose 12 pounds (if I lose 1 lb/week) to 24 pounds (2 lbs/week), giving me the chance to lose up to almost 50% of the amount I need to lose to be at my recommended weight.

So my real goals are to lose 2-4 pounds, exercise 360 minutes and walk 70,000 steps per round. That sounds sooo big! But breaking it down by day, that's 1/4 lb, 30 minutes of exercise (taking out Sundays) and 5000 steps.

My average # of steps this week has been around 5500 - 6000, so that shouldn't be too hard to do. 30 minutes of exercise hasn't happened every day, but I'll do my best to either force myself to do it each night or add extra time on some days to make up for the days I can't. If I do this, plus watch what I eat, which I've been doing (cereal with non-fat milk each morning, Eating Right lunches and mostly-healthy dinners at home), then I should have no problem losing .25 pounds a day. Thank goodness for my Wii, with the Wii Fit Plus, Dance Dance Revolution, and Sports Resort software to keep me from getting too bored with my workout routine. Plus, I use the Wii Fit Plus software to weigh myself each day, so tracking that will be a breeze, and motivation to step up my game if I stop losing weight or gain.

So, here goes. I look forward to updating here with my progress; I probably won't do it daily, but update weekly and include my team's progress and standing in the competition each round.

Weeeee!

A few weeks ago I bought myself a Wii with my tax refund and some gift cards I had. And I was very disappointed to find that every gaming/toy store I called in a 10-mile radius from my house was out of Wii Fit kits. Don't get me wrong, I love playing the different sports games that came with the Wii, but even though my arm got sore playing Table Tennis, I don't think it counts as a workout.

Well, I finally got a Wii Fit! A friend of mine had purchased it about a year ago and never opened it! I got it for a sweet deal of only $50!

I know I'm overweight, as the Wii Fit so gently told me, but I'm very glad to be able to weigh myself each morning in the comfort of my own bedroom, and work out each evening, as it's been hard to tear myself away from my cubicle, even though I'm supposed to take two little breaks each day. And I like how I can see a graph of my BMI, weight and usage anytime I like.

I'm very excited to add this new equipment to my workout portfolio.