Ok, time for a confession. I’ve belonged to some very nice gym’s ever since moving to Texas. I even used to where one the hats. That being said, I can’t really say that I ever really worked out there. I’d get in to the gym about twice a month, but most months – even that would probably be an exaggeration.

Well, here I am, over 70lbs lighter (yeah!) – I’ve gone from 44” pants to 34”. I’m off all of my asthma medicines and feeling great – and I pretty much did all of that by just jumping on to the Advocare eating plan and getting a lot of that solid nutrition in my body – but I realized over the last 4 months that I’ve pretty much plateau’d, and that if I really wanted to get my body to where I wanted it to be I’d have to try something new – and I figured, “hey – I could try this crazy idea and start exercising! I hear some people actually get results with that!”

It started when my wife asked me to run a 5k with her. I thought she meant complete a 5k – apparently she meant compete in a 5k. So we got a trainer, started meeting once a week with some friends (our team Momentum) and I finished the 5k in just around 32 minutes. I feelt really good about that – and we kept running about once a week with our friends even after the race was over. Well, the Texas heat decided to kick in and so we weren’t doing that anymore – I still don’t go to the gym, but I did want to start doing something.

So now I meat with a trainer about 3 times a week. I belonged to 24 hour fitness and went about 9 times a year. Now I meet with a trainer and go at least 3 times a week – what kick in the pants. The first 3 weeks were brutal, I burn close 1000 calories each time we workout (about 800 during the workout the rest in EPOC) and I could barely move after the first couple of times.

Now I’ve been going solid for about 5 weeks and each week and I feel and see the change – I’m getting stronger, and more importantly my body is able to recover from a brutal workout much faster!

OK, so here are my tips if you are going to start a workout routine!

First, talk to your doctor. I’ve dealt with asthma my whole life. I may be off of my meds (yes – I see the humor there), but I still meet with an asthma specialist regularly for check ups. The first couple of times that I did some serious workouts – I got really light headed (thought I was going to pass out) and had to stop – this is definitely something that I talked to my doctor about and he gave me some tips and also gave me the green light to keep going!

Second, find a good trainer that you can work with. Someone that has the proper training, certification, and will work with you can make all of the difference in the world. It’s not just having someone tell you what exercises to do or how many sets (that’s what I used to think they did). A good trainer will help you reach your goals much faster than you would on your own, they’ll make sure that you are optimizing the time that you are there, get the most out of your workouts – without hurting yourself in the process.

Third, I can’t imagine working out with out a heart monitor. I wear a Polar watch with chest strap – so that at any minute I know what my heart is doing and what zone I’m in. This is a huge thing for me, but especially in the Texas heat and doing any sort of running and cardio workouts – you want to know how you’re doing. It also keeps track of how many calories you’ve burned so that it’s easy to get a feel for what’s working for you.

Fourth – Workout Nutrition!

Stay hydrated. I drink plenty of water before, during and after our workouts. In addition to that I add Advocare Rehydrate. Rehydrate is super refreshing, and also get the hydration to your bodies cells way faster than water alone.

Advocare Catalyst was developed for the 1996 US Olympic Wrestling team (the year they took Gold) It basically feeds your muscle fibers with the nutrition that they need. I take 3 Catalyst 15 minutes before a workout and 3 after.

As soon as I get home from a workout and I get to treat myself. People have heard me talk about Post Workout Recovery – and friends, it is that good. It’s super creamy and delicious, but is also the absolute best thing that you can do for your body after a hard workout. PWR gives your muscle the additional key nutrition that can only be absorbed during that 30 to 45 minute window after a hard workout. It also helps speed muscle recovery so that you can move the next day!

In addition that, I take the Argentine Extreme, Spark, O2 Gold, Muscle Fuel and Muscle Strength. I just follow the instructions on the containers. I only mention those because the other day – we ran out of O2 Gold and wow – I could completely tell the difference in my workout. I was worn out and fatigued a whole lot faster.

Remember – the goal of the workout is to optimize the time that you are there, and to recover as quickly as possible so that you can get back at it. Every workout breaks down muscle fibers – the more quickly that you heal – that faster you’ll get results. Which leads me to my second favorite (right after PWR).

Nighttime Recovery – wow. I’m not gonna lie, these are horse pills – but they work amazingly well to get you back on your feet the next day. I’ll even take night time recovery if I just have a sore back or muscle twinge, even if I haven’t worked out that day – it works that well. Make sure you follow the directions. Nighttime Recovery should be that last thing you take, right before your head hits the pillow – then have a great night sleep!

