Please sign in for July 1st in this thread.

To sign in, copy and paste the following three questions into your reply and answer them--"yes" or "no" (an answer of "no" to any of the three questions will get you removed from the group):

Did I eat under my calorie goal?:
Did I exercise for at least 20 minutes?:
Did I write down everything I ate and drank?:




ANNOUNCEMENTS:

1.
June's challenge is over. Congratulations to the winners! Out of 36 original participants, only these five made it. Nice work, ladies.

armywf07
Jessiokafroka
margieparkins
miridai
phillysfrog



2.
A reminder--
There are TWO types of days off you can take from the challenge: sick days and Earned Days Off. Here's how each works:

SICK DAYS
You have 5 sick days per month. You must be truly sick in order to take a sick day, or you have to be taking care of a loved one who's sick in an emergency situation; you can't just be tired or not in the mood to do the challenge. You only have 5 sick days, so if you anticipate that your illness will cause you to be out of commission for more than 5 days, then you should remove yourself from the challenge and re-enter during another month.

Some legitimate reasons to use sick days:
"I sprained my ankle."
"I have a cold."
"I'm coming down with something."
"A loved one died last night."
"I had to take my kid to the hospital."

Some NOT legitimate reasons to use sick days:
"The weather was bad, so I didn't exercise." (You can do 20 minutes of house work to fulfill the group's exercise requirement. There's no reason you can't at least do that, rain or super-shine.)
"I exercised a ton yesterday and wanted to take it easy today." (You're free to take it easy--by doing 20 minutes of house work. You must be active every day, no matter how super-active you've been in previous days.)
"I woke up at 2 a.m. and went to sleep at 11 p.m., so I ate more than my calorie budget allowed."


I've seen that last excuse before, and it killed me to kick that person out the group, but rules are rules. This brings me to the second type of day off you can take: Earned Days Off.

EARNED DAYS OFF
An Earned Day Off is a day off you can take for any reason. It's good have Earned Days Off under your belt for those occasions when you want to relax and not worry about the challenge, or for when something unexpected happens--like you waking up at 1:00 a.m. and not going back to sleep until 11:00 p.m.

You can earn up to 3 Earned Days Off per month. In order to earn an Earned Day Off, you have to read, watch, or attend something related to health, write a two-paragraph essay on what you read/watched/atteneded, and post your essay in the "Earned Days Off" thread. One essay will earn you one Earned Day Off. For more details, please see the "Earned Days Off" thread.




I think that's it for the announcements. Please let me know if you have any questions.

And, everyone--good luck!