Some New Ideas

Hi everyone-
I've been wondering if we want to make some changes to our reward/incentive system.  These are just thoughts-so no problem if you don't want to make any changes!!

Elise is in a Biggest Loser group, and they're doing some things we may be interested in.  For one thing, the "winner" is whoever loses the highest percentage of their weight in a given time. Right now we're keeping track of how many days we stick to our goal, but sometimes I wonder if that backfires. For example, when I mess up one time at the beginning of the month, I know someone else is going to make it 100% so then I just give up.  If we were judging by weight loss, there would be an incentive to do really well after a mess-up and possibly undo the damage.  Another thing they do is post what they eat daily on MyFitnessPal.  Elise feels like this helps because who wants to post that they ate 10 cookies?  People comment on it --like "good job." etc  I'm not sure if I want to do that, but I thought I'd throw it out!  They report their loss to the group each week, but then there's a final winner at the end.  This group she's in has about 30 people (it's national) and they each paid $30 so the big winner gets $700!  The 2nd and 3rd place get something too. I'm not suggesting we do it to that extreme--or maybe we don't even want to include money!  I've been trying to think of some other motivator, but I don't have any ideas on that at the moment!

I'm not sure what to say about the 100 day challenge!  We did learn that Ilene is a very nice person--she gave up $400.  You're the awesome one, Ilene.  Is it something anyone wants to do?  I know it worked well the first time for me, but then after that I think the novelty was lost.  One part of me says, "If you really want to lose weight, why wouldn't you commit to 100 days?"  But then another part says, "Do I really have to be so stringent with myself?"  I realize this isn't something we all have to do, but I am interested in what everyone else sees as the good and bad points of this idea.

I've also wondered if we should have some non-diet goals.  I'm thinking something like scripture study, service, cleaning the house . . .whatever you consider to be a challenge.  I know this could be personal, so maybe we wouldn't actually tell everyone what our goal is.  It could just be called the personal goal.  I don't know--maybe that's making things too complicated.  I just know for me, even though I do want to reach my weight goal REALLY BAD!!!, I feel like I often put too much thought and energy into it and maybe I need to be thinking about other issues.  But, maybe that's something we should just work on on our own.  What do you think?

We're up to $285 in our Fun Fund!  Should we go out to lunch or dinner sometime?

I hope you're all having a great weekend.  I'm excited to get out and work in this sunshine!