To clarify, when I first heard about the challenge, it was from my friend Heather who explained her friends who attended the Mormon church had organized and launched this way hard Healthy Living challenge periodically. This was about a year prior to the text from her that read, “Challenge starts tomorrow, you want in?” So in that year, I had referred to the whole thing as the “Mormon challenge.” This confused many a person in the following weeks, as my name for it was pretty permanently settled by then.
Nothing to do specifically with Mormon religion, the challenge lasts 8 weeks and includes 8 specific requirements, geared toward Healthy Living:
* Exercise 45 minutes daily
* Drink 8 glasses of water daily
* Eat 2 servings each fruits and veggies daily
* Stop eating 2 hours before bed
* Journal x15 mins daily
* Read Bible or inspirational material x15 mins daily
* No sugar (interpreted to mean either no desserts or no food in which sugar is in top 5 ingredients.)
* No junk/fast food
For each of those requirements met daily, you earn one point. Each week you get a free day (day of rest) factored in, where you can get all 8 points regardless. Pay in is $20, at the end of the 8 weeks, half goes to point leader, other half to most weight loss by percentage.
Sounds fun, huh? I had already signed up for the Lose It! app about a month prior to the challenge start and was down 6 lbs. Now, reading the previous blog entries, one might think I finally starting living what I learned. One might be wrong. More so, I was just sick of living in my flabby body and needed to do something, whether or not it came from a right mind or surrendered spirit, I just had to start moving my body.
So, the challenge came along when I already had momentum. That and being familiar with the challenge for a year prior, I think I had a distinct advantage. Week One I racked up a perfect score, which motivated me right away to continue to strive for the flawless score for the whole works.
The toughest week was when my family took a week vacation with my dad, stepmom, and brother to the lake. The challenge is physically challenging and mentally challenging. It took quite a bit of planning to figure out the 45 mins, the 15 min Bible and journal – the whens and whats of all that. Add lake junk food and sugar and peeing every hour and I can honestly say in order to maintain a perfect score I had to give myself to the competition and other things, summer and vacation things, took a backseat.
Thankfully I have a hubby who is even more competitive than I am, so when I was all, who cares if I miss that point, he was the one who’d say, “You go do it, you are in a competition!”
And at the end, I was so sick of the “have to’s” and the “is this junk??,” the whole thing couldn’t get wrapped up faster. I ended with perfect points and 9.54% weight loss. Yay.
More important than the stats, here’s what I learned:
* Exercise. Most days, without a competition creating its false sense of “have-to”, I would have been “too tired” or “too busy” or “burnt out” or “bored” to get 45 mins of exercise in. Because I have three kids, and a husband, and a household to run, 45 minutes does not actually equal 45 mins. Getting the kids somewhere else, or distracted, or involved in the workout, and then the shower afterward – the whole production could take the whole morning. But the competition taught me the Do It Anyway lesson. Because if I was gonna get the points, I was gonna have to exercise. The time making excuses takes up time too, and if I am just gonna end up on the elliptical in the end, skip the whining and *itching and save that time and get on the Elliptical. And in the too busy front, I found that while I had long list of stuff that just didn’t get done this summer (ie closets and baby books), what I did get done I did with a better attitude and more energy. Exercise is a good thing. It’s too easy to forget because sitting on the couch feels deceptively good, too.
* Water. I feel better when I drink more water. I also use less chapstick. However, I am not a fan of peeing all the time. No real life changing lesson there, except part of any winnings will have to go reimburse my hubby for increased TP supply. Just kidding. Mostly.
* 2 servings fruits and veggies. What I appreciate about the “have to” eat fruit and veggies is the fullness factor. Without the “have to,” I can easily rationalize not “wasting” calories on veggies I like less than the food I like more; why add 60 calories of green beans, when I could just have the good stuff, I’m actually saving calories in the long run – something like that. But when I had to, I planned for the veggie, it made me fuller faster and then I ate less of whatever the main dish was and huh, saved calories in the long run. I still do that rationalization with milk. I probably don’t get enough dairy but can’t make myself “waste” 90 calories on a glass of skim milk that I don’t love. 64 year old crippled me will want to kick 34 year olds me’s ass someday.
