"Every-Day" 21-Day Challenge -- Over and over till it's a habit!
Okay, everyone, as is the tradition, I start a new thread when I personally start a new challenge.
Below is a short explanation of how this challenge works so all you newcomers can take a look and decide if you're game or not! I hope you are! Hop aboard and enjoy the ride. We've got a great bunch of supportive people, so I hope you'll give us a try. A lot of people try for a while and then disappear.. I hope some of you will keep trying. There is NO shame in starting over. Remember, it's not over till you give up. And our motto around here is:
NEVER GIVE UP!!...Just start OVER!! EXPLANATION AND RULES:
It works like this: you decide you'll do something for 21 days straight, every single day, so keep it doable. Then you count ....one through 21.....and if you flub it, you MUST go back to zero and start over again. Everyone will be on different days. You can start anytime. At the beginning of the challenge you declare what level it is -- Level 1, 2, or 3. Level 1 means you feel it's a relatively easy challenge for you and means you only give yourself ONE pause day (see explanation of pause days below). Level 2 would give you two pause days and so on...
And taking NO pause days is what I'm going to call "aceing a challenge," as in "I'm aiming on aceing this one!" Yowzah!!
With a pause day you pause in your counting and continue the next day with the number you left off with. Pause days are NOT substitutes for days, i.e. Day 12 -- Day 13 -- Pause Day -- Day 14..... I suggest taking a pause day late in the game (better to go back to Day 1 early on) if you need a break or screw up when you're well into the challenge, meaning, when you're on Day 15 or something like that.
In any case, the trick is to keep going. The momentum builds and it's great incentive to stick to your guns, cause if you don't.........back to START you go. And the really great thing about this challenge is that you are forming new habits that will wipe out the old! AND, you get to do it with a great bunch of really supportive people to whom you are accountable! THREAD GUIDELINES:
In the interest of maintaining structure, a sense of solidarity and facilitating support I ask anyone who wishes to join this thread to please strive to follow the following guidelines while participating in this challenge and in posting.
1. Although this is a fabulous support group, the focus is to be on your CHALLENGE/S and/or other people's challenge/s AND weight loss, whether your challenge is about it or not. Please keep the challenge a priority, although we welcome chattiness! This means tell us what day you're on when you post and it's a good idea to make regular mention of just what your challenge is. This an action-based thread. Our members are ON a challenge, RESTARTING a challenge, or just in between and looking to start up again REAL SOON. We also welcome posts from admirers, encouragers, and old friends!
2. Please refrain from posting food logs or recipes, except where you are really looking for help and advice on your eating. If journaling is your challenge, please keep the journaling off the thread and in a notebook or blog and just tell us if you've done what you set out to do. We have ALL types of dieters here, low-carb, high-carb, low-fat, high-fat, vegetarians, meat-lovers...please use simple mentions if you have something you want to share and then links and/or private messages to do so.
3. Please do NOT go into glowing accounts of any slipups, food indulgences or binges, what we here call "food porn." Simple mentions are fine, but use of smilies etc. as substitutes where possible is encouraged.
4. Please keep this a secular thread. Of course, passing references to your beliefs, a bit of introduction about your beliefs, brief faith-related words of encouragement are fine.
5. Please show support, support, support! This is key. You can waffle on about yourself but please, at least occasionally,come up and look around at others and what they are doing and MENTION it with words of encouragement and/or praise or sympathy. We understand "busy," poor computer connections, and bouts of self-pity and life problems where the focus turns to "me" and dealing with those problems, but these should be temporary, not a habit! ('cept in the computer case.)
In conclusion, let me say, the above are just that, GUIDELINES. Please realize that these guidelines have been added in an attempt to keep this a supportive and beneficial thread, at the LEAST, to those who need it MOST, those for whom weight loss is the hardest and, more often than not, the most crucial as well as for those who still, perhaps despite great success, know all too well that the road they walk will always be a slippery one.
