Sons (and daughters) of Scotland, how did we do this weekend? Did we show England what we’re made of?

Well, it’s time for everyone to report back in on how they did over the weekend for the latest Weekend Warriors Challenge. To recap, here’s everyone who participated this time around:

• Lauren from Less Lauren
• Frank from Male Weight Loss Now
• SeattleRunnerGirl
• Carla from The Right Fit
• Tara from 263 and Counting
• Scott from Minus 5 Times 10
• jord from A Journey of 26.2 Miles Begins with a Blog
• Gluten Free Pumpkins
• Sean from Learn Fitness
• Amy from Living and Loving Life
• Craig from My Life, Take Eight
• Jamie from I Can Heal My Self!
• Mac from Get Fit Slowly
• Josie from 35 and Shrinking
• Erin from Erin Takes Control
• Shelli from Shelli Belly
• 146 Pounds
• Jess from Half of Jess

As for my own weekend, here’s a list of my goals again:

1. Get out for at least one bike ride.
2. Keep my daily calorie intake under 1800.
3. No sweets!

I’m happy to report success on all 3 goals! I hope everyone else had a healthy and happy weekend. Thanks to everyone who participated for making the challenge another success – see you all again back here next month for more fun!

It’s time to get started with the latest Weekend Warrior Challenge! This time around, we’ll be kicking it William Wallace style. So go put on some blue face paint, don a kilt, and let’s kick some ass this weekend!

Here’s a list of everyone who’s signed up for the challenge. So head on over to their blogs and offer them some encouragement for the weekend:

• Lauren from Less Lauren
• Frank from Male Weight Loss Now
• SeattleRunnerGirl
• Carla from The Right Fit
• Tara from 263 and Counting
• Scott from Minus 5 Times 10
• jord from A Journey of 26.2 Miles Begins with a Blog
• Gluten Free Pumpkins
• Sean from Learn Fitness
• Amy from Living and Loving Life
• Craig from My Life, Take Eight
• Jamie from I Can Heal My Self!
• Mac from Get Fit Slowly
• Josie from 35 and Shrinking
• Erin from Erin Takes Control
• Shelli from Shelli Belly
• 146 Pounds
• Jess from Half of Jess

That’s everyone I’ve seen posts from so far – if I missed anyone, just let me know and I’ll get you added to the list right away!

Good luck this weekend everyone – let’s get the month of May started off on the right track!

Update: I just realized that I totally forgot to post my own goals for the weekend

• Get out for at least one bike ride. Even though I’m still nursing my bum ankle and can’t do any running, that doesn’t mean I still can’t get out and exercise! I haven’t gotten my bike out yet this year, and this seems like a great weekend for it.
• Keep my daily calorie intake under 1800. This is usually not a problem during the week, but it usually creeps up a bit on the weekends.
• No sweets! I’ll often treat myself to a small piece or two of chocolate after dinner. At least for this weekend, I’m going to avoid that little indulgence, as it occasionally leads to a mini-binge.

They may take our lives, but they'll never take our JELLY DONUTS!!!

We’re coming up on everyone’s favorite weekend of the month – that’s right, it’s time for another Weekend Warriors Challenge! Last time around, we had a Star Wars theme. For this month’s challenge, I went with Frank’s suggestion of a Braveheart theme. Those guys were hard core – I mean, they went to war in frickin’ kilts! I don’t think that anyone would argue that they were warriors in every sense of the word.

