Is your New Year's resolution to lose weight and get fit? How's that resolution going for you so far?
I'll be honest with you, my fitness resolution hasn't gone so well over the first few days of 2013. In all my busy-ness with family, friends, and getting back to work here at LIVESTRONG.COM, I haven't done a single workout. And, it's probably no surprise that I haven't lost a single one of the 6 pounds I gained over November and December.
Why haven't I gotten started? Where is my motivation?
Despite all my best intentions, I realized one crucial component that helped me lose significant amounts of weight two times over the past two years:
Being a part of a fitness challenge group has been integral to my weight loss success.
The encouragement, support, friendly competition (and, frankly let's be honest, the kick in the butt) that a fitness challenge group provides is what I need to kick-start and stick with my diet and fitness resolutions.
I know this from experience. Over the past two years, I was lucky enough to participate in two different Beachbody test groups. In 2011, I participated in the RevAbs test group and lost 15 pounds, and in summer 2012, I was a member of the Les Mills Combat test group, and I lost 20 pounds in 60 days.
This year, I'm thankful that my LIVESTRONG.COM colleagues and I have committed together to 8 weeks of The Gunnar Challenge. We are officially starting this daily fitness challenge on Monday, January 21, 2013, and we invite our LIVESTRONG readers to join us. We’ll be blogging and tweeting about our experiences day-by-day, and we’d love to have our audience in this adventure with us. (Signing up is quick and easy.)
The LIVESTRONG team is taking The Gunnar Challenge.
I can't wait! If my past experience tells me anything, it's that being a part of this fitness challenge will help me keep my commitment to get fit and get success.
4 Elements of Fitness Challenge Groups That Helped Me Stay Committed and Lose Weight:
1. Daily words of motivation from top trainers. Most of us find it too expensive to hire a personal trainer - nevermind a celebrity trainer - to provide support and those words of wisdom. I realize that I have been lucky to work with top trainers in my past challenge groups. In RevAbs, Brett Hoebel gave us in-person pep talks and video updates to keep us motivated. With Les Mills Combat, we received video updates from Dan Cohen, Rachael Newsham, and our in-person trainers.
During The Gunnar Challenge, we'll be getting daily video motivation from Gunnar Peterson, who has trained Kim Kardashian, Sylvester Stallone, Sofia Vergara, and Jennifer Lopez.
What does a daily motivational video from a pro like Gunnar look like? Here’s an example of the type of daily motivation a.k.a. “Verbal Vitamins” we will be receiving from Gunnar:
2. Daily exercise routines prescribed by a professional trainer. Left to my own devices, I would just do a yoga class or head to the gym and jump on the elliptical and watch MSNBC. But those workouts, even when I did them 5-6 times per week NEVER got me to lose 15 or 20 pounds. In fact, choosing my own daily workout routine never even got me to lose 5 pounds.
This is how I understand and know from experience that fitness challenge groups offer something that is truly an advantage over regular old self-directed gym routines.
The fitness challenge groups that helped me lose weight consisted of different daily workouts programmed for the group by professional trainers that involved interval training, weight training, and core work. The workouts don’t need to be long, they simply need to challenge you and provide variety that keeps you coming back for more.
Want to see an example of a daily workout video from The Gunnar Challenge? Check out the 5×5 WildCard Workout:
3. A simple calorie-restricted daily meal plan created by professional dieticians. Planning my own meals and creating my own shopping lists can be daunting, and my food choices aren't generally conducive to weight loss. And most of us can't afford consultation with a nutritionist or dietician to come up with a meal plan that supports our diet and fitness goals. As I mentioned again and again, I've achieved my best success as a part of fitness challenge groups. In those groups an essential component was the meal plan and sticking to it.
Getting a flexible easy-to-prepare daily meal plan is yet another reason why I'm looking forward to starting The Gunnar Challenge. Gunnar’s website has daily meal plans, complete with recipes and grocery shopping lists to help me keep my eating on track.
Gunnar also offers encouragement and tips on eating. Here's an example:
4. Encouragement, support, and friendly competition from a group of people who started with me on Day 1 and are committed to making it to the end of the 8 weeks. During the two challenge groups I participated in, getting through day 1, day 15, day 30, day 45 and so on, was not always easy. Some days were particularly harder than others. Whenever I needed motivation, I turned to my online group of fellow test group participants who started with me on day 1. We shared our accomplishments with each other via social media and we also shared our challenges, such as going to birthday parties and not being able to eat any cake or snack food. That way we could offer each other the inspiration needed to keep going and make it through the next day's workout. It makes it tougher to quit when you have online peers checking in on you. Also, friendly competition can be a great motivator. Trying to lose the most weight or get the best "Before" and "After" photo transformation of the group can help some people to strive to greater success for themselves.
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