Game over!

My first round of Game On ended this last Monday.  Our team didn't win, so I'm out $100.  I'm ok with that though, I lost 5 pounds and have finally gotten back on the calorie counting bandwagon, which I know works well for me to lose weight.  That's more than enough to count it as a win in my book!  I also found a few recipes for making healthy food ahead of time.  Why have I not done this before?!  Having a bunch of cooked chicken breasts and sweet potatoes doesn't really take that much prep time, but it's very versatile for cooking a quick weeknight dinner, or throwing together a work lunch.  In general, I'm fine eating the same thing over and over.  As long as I'm not hungry, it's all good!

A new round is starting next Monday, and this time there's a lot more people from work playing, so it would definitely make things more interesting.  I want to join, but need to think about a fitness challenge.  Each week you get a 20% bonus for losing 1% of your body weight, which for me is very challenging.  However, if you are close to goal weight you can opt to do a fitness challenge instead.  Since I'm signed up for doing the Mother's Day half marathon and I should be on week 2 of my training plan, but have not really been following it, maybe my challenge should be to do all the training runs.  I am only hesitant though because I don't want to set myself up for injury by over training.  I have struggled with plantar faciitis years aga, and tendonitis in my hips when I tried to start back up after Tilda was born, and it sucks!!!

Game On!

Yesterday I started a competitive diet called Game On with some coworkers and their group of friends.  The idea is to give a point value to eating healthy and other good habits and keep score that way versus just pounds.  Contestants are split into teams, and the team with the most points at the end takes the winnings to split equally among members.  The buy in is $100, so it's a fair amount to lose, but not so much that it really hurts.  Just enough  to keep motivated (hopefully!).  Every day people post on the group FB board with recipes, tips, workout advice...all kinds of goodness.  So far I am really liking it!

I am also starting my food tracking again, with goal intake at 1800 calories.  That's what has worked for me in the past to lose weight, so I think that combined with additional support from my fellow Game On-er's I will finally get those last few pounds off!

One other fun feature of the game is picking a good habit you want to start, and a bad habit you want to stop to track.  It's really tough to pick something that you can do every single day for 5 weeks!  After much hemming and hawing I went with:

Good: Read at least 15 minutes a day.
Bad: Stop leaving the living room all cluttered at night, pick up baby toys before going to bed.

They are small changes but both are easily accomplished, and help me feel better about my day.  And it contributes to my goal of reading one book a month.

Now off to eat and log another snack  ...game on!!