The Game on Diet

Yesterday Britt weighed and measured me and it was a good (harsh) reminder that my lack of discipline with my nutrition the past few weeks is NOT helping me out in the long run.

While I did have some inches lost (hips and waist- not to be confused with the belly button area, where I did not lose anything!), it wasn't the amazing experience of a month ago when I lost just over 8". I can, and certainly have, beat myself up over everything I've done wrong in the past month. But instead, I'm moving forward. Making changes. Working towards overall health. One. Small. Change. At. A. Time. And most certainly, one meal at a time.

To kick-start this whole thing back up again, I've decided to take on this fun challenge. I heard about a book called The Game on Diet. It's written by the head writer of Grey's Anatomy (one of my favorite shows) and seemed interesting enough. I first checked out the website and then was intrigued enough that I purchased the book.

Then I decided to rope a few other people into getting the book and now have a small but mighty team of four ready to play the game beginning Wednesday. Here's the deal.

The game is played for four consecutive weeks. A perfect day is worth 100 points. A perfect day includes:

30 meal points- 6 points per meal for eating five fully sanctioned meals. No snacks between meals.

20 exercise points- earned by doing some form of exercise for 20 minutes per day. (I can't imagine a day when I would only do 20 minutes of exercise, but it's nice to know in order to get the points I ONLY have to do 20 minutes. And, how great, that only 20 minutes doesn't seem like much of a workout for me anymore?).

10 water points- must drink 3 liters of water each day.

15 sleep points- must sleep for a minimum of seven hours a night!

20 transformation points- 10 points for practicing one healthy new habit and another 10 points for eliminating an unhealthy old habit.

5 communication points- must be in touch with at least one teammate and one opponent each day.

Exceptions- each week we get one meal off and one day off a week. Day off is a day off from allll rules. But the point is not to make up for lost time and eat all the calories you would have liked to consume. Rather, the idea is that you're being a little less strict with yourself and giving your metabolism some time to boost up a bit so you don't hit a plateau.

Bonus Points- earned for:
turning in scores on time (10 pts)
losing 1% of your body weight (20% of your points)

Penalties- points taken away for:
snacking (10 pts)
collusion (making someone else do something bad so you can justify doing something bad yourself. or just being a plain asshole is really what that means) (20 pts)
alcohol- per portion (25 pts). Also, if during any week of play someone doesn't earn their weight-loss/fitness bonus, that person loses the provilege of alcohol on the day off for the rest of the game!

We're given a scoring sheet and at the end of the week, we turn it in, add it up and see which team is winning.

I just finished reading the book today and besides finding it to be really funny (I loved the main author, Krista's, writing style- she's very sarcastic and smart assy- my style!), it touched on SO many of the things I've learned over the years while trying desperately to work on my weight.

It's too late to go into all of it, but I'll with the promise that I'll post some of that helpful/funny information throughout the upcoming week. And to give you a tiny update that I have the next two days to get my "game face on" which also means filling my food full of the "sanctioned food" and getting the unsanctioned food out of my house!

I'm really excited and plan on updating you a lot on how the game goes!