Game On!

Today is day one of the Game On diet/fitness competition here at work. I keep having to review the rules--is it a palm sized portion of protein and fist sized portion of carbs or the other way around? Is hummus a protein, a carb, or a fat? Can my "free" 100 calories a day be from the F.L.A.B.B. list (that is, a list of foods likely to get you fat) or is it just 100 extra calories of healthy stuff?

So here's the deal with this game--we have four teams of three to five people each and every day we're working on lots of fitness and diet and healthy lifestyle goals. We get points for successfuly completion of our daily goals, and lose points for various infractions.

• Diet: five small meals a day (each consisting of a lean protein, high quality carb, and healthy fat; at least two vegetable servings a day, unlimited greens with any meal, and 100 free calories a day, which, as it turns out, can be any damn thing you want). You get one free meal a week, and one free day a week where you don't have to follow any of the rules.


• Exercise: six days a week, at least 20 minutes each time, enough exercise to get your heart pounding for those 20 minutes (so pilates doesn't count for me, but you can do an interval workout that alternates aerobic exercise with fast weight work to keep your heart rate up).


• Water: Three liters a day, no flavoring added except things like lemon or cucumber slices. Herbal tea counts, regular tea or coffee doesn't.


• Good habit: take up one good daily habit (I'll be making sure to take my vitamin each day)


• Bad habit: eliminate one bad habit (I'm giving up mindless internet surfing in the evenings)


• Sleep: Seven hours a night.


• Communication: Each day you should be in contact with one team member and one member of an opposite team.

You also get bonus points for reporting your weekly results on time and you get a 20% bonus for reaching your fitness or weight loss goal each week (at the start you have to say if you're going for a fitness or weight loss goal; if weight loss, the goal has to be losing 1% of your weight each week. I was going to do a fitness goal until I weighed myself this morning--147.8!!!! So I'm focusing on weight loss!).

You lose points for snacking (10 points per penalty; given that you only earn six points per healthy meal, that's a lot to lose!), collusion (if you try to convince a member of an opposite team to cheat along with you so your lost points balance out), for obsessively weighing yourself (once a day is allowed, but if you weigh in more often, you lose a point for each time you weigh yourself), and for drinking alcohol (except on your day off).

At the end of each week, you total up your team's points and average them. The cumulative total at the end of the four week game is what determines the winning team. We've all put in $15 per person, with the winning team getting the full pot at the end.

I'm not the most competitive person in the world, but I'm VERY good at following rules, so I like this approach. The diet requirements border on the obsessive, so I might have some trouble with that (I've never liked the sorts of diets where you can have certain types of food at certain points in the day but not at other points and only in the first two weeks of the diet, blah, blah, blah). And sleep will be a problem--last night Connor had me up until 2 a.m. Fun.

I've already had to face multiple temptations today--I made pancakes for breakfast but couldn't eat any of them, then I came in to work where someone brought in the leftovers from her party this weekend, so there are deviled eggs, cookies, and chocolate covered strawberries all over the place. Tomorrow is our staff retreat, which includes breakfast and lunch eaten out. I might make tomorrow my day off to deal with that. Then next week is July 4 on Monday and a pool party on Saturday. The following week includes a division area retreat (again with lots of food). At least the game ends before Brian's birthday, so I don't have to worry about that.