The Life Support 4-Month Challenge

1. Set your own personal goals--and be as specific as you can be. They don't have to be weight-loss goals, although tracking weight can help you monitor how you are doing at your other goals. Don't set your goals too low because you are capable of more than you think you are, but don't set them so high that you give up before the four months is up either. 

Some ideas: decreasing resting heart rate, decreasing cholesterol, triglyceride or blood sugar levels (you'll need a doctor to track these ones), decreasing waist circumference or dress size, exercising for more than 30 minutes for a specific number of weeks, strength training a specific number of weeks, tracking food (or sodium, or fat, or sugar) everyday, decreasing body fat percentage, or increasing muscle mass. (If you have somewhere that you can have your body fat/muscle mass measured, I would highly recommend getting it done. It can be very motivating to look at your body as fat vs. muscle instead of just as weight. To stay out of the morgue you want less fat, more muscle, not just less weight.)

2. I will post a reminder on this blog every Monday. You check in each Monday by commenting on that post. You show off to the living world your progress towards your goals. ("I exercised six days this week.") If your goal is a weight-loss goal, you don't have to tell us your weight. When you start the Challenge, consider your weight 0, then track your changes based on that. (For instance, if four weeks into the Challenge you had lost four pounds, you could write, "I am at -4 lbs. this week." Hopefully you won't have to ever write, "I am at +4 lbs. this week," because that would mean you had gained four pounds since we started the Challenge!)

3. Every living person in our group chooses one day a week to post on this blog. It can be short and sweet, but it has to be positive and health related so that we can all keep our goals in mind. On your designated day, you can post a health tip, a recipe, a hunger-fighting snack idea, a motivational quote, a fun exercise you have discovered, something you have learned about yourself along the way, etc. It doesn't have to be complex, but it has to be positive because some days the only thing harder than staying alive is trying to do something difficult when you are surrounded by people reminding you how impossible what you are trying to do is! Only zombies can be negative.

4. If you run into snags or frustrations, or you don't understand how to do something, you can post here as well, and we can all contribute ideas and suggestions. But we still need to keep the discussions positive!

5. At the end of the four months, we will have culminating, non-morgue activities. If you live close to other people participating in the Challenge, I would highly recommend running/walking/crawling a community 5k or 10k. I know that might not sound like fun, but when you have worked so hard to get fit, a community race is a wonderful place to realize what you are capable of. If you do not live close to anyone participating in the Challenge, do something extra wonderful for yourself with people who love and support you--something that you really look forward to doing throughout the four months.

6. If at the end of four months this Challenge has been helpful to you, we will do it for another four months. Although we are trying to make life-long changes, it is important to have a beginning and an end to the Challenge so that we don't put healthy changes off "until tomorrow" indefinitely.