The guidelines are also meant to cultivate an atmosphere of consideration and concern for ALL, not individually, but AS A GROUP.
Hi there! I'll be starting new challenges. Thought it was about time I started a new thread. This is a continuing thread but all newcomers are welcome to jump in at any time, over and over if need be! Talk to you soon!
My challenge is to not eat any of the foods on my "banned" list. A dietician at work has given me a list of foods I'm not to eat for 2 weeks, just to see if I can. I've decided to make that 21 days, because I'm up for the challenge!
So what's on my list? Lots and lots of my formerly favourite things, but things that I tend to over-indulge in.
X Ice cream
X Fried foods
X Doughnuts and pastries
X Candy, chocolate & sweets
X Soda
X Fruit “drinks” and other sugar-sweetened beverages
X Potato chips
X Bacon, sausage
X White Bread
X Hot dogs, fast food burgers
X Cookies
X Sugary breakfast cereals
A lot of the stuff I've cut out already, but there are some things (chips and chocolate, anyone?) that will be more challenging. But that's the point, isn't it? Oh, and I'm starting tomorrow, because there may have been a very small chocolate frog on my menu today.
Hi Primm!! Welcome to our humble thread! Recently there have only been a few of us but we get people starting up a lot. Unfortunately, they often don't continue. We diehards know that it's about trying and trying again. That's part of the battle. I whine a lot but I keep at it and I think I've really made some good habits over the years.
Funny, but your challenge may be similar to what I'm planning this time around (and when I say "this time," I just mean because I kind of bombed and want to start afresh....like I said, this thread is ongoing"
Primm, I'd be careful about assigning dates to things. Do allow for pauses and startovers so we keep you here. I hate it when people don't continue. I don't call them back but I wish they would keep at it no matter if they can't get or keep going.
In any case, best of luck to you, your list sounds like a HUGE step to healthful eating. Power to you!!
1300 Calories per day - 3 pauses Day 1 done
30 minutes vigorous exercise - 3 pauses Day 2 done
Plus 100 crunches - 3 pauses Day 2 done
Journal and count food intake - no pauses Day 2 done
Water - 1500ml per day - 3 pauses. Day 2 done
Sorry - gotta run. Things to do, people to annoy, pooh to dig into the garden
Heh people. Busy here and not decided on my challenges. I'm playing with some things though so should be able to declare soon.
Hope you all (guess that means diyana find us over here on the new thread.
**************
Shad -- Glad you found us! How'd that poo go in?
Nada -- Welcome! Do we have liftoff?
Primm -- Where are you hanging out? Come talk to us!
1300 Calories per day - 3 pauses Day 2 done
30 minutes vigorous exercise - 3 pauses Day 3 done
Plus 100 crunches - 3 pauses Day 3 done
Journal and count food intake - no pauses Day 3 done
Water - 1500ml per day - 3 pauses. Day 3 done
Finally got back here after the dreaded server is busy message all day yesterday. I haven't finished digging the pooh yet - boy that stuff stinks. I hope it does some good for the garden and doesn't give me another load of different weeds
I've been painting at the other house today, until it got too hot and I needed stuff I didn't have to continue.
I hope those new people find us again. It would be good to get some new ideas in here again. Not that we don't have some ideas - just once in a while we might like some new ones.
Okay - it's dropped from 37c to 35c so in a few minutes I'll go and do some more grouting. Needs to be a couple degrees cooler tho.
1300 Calories per day - 3 pauses Day 3 done
30 minutes vigorous exercise - 3 pauses Day 4 done
Plus 100 crunches - 3 pauses Day 4 done
Journal and count food intake - no pauses Day 4 done
Water - 1500ml per day - 3 pauses. Day 4 done
All present and correct for yesterday. Gotta go start the regime again today. Feeling a bit lazy since it is hot and steamy here.
Still haven't decided what to do. I'll be in Hong Kong for a bit so I don't want anything too restrictive. Will be back...
