Week ONE

Steps

Why do we need to walk 10,000 steps? 

• Think of it as movement. 

• Movement means you are in motion. 

• Motion is an activity that means you are moving muscles-burning calories. 

• When you burn excess calories and are working some muscles you may have some weight loss or maintain your weight.  All in all, you are improving your health! 

• IF you stop moving-you won’t work your muscles or burn excess calories and that is UNHEALTHY. 

The average person takes about 3,000 to 4,000 steps per day.  Let’s get ABOVE AVERAGE and get 10,000 steps daily, which is approximately 5 miles! Unless you have a very active lifestyle or profession, you probably don’t reach 10,000 steps on a given day without putting some effort into your activity.

Walk THIS Way!!  To reach 10,000 steps it could be as simple as:

• Walking to work from the walk or bus lots

• Taking your dog for a walk around a big block

• Making a lap around the department every hour.  

• Taking the stairs versus the elevator.

• When you head to the restroom-walk the perimeter

• Walk in place while cooking or watching TV.

• Window shop.

• Dance!

How to count those steps?!

There are several methods that are cheap or FREE!

• Fit Bit-FREE gift from Bellin a few years back!  Dust it off!  Fit Bit will sync with other fitness apps (like My Fitness Pal)

• Smart Phone-Check your App Store there are several FREE apps available.  My Iphone has a built in feature that you just need to turn it on-doesn’t affect the battery life.

Step to it!!!

Food Journal

You want me to keep track of EVERYTHING I eat?!

Yes…yes!  You will be very surprised what you are truly consuming when you keep track!

• Many experts say that the simple act of keeping a food diary can encourage you to eat fewer calories -- and thus lose weight.

•  In fact, a researcher from one recent study says that people keeping a food diary six days a week lost about twice as much weight as those who kept food records one day a week or less.

• Instantly increases your awareness of what, how much, and why you are eating.

• Portions…you might think a bag of popcorn is a serving but it is really a very large portion made up of several servings.  Food journal will hopefully provide portion control-make you aware of what a suggested serving is!

Easy ways to keep track:

• Standard notebook will work just fine!  You will still have visual of what you are consuming.

• My Fitness Pal-I chose this one only because I have used it.  Allows you to search foods or even scan a barcode.  Will give you detailed nutrition information-calories, fat, carb or protein content.  Warnings pop up if you are eating too much fat, carbs, etc.  You can also sync with other apps to track fitness, water intake, weight.  FREE!!

Enter your food in after each meal.  Or at the end  of the day, get caught up.  Make it a habit.  Only takes a few minutes that will probably save you several calories!

Breaking the Bad!

We are all guilty of having some bad habits.  Why not take this opportunity to BREAK that habit for this week (or the entire 8 weeks for an additional 25 points!)

Breaking bad habits are NOT easy…I am sharing this video to give you insight on ways to be successful! 

http://www.youtube.com/embed/3TX-Nu5wTS8

STATS-This is for your information only!  It will be AMAZING to see results after you make some lifestyle changes!  If you are willing to share your STATS after the challenge-this would be voluntary-we could show success with data.

In effort to keep everyone motivated and learn more about WHY all this is so important, I would like to share some information each week.