The challenge is going to work the same as it has in the past. For those of you who may be new around here, and as a reminder for the rest of you, here are the rules of the challenge:

• Set 2-3 goals for yourself for the weekend
• Goals can be anything, as long as they are health/fitness related in some way
• Goals must be specific and measurable, so that you can give a definitive pass/fail result at the end of the challenge. For example, “workout at least 30 minutes every day this weekend” is preferred over “get more exercise this weekend”.
• Sometime between now and Thursday night (April 29), write a blog post about the challenge, and detail what your goals for the weekend are. Then, come back here and leave a comment with a link to your post, so we can all keep an eye on each other and offer encouragement.
• The Friday before the challenge starts (April 30), I’ll put up another post with a list of all the participants.
• The Monday after the challenge (May 3), I’ll put up a post where everyone can report back on how they did over the weekend.
• Everyone is encouraged to write an after-challenge post with your results, and link to all the other participants (my after-challenge post will have a list of all the participants with links, so it should be easy to just copy/paste that section). That way, we can raise more awareness of the challenge by getting the word out, and hopefully have even more participants next time. That, and everyone can share in a little link-lovin’!
• Everyone is also encouraged to tweet about the challenge using the #WeekendWarriors hashtag
• Maybe something like this: I’m participating in the #WeekendWarriors challenge from @SoLongFatAss, are you? http://bit.ly/dflwo0

I want us to all be successful with this challenge next weekend – so whether you need to don a kilt, or put on some blue war paint to unleash your true warrior spirit, let’s all get out there and kick some ass!

So how was everyone’s Easter weekend? How did you do with your Weekend Warriors goals? Anyone break down and gorge themselves on chocolate bunnies and jelly beans  For the most part, I ate very well this weekend. I did have more than I had hoped to yesterday, but overall not too bad.

As a reminder, here were my goals for the weekend:

1. NO chocolate this weekend. WIN – I managed to stay clear of the chocolate, although in retrospect, I should have made this goal for no candy, because I did have a brief visit from my old arch-nemesis, the Jelly Belly. Nothing too crazy, but nothing I really needed, either.
2. Exercise at least 45 minutes on both Saturday and Sunday. WIN – Saturday I did 45 minutes on the elliptical, and Sunday I started the Couch to 5k program. Technically the first exercise is only 31 minutes, but I thought it went very well, and it felt GREAT to get outside and run, so I’m counting that as a success. My only regret was not wearing gloves. I guess I didn’t realize how cold it still is out there, and my hands were freezing by the time I was done!
3. Weigh no more on Monday morning than I did on Saturday morning. FAIL – I’m definitely up on the scale today. Despite my best intentions, I had a fair amount to eat yesterday. We had three big meals on Easter – breakfast at my parent’s house, lunch at my mother-in-law’s, and everyone came for dinner at our house. I didn’t eat too badly at any one meal, but the three big meals combined just added up to a big day. I actually had a pretty big gain this morning from just yesterday, but I attribute most of that to being “the morning after”. I expect most of that to drop back off tomorrow.

So that’s how my weekend went – 2 out of 3 ain’t bad, right?

How was everyone else’s weekend? Did the challenge help with overeating on Easter?

Thanks everyone for participating in the challenge – hopefully we’ll see you all back here again next month for challenge #3!

Well, Easter weekend is almost upon on, and you know what that means? It’s time for the 2nd installment of the Weekend Warriors Challenge! We had such a fun time last time around, and I got such great reports of the success that people had, that we decided to do it again!

Here’s a list of everyone who’s signed up for this weekend’s challenge:

• Carla from The Right Fit
• Lauren from Less Lauren
• Scott from Minus 5 Times 10
• Marissa from Fatty Slims Down
• Sean from Learn Fitness
• Joey from Joey’s Health
• Joe from Joe the Runner
• Jeremy from Stellar Path
• Lynne from Losing Lynne
• Steve from 265 and Falling
• Erin from Erin Takes Control
• Frank from Male Weight Loss Now
• Dana from Eat Sleep Get Fit
• Jess from Half of Jess
• Craig from My Life, Take Eight
• CiCi from Too Flabby Dames

This list has everyone that I’ve seen a post from – if I happened to miss anybody, or you didn’t get a chance to put your post yet, just let me know and I’ll get you added!

