"Every-Day" 21-Day Challenge -- A-COUNT-able through the holidays!
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.
To everyone...this is a CONTINUATION of the old thread..no need to start over. Newcomers are ALWAYS welcome!!!
Got through the day. I'm not happy with the way my body is responding to eating clean. It seems to be absorbing MORE calories, holding fluid, bulking up, I don't know, but I feel and look (I think) bigger than ever. It's very hard to gauge with clothes since they are all stretchy these days and I absolutely hate taking measurements (nothing like having to look at the fat let alone measure it! ). I think I have to stop going with "feelings." They are my downfall. "Just the facts, ma'am, just the facts." This is what I need. Well, here's to a successful, productive day.
No smoking -- Round 4 -- 2 days completed
Eat clean challenge -- Day 6 completed 1 pause taken
Last edited by redballoon; 12-10-2010 at 12:10 AM.
I really love the concept of this, so let's give it a try. For the next 21 days I will be cooking all of my own meals, breaking that addiction to fast food. This is an extremely hard one for me, so level 3. It's after midnight, so I will consider this day 1 of 21.
Day 8, round 2 for me today. I'm really making this a habit and I appreciate that this thread gave me the actually push to do it.
What is my goal?
To dance through at least 2 songs every day. I'm not much on exercise and I find it boring. I avoid it like the plague. But, I have been enjoying this little danceathon of mine.
I put in my ipod and let it go to any song and I dance according to whatever comes on. Sometimes it's slow and other times it's fast. I try to interpret the energy and emotion of the song.
It's making me committed to a little bit of movement each day. I am really busy and it's hard to make time for exercise, so this challenge keeps me on target.
Day 1 of round 1, cooking every meal at home to break the fast food addiction cycle. Usually mornings are hard because I want to pull through McDs for a fast breakfast sandwich after i drop the kids at school...but they are home today so I don't have to worry about that I feel confident and motivated so this shouldn't be a problem today.
Purple, you can do it! I'm doing something similar this evening. Making a WW recipe for homemade Lo Mein instead of getting Chinies/Japanese food. I'm getting my son and husband shushi and they can have some of what I am making as well. I'm going to enjoy it.
Yet another day from **** yesterday and I just want to cry all the time. I really can't take this stuff anymore. Now the other cat has run out and not come back out night although I left the cat door open (freezing the room in doing so). I had just come home and let her out of the cage to play and then went outside for a moment to bring in the wash and accidentally left the door open. She ran out and though I saw her playing nearby and crying she wouldn't come back in. This morning I walked around looking for her but there is NO sign whatsoever and I have to go to work. It really pisses me off that, after all the care and good home I gave them, they just run off. Well, it sounds like a lot of the men I have known...
Other than that, the day was crap as well except for my challenges. I had to give up visiting my horse because I had work to finish. Determined not to waste the day, I got to the gym and went through the motions again despite quite a bit of pain in one hand.
Then I discovered that my cell phone had broken (no idea how but the screen seemed to have suffered a blow) and I spent most of the night trying to get a replacement and having to pay for that and go tomorrow to pick up a new phone and blah, blah, blah. The only GOOD thing that happened during the day was I got a haircut that I actually like!
Please, please, please, that some good things happen to me today...
No smoking -- Round 4 -- 3 days completed
Eat clean challenge -- Day 7 completed 1 pause taken
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purple -- Welcome! Your challenge sounds like a great one and I hope you had a successful liftoff! Yes, you can do this. Just think of all the gross stuff hidden in fast food and the money you are giving to mega companies that don't deserve it or pay their employees enough but make HUGE profits! I quit smoking nine weeks ago and the motivation for me was NOT giving the government any more of my money (there was a big price hike). Sometimes health, even though THE most important thing, loses its efficacy as a reason. Well, do whatever it takes and good luck!
Got through another day but was feeling pretty weak. Got to the gym but had to cut way down on the poundage. No sign of the cats... I had a bit of sugar yesterday. It was really minimal but I'm taking the pause. This is the way I have to think, NOT, as I used to, where a "pause" meant a binge.
Weight is up again and my clothes are tight. Don't know and am getting to the point where I don't care again...a dangerous and self-sabotaging point....
No smoking -- Round 4 -- 4 days completed
Eat clean challenge -- Day 7 completed 2 pauses taken
derry -- That's great that you're dancing so consistently! Time is funny, isn't it? Sometimes it flies, sometimes it drags, I guess it's a matter of learning to distract yourself. So, like now, when I'm focusing on and bummed about my weight, I should distract myself with other things.
Well, weight-in this morning showed a slight drop in weight, which has me right on track for my pound-a-week-weight-loss target. It's not much but I suppose it's the best weight, slow and steady. Got to keep it up. May I have the....whatever it takes.
The one cat came back!! Hurrah!
Too much going on here and am taking a day off the gym today. Boyfriend from years ago (unamicable ending!) bugging me with early-morning phone calls, wanting to meet. Damn, I hate these stalkers! Bunch of lunatics.
No smoking -- Round 4 -- 5 days completed
Eat clean challenge -- Day 8 completed 2 pauses taken
Red, such good news about the one cat! Now, keep that door closed! Maybe the other cat will show up too?
Today is day 10, round 2. I hurt my back and I almost didn't dance, but I did. I did some back strengthening exercises to.
Maybe you should meet the X boyfriend? You never know.
I'm in serious danger right now of going out to the convenience story and buyin a LOT of junk food to stave the cravings and appease my anger that I am fatter than ever! What is going on?
.....well, I am doing it again...thinking that I can eat whatever I want as long as it's NOT junk food. It would seem perhaps not...I don't know. It just ticks me bad....
"Every-Day" 21-Day Challenge -- A-COUNT-able through the holidays!
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. 
). I think I have to stop going with "feelings." They are my downfall. "Just the facts, ma'am, just the facts." This is what I need. Well, here's to a successful, productive day.
I feel confident and motivated so this shouldn't be a problem today.
really too much...
Your challenge sounds like a great one and I hope you had a successful liftoff! Yes, you can do this. Just think of all the gross stuff hidden in fast food and the money you are giving to mega companies that don't deserve it or pay their employees enough but make HUGE profits! I quit smoking nine weeks ago and the motivation for me was NOT giving the government any more of my money (there was a big price hike). Sometimes health, even though THE most important thing, loses its efficacy as a reason. Well, do whatever it takes and good luck!