Photo credit:
Yeah, neither of those guys are me, but you probably already knew that.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/soldiersmediacenter/4127720231/in/photostream/

Holiday update: How’d you do with Christmas, New Years and all of the celebrating (and eating) that went along with them? This is a quick update to mention that this photo is now little out dated. I just did my first “official” weigh in since we went on Christmas break… and I lost weight over the holidays!

[Out dated photo: I’ve lost 17 more lbs since this photo was taken!]

I love using products that work!

I also love seeing a company like Advocare getting so involved with other great sporting events. In case you missed it, Advocare was the sponsor of the Independence Bowl in Shreveport LA last week. Awesome!

In case you didn’t know, Advocare doesn’t pay money to any of their endorsers, not even elite athletes like Drew Brees (featured below) or the many others.

Awesome!

First, a little background.

Asthma. I was first diagnosed with asthma when I was 18 months old. I’ve carried an asthma inhaler with me and have been on daily medication since I was 5. I’ve been hospitalized 4 times due to severe asthma and have had countless trips to the emergency room in my lifetime. So when I say that I have asthma, I mean it.

Migraines. Until last December, I was taking an Excedrin migraine almost every day for over a year. I’ve jokingly referred to it as my “daily vitamin”. Related or not, this is the same time that I was drinking 3 to 4 monster energy drinks every day.

So what’s changed? Last December I started the Advocare Nutrition products, including completely replacing monster energy with super high quality Spark. Since then I’ve:

• lost over 60lbs – gone from 44” pants to 36” pants
• I’m completely off all of my asthma medicine (even when running at the gym or playing soccer with my 4 children)
• migraines are almost completely non-existent in my life. I still get the occasional headache, but now it’s about 1 every 2 – 3 months instead of every day.
• I now take allergy medicine every other day instead of daily.

It’s hard to explain or communicate the change all of this has made in my life. To be able to run and play and still be able breath! (breathing is a good thing). To go through my life without my head always feeling like it was ready to explode (or implode depending on the day). All of this is completely amazing and a real life change – I highly recommend it!

Final Disclaimer: I am still not a doctor, and Advocare is a nutritional company that makes no medical claims. I’m simply communicating my experience and the affects that becoming more healthy has had on me. You should consult with your doctor before you do anything.

It’s been a while since I’ve updated my blog… last time I did an update I was down 25lbs. Last December I started this journey at 278 and barely squeezed into my 44” jeans (pictured above). Today I’m happy to report that I am at 221 and am wearing 36” jeans! 55 lbs and 8 inches off the waist makes a ton of difference.

To celebrate this latest victory we're running some great promotions this month for the Advocare products that we're using. Let me know if you'd like to get started and I'll fill you in on the details!

OK, this is just a quick update, but I wanted to get this update out there. I’ll blog later about some of the unexpected benefits that I’ve had (like I’m almost completely off of my asthma medicine and have more energy that ever.) I’ll work on some more updates soon. Right now, I’m busy starting a new job and making changes to my other blog.

What ever the reason was, I want to start off now by thanking everyone that participated. I hope that the month was a catalyst for lasting change for at least a couple of people. I’ve heard from many of you that have told me about the weight you lost, the workouts that you started and in some cases the weight (muscle) that you gained. (on purpose from working out … )

As a reminder: There will not be a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners. Instead, there are 3 different categories that people can win in.

Winner – Total Lost

So… without further ado. Congratulations Peter! Seriously, check out his before and after picture.

Peter lost a total of 18.5 lbs during February (and I hear that he’s up to over 30 lbs lost now! – seriously, way to go Peter!) He completely blew away 2 of the 3 categories for the Fit in February Developer Challenge (9.5 lbs more than the next person) plus he blew away the percentage category at 9.2% (over 4.28% more than the next person).

Winners – Based on Percentage Lost

The next winner was harder to calculate. If I calculated the next winner by total pounds, 1 person would win, but if I calculated by percentage then someone else would win… in the end, I decided to count Peter’s win as the “total pounds lost” category and so calculated the next winner by percentage…

The challenge with that was that there were two people that were tied for this one. They both lost the same amount of weight (9 lbs – awesome!), but with varying starting weights, they were slightly different by percentage. Also, one turned in a daily log, starting and ending video’s, images, and blog posts. So… congratulations to them both! Congratulations to Mr.SQL Ninja himself Tim Mitchell and the DNN Samurai Joe Brinkman!

