Game On! Diet! Yes, Me!

I think I'm the last of the Ding-Dongs to blog about this, but I wanted to wait until I had the book in hand before I tried to put together a post. Here's how it went down:

Dawn suggests we do this Game On! Diet thing. She reminds me that Jennifer of Book Club Girl has been doing it. "Oh yes" I think, vaguely remembering scanning those posts. "Sounds like a good time, count me in!"

For some reason, I actually thought "diet" and "sounds like a good time" went together.

So when I started realizing what this entailed ("Giving up diet soda...WHAT???) I have to admit I started to feel a little grumpy. And then my book didn't show up before we started and while I could read the book online, well, we all know how that goes. I felt like I was taking a huge exam after only glancing at the notes.

But I did my best to eat 5 meals that fit into the plan of the diet, avoided snacking, and drank 3 liters of water. My book showed up today and so I tucked it in my purse and headed to the grocery store.

Yes, I'm starving myself, it sure feels like it. But as I was chopping up cucumbers and basking in their wonderful scent, I got to thinking that I'm going to enjoy this. It's fun to do it on a team and to award myself points for doing things right. It always feels good to make healthy choices and as I said, I love cucumbers. So this just might work out after all. Besides, I've always wanted to do this review a diet book by doing it sort of thing. I meant to do it with the Ultimate Tea Diet, but it never happened. So now I'm doing it!

Here are the details! (Stolen from Jenn's Bookshelf)

The Game On! Diet is the brainchild of Krista Vernoff, head writer and executive producer of tv's Grey's Anatomy and Az Ferguson, winner of the Body-for-Life Challenge. When Krista returned to work after having her baby, she called on Az to help her lose the baby weight. He made her a workout regimen and eating plan that she, well, didn't follow at all. So Az went back to the drawing board. Knowing that Krista had a VERY competitive nature, he decided to present her with a healthy lifestyle plan in the form of a game, that she could play with a team, and that she could play to win. This appealed to her very much. Rather than the focus being on losing weight, the focus is on winning points, a far more tantalizing prospect.

So how do you earn points? You can earn a maximum of 100 points a day for doing the following:

1) Eating 5 balanced meals a day, every 2-4 hours -- 6 points per meal
2) Exercising for at least 20 minutes a day -- 20 points
3) Sleeping for a minimum of 7 hours per night -- 15 points
4) Drinking 3 liters of water a day -- 10 points
5) Adopting a healthy new habit that you practice every day -- 10 points
6) Dropping one unhealthy habit -- 10 points
7) Communicating with your team members every day -- 5 points

You earn penalties (points lost!) for:

1) stepping on the scale more than once a day
2) unsanctioned snacking (you can have as much celery and cucumber as you want throughout the day, plus 100 free calories of whatever once a day, no other snacking)
3) Colluding with the opposing team to get them to break a rule
4) Drinking alcohol (see exception below)
5) changing the healthy or unhealthy habit during the course of the game (you have to pick those and stick to them).

It's not about total deprivation as you get:

1) One day off a week, when you don't have to follow any of the rules
2) One meal off a week when you can eat what you want and have one unit of alcohol
3) each day you can have 100 calories of anything as a bonus treat

My Habit to stop: Checking email on my phone. Being fully present with the people I'm with.

My Habit to Add: Organzing all the piles of paper I have around in my office and home. I hope to spend a little time each day doing just this!

We have three teams participating...The Ding-Dongs, the Ho-hos and the Twinkies. Yes such cute and clever names. And yes I am on the appropriately named team the Ding-Dongs.

Here is the line up of the three teams:

The Ding-Dongs:
Julie from Booking Mama
softdrink from Fizzy Thoughts
Amy from My Friend Amy
Jill from Rhapsody in Books
Ti from Book Chatter and Other Stuff

The Twinkies:

Beth F from Beth Fish Reads
Jenners from Find Your Next Book Here
Jenn of Jenn's Bookshelf
Denise from M. Denise C.
Dawn from She is Too Fond of Books

The HoHos:
Kathy from The Brain Lair
two of Kathy’s IRL friends who will be updating their progress on Facebook

I think I have to post about this once a week, and can you also see my whining on Twitter at #gameondiet :)