I'm Getting My Game On!

Beginning today, I’m joining three teams of bloggers in The Game On Diet Challenge. We learned about this Challenge from Jennifer (aka Book Club Girl) when she embarked upon this challenge a few weeks ago. I haven’t received my copy of the book yet, so I’m pulling information from Jennifer’s blog:

The Game On! Diet is the brainchild of Krista Vernoff, head writer and executive producer of tv’s Grey’s Anatomy and Az Ferguson, winner of the Body-for-Life Challenge. When Krista returned to work after having her baby, she called on Az to help her lose the baby weight. He made her a workout regimen and eating plan that she, well, didn’t follow at all. So Az went back to the drawing board. Knowing that Krista had a VERY competitive nature, he decided to present her with a healthy lifestyle plan in the form of a game, that she could play with a team, and that she could play to win. This appealed to her very much. Rather than the focus being on losing weight, the focus is on winning points, a far more tantalizing prospect.

So how do you earn points? You can earn a maximum of 100 points a day for doing the following:

1) Eating 5 balanced meals a day, every 2-4 hours — 6 points per meal

2) Exercising for at least 20 minutes a day — 20 points

3) Sleeping for a minimum of 7 hours per night — 15 points

4) Drinking 3 liters of water a day — 10 points

5) Adopting a healthy new habit that you practice every day — 10 points

6) Dropping one unhealthy habit — 10 points

7) Communicating with your team members every day — 5 points

You earn penalties (points lost!) for:

1) stepping on the scale more than once a day

2) unsanctioned snacking (you can have as much celery and cucumber as you want throughout the day, plus 100 free calories of whatever once a day, no other snacking)

3) Colluding with the opposing team to get them to break a rule

4) Drinking alcohol (see exception below)

5) changing the healthy or unhealthy habit during the course of the game (you have to pick those and stick to them).

It’s not about total deprivation as you get:

1) One day off a week, when you don’t have to follow any of the rules

2) One meal off a week when you can eat what you want and have one unit of alcohol

3) each day you can have 100 calories of anything as a bonus treat

My habit I’m going to break is logging on to email/twitter as soon as I get home from work, even before we’ve had dinner. I will now wait until we’ve had dinner and enjoyed some time with my family before getting on my computer.

My new habit will be…gasp…reducing the size of my library. It really has become quite overwhelming. In addition to the 4 overflowing bookshelves I have, I have stacks of books all over the house. So, my new habit–with every new book that comes in, I have to get rid of one. By getting rid of, I mean giving away, swapping, etc. A manageable goal that will make my dear husband happy!

Ok, back to the challenge. Here is the line up of the three teams:

The Ding-Dongs:
Julie from Booking Mama
softdrink from Fizzy Thoughts
Amy from My Friend Amy
Jill from Rhapsody in Books
Ti from Book Chatter and Other Stuff

Beth F from Beth Fish Reads
Jenners from Find Your Next Book Here
ME!
Denise from M. Denise C.
Dawn from She is Too Fond of Books

The HoHos:
Kathy from The Brain Lair
two of Kathy’s IRL friends who will be updating their progress on Facebook

I will be posting a few times a week about this challenge. I don’t want to inundate those that aren’t interesting in this challenge, so after I post my first update, all you will need to do is click on the “Game On” button on my sidebar to view my progress.

Thanks for all the support…and wish me good luck!