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.
Well, all's said. Please join us!!
I'll be in with a slew of challenges and this time I'm going to get really tough! 
I'm sick of being where I am, sick of seeing the fat in the riding arena mirrors. Yeah, OK, OK, I know you gotta be a stick to look good on a horse, but still, I need to get this weight down! 
but as a starter (and I do plan on getting there in the next round or so) I am going to combine the food journal and a calorie estimate each day!
Go ahead, you can say what you're staying off. I think it starts with a "ch" and ends with a "te" and has three syllables, no? 
And no coffee?! Wow. Aren't you going through severe withdrawal? How much were you drinking. I get withdrawal headaches if I miss my morning dose by a few hours. I know. It's bad. I am going to try to cut back again. It's been creeping up again, the amount I have daily. Well, good luck! 
Glad you like the thread! 
You've got some tough challenges there! Such a low calorie count! Are you sure that's OK? Also, I'm wondering by the looks of your photo just where you are going to find the weight to lose?! 
Ok, it's a head shot but you look pretty thin to me! 
Just do some floor exercises or something.
Yes, 1,000 crunches! Yowzah! I do 200 and think that's so-so. I could double it easily enough but five times that??? 
Don't think so. Well, good luck! 
Everything going OK out there? Getting real close on those two challenges! Best of luck!