I keep eating and am undoing all my hard work...
**************
gasouza -- Welcome! Great challenges! I especially like the yoga/pilates one. I really need to get flexible. I never stretch.
Shad -- You're on a roll. Just what kind of new ideas do you want? Ways to stop red whining?
Primm, Nada, diyana? Where did you go? Come back!!
I'm back!! Sorry I was away for a few days due to the Thanksgiving Holiday. The Internet was ghastly slow for me (and I even have a high speed connection) the past couple days. I think online shoppers were taking advantage of the busiest shopping days of the year.
Red - You're going to Hong Kong? For work or fun? I've been to Hong Kong once for about 10 days when I was 18 and my dad was transferred there for work. He and my step mom moved there for several years, but I chose to stay in the States so I could graduate high school with my friends. I really enjoyed my visit there.
Shad - we're having a "warm" weekend here, it's nearly up to 50 degrees. Yesterday we only got up to the mid 30s, but the sun was SO bright and it actually felt warm...perfect for Black Friday shopping!
Okay....enough chit chat....here are my goals.
Journal and stay within WW points - 3 pauses - Day 0 completed
Drink 64 ounces of water - 3 pauses - Day 0 completed
5 servings of fruits and veg - 3 pauses - Day 0 completed
1/2 hour of cardio - 3 pauses - Day 0 completed
50 crunches - 3 pauses - Day 0 completed
diyana -- Good to see you again. I was wondering what had happened...kind of forget about Thanksgiving. You've got a bundle of challenges there, but what better time to do them. You can be through another round by Christmas and feeling GOOD about yourself.
Yes, Hong Kong has been an annual thing for me (though I don't think I've been there for a couple years or so...). I can take advantage of a great press package for the International Races, so that's why I go. It's work-related but, unless I can dredge up some work, I won't be working. It's not a good time to go, with my old cat so frail and my own health iffy. I always get sick in Hong Kong. One year I spent race day sick as it gets all day in my hotel room with friends at the track calling regularly to give me the news since I couldn't gather much from the TV. Luckily a Japanese friend living there came over to help bring me a bit of food when I could finally hold it down....anyhow. The first couple years were OK. Let's hope things hold up this year. I will leave on the 9th and be gone 5 days, but can check in here if I want from the press center. I like Hong Kong except for the air pollution. I always stay at a hotel in Wanchai right on the harbor and love hopping on the Star Ferry.
It's so cheap and the ride is beautiful. I had been studying a bit of Cantonese because I think it's a cool and bizarre language but didn't get too far before I stopped because I wasn't going that year. This time, it was a spontaneous decision to get off my arse and go so no time either. Still, because I can read Japanese, I can get around easily in Hong Kong because the gist of the characters are the same.
Ok, later and back with a challenge decision of my own!
1300 Calories per day - 3 pauses Day 4 done
30 minutes vigorous exercise - 3 pauses Day 5 done
Plus 100 crunches - 3 pauses Day 5 done
Journal and count food intake - no pauses Day 5 done
Water - 1500ml per day - 3 pauses. Day 5 done
"Every-Day" 21-Day Challenge -- Over and over till it's a habit!
And the really great thing about this challenge is that you are forming new habits that will wipe out the old! AND, you get to do it with a great bunch of really supportive people to whom you are accountable! 
This means tell us what day you're on when you post and it's a good idea to make regular mention of just what your challenge is. This an action-based thread. Our members are ON a challenge, RESTARTING a challenge, or just in between and looking to start up again REAL SOON. 
We also welcome posts from admirers, encouragers, and old friends!
etc. as substitutes where possible is encouraged. 
Welcome!!
Recently there have only been a few of us but we get people starting up a lot. Unfortunately, they often don't continue. We diehards know that it's about trying and trying again. That's part of the battle. I whine a lot but I keep at it and I think I've really made some good habits over the years.
find us over here on the new thread.
Do we have liftoff?
Ways to stop red whining? 
Come back!!
