Hello Red Team!! Just wanted to take a second and introduce myself as well. I am a full time dental assistant for the state of Kansas, full time student, and a mother of a 3 year old girl and 9 year old boy. I spent 8 years in the Navy and was able to keep my weight at an ideal range. However, when I got out 4 years ago my weight has slowly crept up to 195 and that is when I found MFP. I have been able to take about 10lbs off. When I found the biggest loser challenge I wasn’t sure if I would be able to commit to something for that long. But after a lot of soul searching I decided I would jump into this 150% and for once and for all I would conquer this weight and get back to how I was in the Navy. About a month ago I ran my first 5k in 4 years and I felt great. The other girls I ran with asked me to do a half marathon in April so I hope with this Biggest Loser Challenge and training for a half marathon I can achieve my fitness goals. I also turn the big 3-0 in February and I refuse to spend my 30s, 40s, and so on as unhealthy as I have in my late 20s. Good luck to everyone and I can’t wait to get to know everyone.

Hello Red Team!!

My name is Tina. I am a 43 yr old nurse working at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. I have 2 daughters, 13 and 11. I have struggled with my weight my entire life! My heaviest was 225+ after my first child and my lowest was 129. I have ran a marathon, 2- 1/2 marathons and I used to teach a weight lifting class. I love to workout and try to everyday. My problem is eating. I'm always hungry and when I'm REALLY hungry, I get mean!! This past summer I've somehow gained 20 lbs. I hoping this challenge will help keep me on track!

Good Luck Red Team!!

LETS GO RED TEAM!!!
My name is Shelley, I am 23 years old. For as long as I can remember I have always been bigger than my friends. I work full time as a receptionist but I am so ready to do this. Good Luck to everyone!!

Welcome to week 1! I hope everyone is as excited as I am to get things started and shed some pounds!

Each week I will post a thread like this that will be the place to get all your information for the week about the challenges. Your coach will also copy and post the challenge in your personal team thread as well.

A few important things before I go any farther

1) DO NOT message me with your weights and challenge completions. These are now to be reported to your coach directly. Each team is going to have different ways of doing this and different times it has to be done, so refer to your team thread to see how your coach would like you to do it. Remember everything is done in EST your coach asks you to message them by 8 pm Monday night, don’t go by your local time. If you need to look up what that time would be for you, try using http://www.thetimezoneconverter.com/

2) PLEASE READ the challenges all the way through and make sure you understand them. You can comment on the weekly thread if you need something clarified that doesn’t make sense. Otherwise ask your coach if you have an issue with it or need to make substitutions. Most things you guys should be able to work out on your own, but I can help if your coach doesn’t know. I ask that you read the challenges carefully because there may be multiple steps or even certain threads to post in. We may ask you to let us all know a weakness you have, share a new workout technique, or your favorite healthy recipe and you wont get credit for completing the challenge unless you follow the directions and post things in the correct place.

3) You will be deleted if you miss two consecutive weigh ins. Going out of town? No problem, just let your coach know so they can report it as that. Internet go out in the storm and you missed checking in. It happens, just report it to your coach ASAP. This is VERY important. Why? Well it messes up your stats of course. When you miss a weigh in, your weight is automatically recorded as a 1% increase from the previous week. So if you weighed 150 to start and miss the next weigh in, your weight will show as 151.5. Now if you actually lost .5 pounds that week and your weight should actually be 149.5 it really messes things up for the following week. So week 2 you lost another .5 pounds bringing you to 149 and a weekly change of 0.33%. But if we go by that +1% increase then it makes your week two loss look much bigger (2.5 pounds instead of .5) and then your weekly loss percentage is 1.65%. Make sense? So PLEASE report your weights even if you miss the official weigh in time.

4) You get points for weighing in and completing challenges. 1 point for weighing in on time, with 2 bonus points if your entire team does. Challenges are on a scale as some may not be able to complete exactly as described. The possible challenge reporting codes are C (complete, 2 points), A (attempted, 1 point), E (Exempt, 0 points) and NA (Not attempted, -1). Complete means you did the challenge exactly as described and were able to actually complete all parts of it. Attempt means you tried to do the challenge but weren’t able to finish it or had to do some modifications. Exempt is only for people with severe injuries or out of town. Last year we had a girl with a broken foot who was still able to at least attempt every single challenge, so there should be a way for most people to do each one. The one I really hate to see but always do its Not Attempted. This is that you literally didn’t even try to do the challenge at all, and didn’t let your coach know of a legitimate reason you cant do it. Guess what? People that have this tend to be the ones who drop out/ don’t see an improvement

5) Each week I will report an overall biggest loser, a team with the highest avg percentage lost, and the biggest losers for each team. You get points if you are any of those. 5 points for overall BL, 3 for team percentage and team BL. Points are mainly for fun, but also at the end we try to give out prizes and the more points you have, the more entries you get into the raffles

Ok now that that’s out of the way, time for some fun. Use this thread to get to know each other, share issues that you are having as you get started and encourage the other members of this challenge. We are here to support each other and help each other out so that by the end of this challenge (in 3-4 months, whenever the show ends) we will have all lost some weight and gained some new friends!

