Welcome!

Welcome to our blog! We've got a great group and I feel confident that over the next 8 weeks, we can help each other through a challenging and rewarding experience.  Here are the folks participating:

Carly Porter (yours truly)
Josh Porter
Lauren Buchan
Cameron Buchan
Carolyn Buchan
Cat Beachum
Krissy Christiansen
Carmen Bradley
Becca Hoxer
Lindsay Pedersen
Dave Moss
Julia Moss
Patti Hosford
Ashley Rufty
Bethany Davis
Melissa Porter
Amber Smith
Rebecca Bramble
Scarlett Tracy
Bonnie Tracy


I've emailed the document for the challenge with the rules and tracking sheet but in case you need it, here's a link to it. Here is an Excel version of the tracker if you prefer that. Please read through it several times; there's a lot of stuff on there and I'd hate if you lost points because you missed reading something.

Here are the "need to know" stuff abbreviated (but look over it in full on the link):

• This is an 8-Week Challenge that starts on Monday, March 25th with a weekly points calendar.
• Everyone puts $20 in the pot to join, I’ll be the banker.
• There is a double point challenge each week (highlighted in yellow).
• You will only receive points for exercising 30 OR 45 minutes, 5 days a week. No rounding! 
• You will only receive points for not eating sugary treats or soda on 6 days.  Same thing goes for the eating after 9pm goal.
• There is a sample food journal that you can use or you can use your own kind of food journal to keep track of what you eat.
• Weigh yourself either Sunday evening or Monday morning and tally up all points. 
• Send a weekly email/text to me (carly.b.porter@gmail.com, or 980-395-4492) with your total weekly points and total weight loss for the week. I will keep track of everyone's points and then send out an email of the frontrunners on Tuesdays. All points have to be emailed/texted by midnight (in your time zone) on Monday. 
• Contact with teammate: It's amazing the strength that comes from encouragement from your teammates! Email, call, or text someone on our team to encourage them to have a healthy day. For one of your points once each week, you can contribute to the blog.
• Bonus personal goal: This allows you to take ownership in your health goals.  Some examples: no second helpings, omit all soda including diet, in bed by 10 pm, up by 7am, no snacking, etc. You don't need to share this personal goal with anyone (unless you want to). 
• Weight loss points: You will get 2 points for at least maintaining weight from the week before.  
• To calculate percent of body weight lost I need your starting weight. I promise to keep this number to myself. When you send me your points every Monday I will also need you to send me exactly how much weight you lost. 
• No crash diets to loose weight quickly! That includes juice diets, colon cleanses, etc. 
• Cash prize money will be divided equally between the person who loses the highest percentage of their body weight and the person who has the most total healthy living points.  If this happens to be the same person, more dough for them!!  

Comment here on the blog if you have any questions or ideas for us. And if you know of someone else who would like to be part of our challenge, just let me know, there's still time! The more the merrier!