And of course, I’ll be participating again along with everyone else. Just because I’m hosting the challenge doesn’t mean I have to miss out on all the fun! Here are my goals for this weekend:

1. NO chocolate this weekend. This is going to be a tough one, for sure, but like Carla said: “I’m not an eight year old child that I need to pig out on candy at Easter. I’ve literally done that for decades and look where it’s gotten me.”
2. Exercise at least 45 minutes on both Saturday and Sunday. This is my planned exercise schedule anyways, but the past few weekends, I’ve definitely slacked off a bit on Sundays, either doing a shorter workout, or even none at all.
3. Weigh no more on Monday morning than I did on Saturday morning. When all is said and done, my primary goal in all this is weight loss, so it only makes sense to have this as one of my goals for the weekend.

Good luck to everyone this weekend, let’s all have a healthy and happy Easter weekend! I look forward to seeing everybody’s results on Monday.

Ok, so I thought I’d keep up with my Star Wars theme for the second installment of the Weekend Warriors Challenge. The challenge is going to be this coming weekend, which also happens to be Easter weekend. When I first realized this, I thought about pushing the challenge back a week, but after thinking about it a little more, realized that it was the perfect time for this challenge. Easter (at least for me), is one of those holidays where I used to pretty much give myself carte blanche to eat whatever (and however much) I wanted. This year, instead I’ll be looking for excuses to not be eating all this great food.

So, the challenge is going to work just like before. For those of you just tuning in, and as a reminder for the rest of you, here are the rules of the challenge:

• Set 2-3 goals for yourself for the weekend
• Goals can be anything, as long as they are health/fitness related in some way
• Goals must be specific and measurable, so that you can give a definitive pass/fail result at the end of the challenge. For example, “workout at least 30 minutes every day this weekend” is preferred over “get more exercise this weekend”.
• Sometime between now and Thursday night (April 1), write a blog post about the challenge, and detail what your goals for the weekend are. Then, come back here and leave a comment with a link to your post, so we can all keep an eye on each other and offer encouragement.
• The Friday before the challenge starts (April 2), I’ll put up another post with a list of all the participants.
• The Monday after the challenge (April 5), I’ll put up a post where everyone can report back on how they did over the weekend.
• Everyone is encouraged to write an after-challenge post with your results, and link to all the other participants (my after-challenge post will have a list of all the participants with links, so it should be easy to just copy/paste that section). That way, we can raise more awareness of the challenge by getting the word out, and hopefully have even more participants next time. That, and everyone can share in a little link-lovin’!
• Everyone is also encouraged to tweet about the challenge using the #WeekendWarriors hashtag
• Maybe something like this: I’m participating in the #WeekendWarriors challenge from @SoLongFatAss, are you? http://bit.ly/cNa5Tq

We had a really great turn out last time around, and I’m hoping to see even more people participating this time. So please help spread the word, and let’s make sure everyone stays healthy and happy over Easter weekend!

Now that the first Weekend Warriors Challenge has come to a succesful end, it’s time to start looking ahead. I got lots of great feedback on the challenge, and most people seemed to really like it, and felt that it helped motivate them to do better on the weekend and reach their goals.

On top of all this great feedback, I saw a lot of the same question – when’s the next one?

To be completely honest, when I first proposed the challenge, I hadn’t thought much about doing it more than once. It just kind of sounded like a fun thing for everyone to do, and all have a healthy weekend together. But considering that it seems like many people are eager to do this again, I’m completely open to that idea as well.

So the next question, then, is how often to do the challenge? Personally, doing it every week would be overkill. I’m not sure that many people would be up for doing it that often, and at least for myself, it would be a little much. There’s a fair amount of work I have to do with putting all the posts together, tracking the participants, etc., and I’m just not up for doing that every week. That, and if I was going to do that, I might as well change the name of my blog to “The Weekend Warriors”

Currently, what I’m leaning towards doing is having the challenge once a month, on the first weekend of each month. It would be a great way to start off each month on the right foot, and hopefully help set a healthy tone for the rest of the month. I’d probably put out a post the Monday before each challenge, reminding everyone and giving people a place to sign up. Then on the Friday before the challenge I’d put up the list of participants, followed up by the results on Monday, similar to how we did this first time around.

