The Slimmer This Summer Challenge Begins!! Week 1

Woo hoo!  We're off and running for the next 12 weeks with The Slimmer This Summer Challenge. 

The official "rules" post is here but here is a quick reminder of what to do.

**Track food and water.  Use an online food tracker, your blog or a post it note but write down your food and water.

**Keep calories around 10,000 or less per week.  Make healthy, smart choices.  Ask for help if you need suggestions for meals and snacks.

**Stay hydrated.  I can't believe how much this has helped me with weight loss.  I believe that a person at a heatlhy weight is supposed to drink 8 - 8 oz. glasses of water.  We are overweight so we need more.  Shoot for at least 10 - 8 oz. glasses a day. I drink about 120 oz. of water a day which is about 15 glasses.  Yes, I'm in the bathroom a lot but I'm well hydrated.  It does get easier as you go!

**Weigh in weekly. You don't have to tell us what your starting weight is but please tell us how much you've lost each week. Weigh in on June 6th and let us know each week in your review post.

**Stick to your exercise goals.  Let's do more than just "get up and move".  Let's sweat a litttle and make exercise a bit of a challenge. If you're new to exercise, start slow but stay steady and you WILL see improvement soon.  If you already have a good exercise routine, change it up and kick it up a notch.  Ask if you need some suggestions.  Mir is the exercise queen and she'll be able to help a lot.

**DO NOT QUIT. I can't stress how important this is.  If you have a bad day or week, pick yourself up, get over it and get back on track.

**Keep blogging.  Blog about your successes, blog about your failures, blog about your NSV's.  We love to hear about them.  Stay accountable.

**Encourage others.  While it's hard to read everyday and comment every day, please try to visit the other challengers as much as possible to encourage and offer suggestions.  Encouraging does not necessarily mean coddling.  We're not going to tell you "it's okay that you had that jelly donut...".  We're going to tell you to knock it off and get back on plan!  No meanness, no judging, just helpful encouragement.
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Below I have a linky for you to link in your initial goal post. Many of you have already posted this and that's great, just link directly to that post so we can all see your goals.  If you haven't finished your goal post, please get it in and link it in.  The link will be up for the next few days. 

Each Sunday night, I will put another post up with a linky at the bottom so we can see how you've done.  Let us know how much weight you've lost and if you've met or exceeded your exercise goals. You can do your post whenever but lets try to link in the "week in review" posts on Monday so we can all see how you've been doing. 

Remember, this is supposed to be fun and encouraging but serious too.  Too many weeks of no successes, no weight loss, no sore muscles or no NSV's just isn't going to cut it.  We're here to lose weight and get healthy.  We've wanted this for a long time so let's finally DO IT. Not just talk about it. I know I've spent WAY too much time talking about it and wasting time. 

Email me if you want to join in. 

Link in your goal post. Please link to the post itself and not your main blog. You can use your blog name as your NAME. Thanks!