Don’t try to dive head first into this or you’ll likely get discouraged and burned out quickly. That means don’t suddenly drop to 1200 cals and start working out for an hour every day if you’ve been eating 2000 and working out has meant going from your car to the office. Start slowly and make changes you can stick with. Dropping one bad food at a time. Trying to incorporate small bits of exercise into your normal day. And if you don’t do it on your own, don’t worry, they’ll likely show up in challenges too wink

Some things you should do though are start upping your water intake. 64 oz a day minimum, but aim for more if you can. Carry a water bottle around with you all the time. I have three sitting on my desk and often forget to drink them, so sometimes I set an online timer to go off every 10 minutes and drink an ounce of water each time.

If you don’t have weights or a pedometer they are recommended for this challenge. Not necessary, but recommended. We will have weekly challenges that require walking/jogging for a distance which is where the pedometer comes in handy if you don’t have a treadmill or a route mapped out (walkjogrun.net can help you out with that though). But a pedometer is nice to track your steps throughout the day in general as well, and you can use it to try to hit a goal each day or week. You don’t need a fancy one, the dollar store sells some and they work just fine. Weights are also needed for some challenges. If you don’t have any, im obviously not going to make you buy any, but I will warn you now that you will have to have something with weight at times. Paint cans, sacks of flour, your toddler, whatever. Get creative if you have to, but just be aware that you will be asked to incorporate weight into some challenges. Hand weights aren’t that expensive though. In fact, Wal-Mart has a pretty awesome 40 lb set for less than $20. Its what I use and has the bars, 4 2.5 lb weights and 4 7.5 lb weights so you can mix and match to get whatever you need. They carry it in the store, but here is the link: http://www.walmart.com/ip/Gold-s-Gym-40-lb-Vinyl-Dumbbell-Set/21672513 I highly recommend it if you are looking to add a little weight training for a cheap price

Now onto the show and the weekly challenge! This season’s theme is “Second Chances”. Everyone that they chose to participate this season has had a really bright future that somehow was lost and they are looking to get back. I have a feeling that there is going to be a lot of emotional talks this season and a lot of exploring past demons and why they are struggling and how to overcome it. Contestants eager for a second chance to reclaim their health and re-write their futures include “American Idol” winner Ruben Studdard, this season’s heaviest contestant at 462 pounds, David Brown, who lost his first wife to an almost decade-long battle with cancer and is now fighting for his life so he can be there for his daughters, and Tanya Winfield, a single mom addicted to food who grew up with a teenage mom addicted to drugs, who is eager to break the cycle of addiction in her family. Also competing this season will be Olympic weight lifter Holley Mangold, hoping to get in the best shape possible for a second chance at gold in the 2016 Olympics, and Matt Hooper, who postponed his wedding to be on the show so he could give his fiancé the best physical version of himself.

There wasn’t really a physical challenge last night and since this is our first week and I don’t want to overwhelm everyone, we’re going to do something easy. While they were on the treadmill last night, Jillian tells her team that they have to find their why? Why they are here and are losing weight. That’s what I would like everyone to do for the challenge this week. The good news is that some of you have already done this in your team threads as part of your introductions, so it should be easy! It’s an important step though. If you don’t have a reason that is important to you, its not likely you will succeed. So really sit and think about it for a moment and then share it with everyone. You need to post your “why” in this thread (not your team one) by 8pm EST on Tuesday Oct 22. This is an easy challenge but I know people will forget about it so do it sooner rather than later you procrastinators! There is no “attempt” or “exempt” this week for challenges, you either do it or you don’t.

For those of you who like a physical challenge, there is an optional one this week. This whole challenge is based on a show, albeit a workout show. How many of you actually workout while you watch Biggest Loser? Or workout at all while you watch tv? The average American watches something crazy like 5 hours of TV a day, 90 minutes or so of which are commercials. This optional challenge this week is to workout during the commercials. You can do whatever you want, but I found this fun challenge based on the type of commercial you are watching. Give it a try while you are watching tv this week.
http://www.sparkpeople.com/assets/uploads/commercial_infographic.jpg

So that’s it. I promise that future posts will not be as long as this, but since it’s the first week I had to give some extra details. What did you guys think of the show last night? Did you have a favorite already? Find someone annoying? Have a story that touched you? Lets hear it and of course your why.
Lets do this!


*********Recap********
1) Determine your team’s weigh in day and how you are supposed to report (ie PM, in the team thread, directly to the spreadsheet)
2) Report your weight and challenge completion by your teams established date (may be earlier than official weigh in time). Make sure you are aware of what that time is for you locally as it may be different.
3) Post your “why” in the “Week 1 official thread”. This is a statement about why you are here and why you want to lose weight. Challenge this week is only reported as C (completed) or NA (not attempted.
4) Optional physical challenge : http://www.sparkpeople.com/assets/uploads/commercial_infographic.jpg

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AupZ8kDMiwo-dGNNemZqLVF4SWhQM2JHcFVpVXpKY1E&usp=sharing, above is the link to our spreadsheet. This is where you can add your weight each week and if you completed the challenge. GO RED!

HI, don't forget to report your weight in today so I can give them to the challenge leader by tomorrow morning. Nice job for everyone completing this weeks challenge.