* Stop eating 2 hours before bed – this one wasn’t all that hard for me. There was an astrix by the rule that read “unless it’s your supper.” So as long as I stopped eating after supper, or ate popcorn with a movie at the beginning and stayed up for 2 more hours… no big deal. Eating at night is not my downfall, except when I was preggers. Then you would find me with a big bowl of cereal propped on the belly with the evening news.
* Journal x15 minutes daily: I liked this one and wish I would keep up with it now that the “have to” has disappeared. I feel like my words are less once they have been expressed, I don’t feel the pressure bubbling up to spill them on whatever poor victim crosses my way with a “How are you?” It forced me to consider my ways, face my thoughts and fears and goals. Towards the end of the challenge, I wrote often about what my plan was after it was over, what next? Would I continue to lose weight? Would I eat every cookie I could reach? I read Joshua and Judges for the Bible reading and related to the Israelites so much. At the end of Joshua, all the promises God had made beginning in Genesis had been fulfilled. I felt like Judges started with a “Now What?” Sure they had land still to conquer, but there was an overall sense of completion. Like when I graduated from seminary, I still had one class I had to write three papers for and get turned in sometime, whenever... Yep, I didn’t write those papers for literally ten years. What was the point, I had the diploma? The Israelites didn’t do so hot without a vision for the future. I was afraid I’d fall, too, without something making me keep on keeping on.
* Bible x15 mins a day: I loved this one, too. Because I am all or nothing, I like to study the Word and really dive in, I don’t just like to skim/read and move on. So often, my Bible time takes too long, so I avoid it unless I have an afternoon free; feast or famine. But to set a timer and say, I’m gonna study for 15 minutes and then I’m done, was life-changing. You’d think I would have come up with that plan a lot sooner.
* Sugar. Oh, sugar, sugar, sugar. It was an amazing feat, I thought, to only have sugar once a week for 8 weeks. Again, a friend of mine had challenged me to give up sugar for National Nutrition month or something like that just a couple of months prior, so I had practiced this. It wasn’t so shocking, and then to say, hmm… is that Oreo worth $80 to me (the points half of the winnings) helped me resist. In real life, without a reward or outside motivation, it’s so much harder to say No. I get anxious when I think of only having one treat a week, even though I know I can, I just Do.Not.Want.To. I love sugar. Even though now when I do eat it, or eat too much, I do feel foggy and ill. I’m not to the point where that hinders me from over-indulging though. So mentally I haven’t really changed. I like sugar more than I like self-control. Apparently I like winning competitions and $$ more than both of those.
* Junk. This was the prevalent thought squatter. Is this junk? I asked the people around me at a sample of garlic toast and alfredo at Walmart, is this junk? Once it was okay with my conscience, avoiding or partaking wasn’t so difficult. Mostly, just the thought process of breaking down the ingredients and then determining if I was bending the rules and all that, took time, energy, and thought space. “Junk” was so arbitrary. I did though see how kind of often I feed my kids what the judges would rule as junk: corn dogs, party pizza, just about anything from the freezer section that comes in a box. It’s just so easy and they like it so much. This unhealthy habit will be hard to break; I need to really get a handle on soon, for their sake.
* Free days: What I learned about free days is if I don’t handle my freedom, I am kind of miserable. If I am full, I don’t enjoy my time between meals. I’m sluggish, lazy, heavy. I resent kids for making me get off the couch – which is no way to live. The worst part though is not being able to enjoy eating the next time I sit down to eat. If I’m still fullish, the food doesn’t taste nearly as good as when I am holding out for a meal and really enjoy it. Eating is such a treat when I’m a little hungry! Eating is such a burden if I’m already full from a previous free for all. And then I feel sad to not be enjoying the food. And I feel wasteful, starving kids in Africa guilt. Over-eating bad, rational portions good. You’d think that’d be as of a no brainer as exercise good, couch potato bad, for whatever reason, it was still an epiphany.
To change a lifestyle on all these fronts all at once would be impossible, which is why it was an 8 week challenge. But I am so glad I did it, that I learned the iceburg tip of these lessons, and hope to, plan to, still incorporate these habits into my daily life little by little, by choice, not by coercion.
(Side note: Another friend who participated in the challenge wants to coordinate a round two. And truthfully, I can’t wait. It seems so much easier to “have to” than it is to make the choice because I want to, deep down, make that healthy choice more than I want this unhealthy choice. Why is that? I don’t know. Maybe you can tell me...)
