Miles Challenge

Time to start counting those miles! The miles challenge started yesterday, so going forward, any miles earned can be counted toward your weekly total. If you do not have the tracking sheet, please let me know and I will re-send it to you. We did add one participant over the weekend, so here are the teams as they stand now:

Team 1: Nancy, Scott, Becky H, Roger, Katie, Sarah, Maureen
Team 2: Mary Kay, Donna, Beth, David, Alison, Gary, Karen

Just to clarify, only miles earned during exercise should be counted. Wearing a pedometer through your regular routine day does not count, as the purpose of the challenge is to add activity and exercise into your week.

If you are not earning miles on a machine that can track them for you, and you're not sure how to get a good count, let me know and we can figure out the best way to get an accurate number.

Good luck, Go Team #1! : )

Week 15 Biggest Loser

The winner for Week 15 is Alison, with a great loss of 2.53%. Congratulations, Alison!!!

Other losses in Week 15:
Kyle, -1.98%
Nancy, -1.07%
Gary, -0.44%
Scott, -0.72%
Beth, -1.09%
Becky S, -0.12%
Donna, -0.93%

Congratulations, losers! : )

Miles Challenge - Starts Sunday!

We are going to start the Miles Challenge this Sunday, January 30th. We currently have 13 participants, and I divided us into 2 teams. Since we have an odd number, and I'd like to leave this open for others to join us down the road, we are going to select the winning team each week based on average mileage. The only fair way to split us into teams was to draw names, so that's exactly what I did.

The only thing I manipulated was to swap one person, so that each married couple is split up. Hopefully this will help get some good competition going, and motivate you to one-up your spouse!

I'm sending out a tracking form to each of you, directions are on the form. All you have to do now is start earning miles. You can do this by biking, walking, elliptical, running or swimming. Log the number of miles you do, and make sure to record the date and activity type so that I can calculate the totals for each week. Submit your form to me each week, and I'll take care of the rest!

Alright, let's get moving! Go team #1! Hehe.

Week 14 - Biggest Loser

Week 14's Biggest Loser is Kyle, with a loss of 2.69%. Way to go, Kyle! Show that "Freshman 15" who's boss! : )

Other losers for Week 14:
Katie, -0.96%
Sarah, -2.19%
Gary, -1.72%
Scott, -0.71%
Becky S, -1.59%
Beth, -0.90%
David, -0.49%
Amy, -0.59%

As a group, we lost 25.8 pounds last week!

There was a request last week for some cumulative numbers. As a whole, we are down 85.4 pounds since we started this challenge. This is awesome, especially considering that includes some overall gains and maintains, and spanned a holiday season!

The people who have an overall loss over the last 14 weeks are:

Alison, -9.71% (WOW!)
Nancy, -6.72%
Katie, -6.50%
Kyle, -6.30%
Sarah, -5.55%
Gary, -5.00%
Brian, -2.07%
Jean, -1.97%
Scott, -1.77%
Becky S, -1.67%
Beth, -1.26%
Lenny, -0.82%
Mary Kay, -0.36%

Congrats and way to go, losers! : )

The "Miles Challenge"

Last week, I proposed a new type of challenge. I don't have all the details worked out yet, but it would go something like this:


- All participants are split into teams. Once we know who's participating, we can decide whether we would like to do several teams of 3-4 people, or just divide the participants in half.
- We select a timeframe for the competition
- Over that set timeframe, each participant logs as many miles as they can. Miles can be logged by walking, running, biking, swimming or using an elliptical machine (let me know if you think I forgot anything that should count for miles).
- Each type of activity has a multiplier assigned to it, based on the intensity of that activity:
Biking = .4
Walking = 1
Elliptical = 1
Running = 1.2
Swimming = 3.6
- After the challenge period is over, we will have a winning team (we could also have an overall winner for the men and for the women if we wanted).

So far, 7 people have responded and said they are interested in this challenge:
Alison
Donna
Mary Kay
Nancy
Sarah
Gary
Roger

(plus myself)...if you're interested, let me know right away. I'm also looking for feedback on the challenge structure - I adapted this from something Aunt Karen sent to me (thanks, Aunt Karen!) from her district, so if we need to change it up to make it work better for us, I am definitely open to suggestions.

Week 13's Biggest Loser

Sorry, I'm a couple days behind again! Week's 13's Biggest Loser was.......Alison! She lost 1.25% last week. Congratulations, Alison!

Other losers in Week 13 (ending 1/15):
Beth, -0.54%
Scott, -1.06%
Katie, -1.07%
Mary Kay, -1.07%
Donna, -0.09%
Becky H, -0.20%
Nancy, -1.06%
Gary, -1.07%

As a group, it looks like we have not completely gotten rid of our holiday gains - in total, we gained 24.5 pounds in the 2 weeks with Christmas and New Year's. Last week, we had an overall loss of 7.9 pounds. We're heading back in the right direction, but we're all going to have to step it up to get rid of that holiday weight....which leads me right into my next post, regarding the miles challenge (check back in a few!)

How about a new Health Challenge?

I'm working on a new challenge that would actually allow us to compete and have a winner or winners. Aunt Karen sent me the idea from a challenge her district is doing. It would involve teams of people tracking their miles over a period of time. Depending on the activity, miles would count for different amounts, and each team's totals would be used to choose a winning team. Let's get moving and losing in 2011! If you're interested in participating in a challenge like this, please let me know. For this type of challenge to work, I definitely need to get an idea of how many participants we will have, so I can structure it to work for us. Let me know what you think!

Biggest Loser - Week 9, 10, 11 & 12 Winners

Okay, so I'm a few weeks behind because of the holidays. As a group (and as expected), we had some gains over Christmas & the New Year. Now it's time to get back into our regular routines, work hard, and start losing again!

The winner of Week 9 was Kyle, with a loss of 2.32%

Other losers in Week 9:
Katie, -0.41%
Mary Kay, -1.43%
Donna, -0.62%
Becky S, -0.62%
Nancy, -0.78%
Gary, -0.65%

The winner of Week 10 was Becky S, with a loss of 1.32%.

Other losers in Week 10:
Katie, -0.65%
Alison, -1.23%
Becky H, -0.41%
Gary, -0.22%

The winner of Week 11 was David, with a loss of 1.47%. David was also the only person to report a loss in Week 11, which makes that a huge accomplishment, while the rest of us were gaining and maintaining!

The winner of Week 12 was Amy, with a loss of 1.78%.

Other losers in Week 12:
Katie, -0.65%
Alison, -0.62%
Sarah, -0.46%
Brian, -0.92%
Becky S, -0.16%
Nancy, -1.04%

We also have another participant joining us in Week 12. Welcome, Scott! If anyone else wants to participate, just send me your current weigh in results, and choose a day for your weekly weigh-in.

Now that the holidays are over, let's all push to get back in the swing of things, and start posting a loss each week!