How does that idea sound to everyone? Any other thoughts or suggestions? I’m open to just about anything at this point if someone has a better idea.

Ok, so the Weekend Warrior challenge has officially come to a close. Hopefully, everyone participating had a good weekend, full of healthy choices. As a reminder to all those following along at home, here’s a full list of all the participants:

• Carla from The Right Fit
• Lynne from Losing Lynne
• Steve from 265 and Falling
• Kat from Kat’s Adventures in Dietland
• Frank from Male Weight Loss Now
• Sean from Learn Fitness
• Mac from Get Fit Slowly
• Andrew from Andrew is Getting Fit
• Karyn from Fitness Road Trip
• Josie from 35 and Shrinking
• Marissa from Fatty Slims Down
• Jeremy from Stellar Path
• Mike from SUB6
• Andrew from 100 Pounds in a Year
• Erin from Erin Takes Control
• Alissa from Gluten Free Pumpkins
• Craig from My Life, Take Eight
• Ryan from No More Bacon
• Chad from Reconstructing 30
• beej from Journey to Satisfaction

So, how did everyone do? Here were my goals for the challenge:

1. Weigh less Monday morning than on Saturday morning.
2. Exercise at least 45 minutes every day this weekend (including Friday).
3. Keep my average daily calorie intake below 1800.

#1 was a success for me this weekend. I weighed in at 246.0 Saturday morning, and just weighed in at 245.6 this morning. That gives me a 0.4 pound loss for the weekend – no complaints from me! #2 was a big win. I exercised 45 minutes Friday through Sunday nights, and I also finished the 200 squats challenge! #3 also went very well for me. I kept right at or even a little under 1800 calories all weekend. So that’s 3 out of 3 for me!

I can’t wait to hear how everyone else did. Either leave a comment below or write up your own blog post linking here with your results. Thanks to everyone who participated for making this a great challenge!

Well, it’s finally here – it’s time for the Weekend Warriors Challenge! For those of you not keeping score at home, the idea behind the challenge is that while many of us do well with being healthy and active during the week, many of us struggle through the weekends. The temptation to make poor eating choices, or slack off on our workouts, is much greater on the weekend while we’re at home.

The goal is that this weekend, we will all challenge ourselves to do better. For the challenge, I asked everyone to set 2-3 goals for themselves. The only requirements were that those goals are specific and measurable, so that at the end of the weekend, everyone can give a definitive pass/fail. This is an “everyone wins” type of challenge, so there are no prizes – other than good health, of course

Below is a list of everyone who has signed up to participate in the challenge. So head on over to their blogs and give them some encouragement for the weekend – after all, that’s what this is all about! If I missed anyone, please let me know and I’ll get you added to the list right away.

• Carla from The Right Fit
• Lynne from Losing Lynne
• Steve from 265 and Falling
• Kat from Kat’s Adventures in Dietland
• Frank from Male Weight Loss Now
• Sean from Learn Fitness
• Mac from Get Fit Slowly
• Andrew from Andrew is Getting Fit
• Karyn from Fitness Road Trip
• Josie from 35 and Shrinking
• Marissa from Fatty Slims Down
• Jeremy from Stellar Path
• Mike from SUB6
• Andrew from 100 Pounds in a Year
• Erin from Erin Takes Control
• Alissa from Gluten Free Pumpkins
• Craig from My Life, Take Eight
• Ryan from No More Bacon
• Chad from Reconstructing 30
• beej from Journey to Satisfaction

And of course I’m going to be participating in the challenge myself, so here are my goals for the weekend:

1. Weigh less Monday morning than on Saturday morning. Recently, most of my weekends have ended with me weighing the same, or even a little more, than I did at my weigh-in on Friday. This weekend, I really want to see a loss!
2. Exercise at least 45 minutes every day this weekend (including Friday). Currently, my exercise pretty much solely consists of time on the elliptical, and doing body squats for the 200 squats challenge. I usually already exercise both Saturday and Sunday, but sometimes slack off a bit and only do 30 minutes. So this weekend, I’m going to do at least 45 minutes each day, and throw Friday into the mix as well!
3. Keep my average daily calorie intake below 1800. This is where I aim for most days anyways, but usually on the weekends it can creep up into the 2200-2400 range. This also means that I will need to be diligent about tracking everything I eat at DailyBurn. I typically do a pretty good job of tracking calories during the week, but then slack off on the weekend, leading me to eat more than I realize.

