I took the Health challenge

After I had my third child I had a friend invite me to join a health challenge.  Its called the Meltdown Challenge.  Its a group that encourages healthy lifestyles.  It's not ONLY about losing the weight but making healthy choices in all of the aspects of life.  I really like this way of losing weight because diets don't work long term, but changing your lifestyle will.   It really focuses on taking those small steps to making better choices daily.

Drinking water is one of the big ones they focus on.  Drinking water is so important especially to a nursing mom (aka ME!) Our bodies are 70% water.  Most people are chronically dehydrated and I know a lot of the time I am.  I try to drink water as soon as I wake up because I know I am dehydrated first thing in the morning.  I know it makes me feel better when I start my day off with a large glass of water with my ultimate minerals in it as well.   I have a harder time trying to fit in all 80 oz of water that they recommend drinking especially when I am drinking my quart of green smoothie for breakfast.  I just have to keep on top of it and keep my nalgene water bottle out, so I see it and am reminded to drink.

Another one of the areas is sleep.  Any mom will know that with small kids its hard to get 8 hours of continuous sleep.  I don't even remember the last time I had a full 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep..... seriously.....   Its hard especially since I wake up at 5 every morning to work.  So I don't get those points very often.  Sleep really is important though I try to get the most I can I try to go to bed at 9 so I get some good hours in but my baby is still waking up at night and sometimes the toddlers as well.  Oh well I will miss these days right?

Movement is another important one, ok they are all important.  This one is you can walk in place or while you are on the phone pace around.  I chase my kids around and play with them that gets a lot of movement in.  I also try to just be moving a lot, which isn't very hard to keep moving when you have little kids.  They keep you on your toes.  Another one is to chose to park farther away from the store and walk in, little things like that.  Take the long way to get somewhere instead of the short cut.


You get to set up your own eating plan and make your own goals.  The only goal that they set is you lose 6% of your body weight in 6 weeks.  Even then you get to choose because you can choose the maintain part of the challenge which is you can't gain more than 1% of your body weight but you can lose up to 5.99%.   The first time I chose to lose the percentage because I had some baby weight to lose.  Since then I have chosen to maintain because I can still lose up to 5.99% which is awesome.

There are daily readings that help motivate and inform you on making healthy choices and how to make your life easier.  I love reading these.  I find that they are clever and very helpful.  One example is this

One of the best parts of this challenge is that you pay $20 to do it and then the winners (meaning you lose or maintain whatever you choose and get your points required.) divide up the money pool and you get all of your $ back and some of the times even more.   So Its a win win for me.  I don't think I have lost a challenge yet because I choose maintain and lose still.

I have found that its true that its harder and harder to lose the baby weight with each additional child.  It might be because of the limited time you have or your body just getting older, I don't know for sure but I am having a harder time.  So these challenges have been helpful to remind me and keep me going to get healthier and lose some extra weight I have hanging around.