Remember, on Monday, I’ll put up another post where everyone can check back in and report on how they did. If you write up a blog post about your results, you’re also encourage to link to all the other participants (you should be able to just copy/paste the list above).

Here’s wishing everyone good luck on the challenge and meeting their goals for the weekend. Let’s all get out there and support each other, and hopefully we’ll all be able to report success on Monday!

In my original Weekend Warrior post, I talked about how much more of a challenge the weekends can be for those of us who are trying to be healthy and get fit. There are typically a lot of temptations for us to overeat, or make less than ideal food choices. And on Monday it shows. Looking at my daily weigh-in history, I see the same trend repeating itself over and over again: good progress during the week, followed by a plateau (or even a small peak) on the weekend.

Based on the comments I received on that post, I’m not alone in this. There are quite a few of you that struggle through the weekends as well. Based on a comment left by Craig, I came up with the idea of the Weekend Warriors Challenge.

The basic idea is that we’ll all challenge ourselves to do better on the weekends. “Better” can mean different things for different people. Maybe it has to do with eating better, or getting more exercise, or even a combination of the two. The point is, we’ll all set specific, measurable goals for ourselves for the weekend, and then report back on Monday on how we did.

I was originally hoping to be able to have the challenge ready for this weekend, but I realized that might be rushing it too much, and I want to give more time for other people to find out about the challenge and participate as well. So the challenge is actually going to be next weekend, March 6 & 7.

Just to make things semi-official around here, here’s the set of rules for the challenge that I came up with, based on the feedback I received on my last post:

• Set 2-3 goals for yourself for the weekend
• Goals can be anything, as long as they are health/fitness related in some way
• Goals must be specific and measurable, so that you can give a definitive pass/fail result at the end of the challenge. For example, “workout at least 30 minutes every day this weekend” is preferred over “get more exercise this weekend”.
• Sometime between now and next Friday (March 5), write a blog post about the challenge, and detail what your goals for the weekend are. Then, come back here and leave a comment with a link to your post, so we can all keep an eye on each other and offer encouragement.
• The Friday before the challenge starts (March 5), I’ll put up another post with a list of all the participants.
• The Monday after the challenge (March 8), I’ll put up a post where everyone can report back on how they did over the weekend.
• Everyone is encouraged to write an after-challenge post with your results, and link to all the other participants (my after-challenge post will have a list of all the participants with links, so it should be easy to just copy/paste that section). That way, we can raise more awareness of the challenge by getting the word out, and hopefully have even more participants next time. That, and everyone can share in a little link-lovin’!
• Everyone is also encouraged to tweet about the challenge using the #WeekendWarriors hashtag
• Maybe something like this: I’m participating in the #WeekendWarriors challenge from @SoLongFatAss, are you? http://bit.ly/bCIas2

Prizes

• None this time around, it’s more of an “everyone wins” type of challenge. If there’s enough interest this first go-around, then I’ll likely host this challenge again in the future. If so, I can look more into getting some “real” prizes next time. Besides, isn’t better health a good enough prize on its’ own?

I do have one request, if anyone is willing & able – it would be nice to have an image/badge/whatever you want to call it, that I can use for this challenge, and that everyone participating can post on their own blogs. Unfortunately, while I’m a programmer by day and can code my way around almost anything, I can’t do much when it comes to graphics. If anyone out there has been blessed with that ability, and would care to lend a hand, it would be greatly appreciated. Either leave a comment below, or use my contact page to get my attention.

Well, I think that’s it – good luck everyone!

Photo by Dunechaser