Winner – Community Participation

The final winner, in the category of “community participation” went all out. He blogged, he posted videos, and he didn’t miss a single day on twitter. You can tell that he wanted to win bad… the blog that he started just for this event was the “IwannaWinVSTS” blog. Congratulations Jason Ipock!

Prizes – Everyone’s a winner!

First, everyone get’s to include this awesome “I participated” trophy on your blog, facebook profile, twitter avatar – you know, wherever – go nuts. Your welcome.   The 4 people that won (that’s right, we had 4 winners – even though we only promised 3!) get the privilege of displaying the uber awesome “I won” trophy on their blogs, maybe print out a shirt and wear it around… or any other sort of bragging rights that you deem appropriate. Awesome work guys!

Second, the very first prize offered up for this contest was a VSTS subscription. Yes friends, that’s a one year subscription to Microsoft’s Developer Network with Visual Studio Team Suite (something like a 10k street value… that is, assuming you can find someone on the street that knows what a VSTS MSDN subscription is – psst. hey, buddy, check out the msdn in my trunk!)

The second prize offered up was a 80 GB Black Zune with the VSTS Logo on it (woot). Seriously, I think that’s the prize that got a lot of the MVP’s excited (most of which already have MSDN subscriptions). Huge thanks goes out to Doug Seven from Microsoft for offering this prize (thanks for the support!).

Finally Brian Sampica stepped up and offered another prize. His original ended up being given away at an Iowa Code Camp (glad it went to a good cause!) That being said, Brian says that he has another VSTS Subscription that he’d be happy to offer up in it’s place. Thanks Brian!

Honorable Mentions

There were a number of people that participated in this challenge (way more than I anticipated!). I’d like to thank everyone that joined the Facebook group, that posted their progress and that went out and worked at getting more Fit. But I want to give special recognition to Tim Rayburn who, with a 9 lb loss in February, was next in line for the total weight lost category. (if Peter had taken the percentage lost slot instead – see above) awesome job Tim – keep up the great work!

Lessons Learned

All in all I’d say that the Fit in February Developer Challenge was a resounding success. There are a couple of things that I’d like to reflect on that I would do differently next time.

Get more people involved sooner. Even though I eventually asked some people to act as judges, (thanks for agreeing to help guys!) it was pretty late in the process and a lot of the work was already on my shoulders. Next time: get more people involved, earlier in the process.

Automate, automate, automate. One of the first questions that David Silverlight asked me was, is there any of this that we can automate? David is like a total community veteran when it comes to running community contests… he could see the issues coming before I did. Point taken: next time use RSS, workflow, yahoo pipes… whatever to track and monitor the updates. Automate as much as possible.

I had no idea how much time would be involved with tracking down participants info, checking on the twitter updates.

Next Time

While not everything went as planned, I would like to do a similar event again sometime. Some of the things that I wasn’t able to do this time around, but would have liked to.

Daily Leader Board. Even a weekly leader board would have been nice to keep the motivation going all month.

Combined Results. I would have liked a better way to track everyone’s results. It would have been nice to see the total weight loss/miles ran or whatever by the whole group.

Use Facebook. Creating a Facebook group was almost an afterthought for doing the challenge. It turned out to be one of the best ways to spread the word! Some friends here in Dallas were even inspired to write a Facebook application that I got to preview at there office. I’ll post more on that after they launch!

OK… I think that’s it. Congratulations again to all of the winners and thank you to everyone!

Update: I just saw that my friends from CoHabitat have posted some information on their Facebook App “Challenge” – I can’t wait to try it out!

Over a month ago we kicked off the “Fit in February Developer Challenge”. Over 170 people joined the facebook group and a ton of people participated through twitter! Sorry for the obvious delay in announcing the winners of this challenge. I was out of town last week at the Microsoft MVP Summit and am just now getting caught up on everything.

What that means for everyone that participated… is that you have until tomorrow (Wed March 11, 2009) to get me your final results. You can email them directly to me, post them as a comment here or directly on the Facebook group.

Thanks for everyone that participated! I’m really looking forward to seeing your final results!

P.S. – sorry for the late notice on this. I kept meaning to schedule this, but then had a crazy weekend. If you can’t make this, but wanted to attend, leave a comment and I’ll see about scheduling another lunch later in the week.

Click here to Join the meeting, Monday Feb 2, 2009 12pm to 1pm CST.

See you then!

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Well, it’s taken almost a month to get to this point. There has been a lot of enthusiasm building around this too. (over 140 members have joined the Facebook group!) So with out further ado, let me out line the contest.

Overview / Goal: The Fit in February Developer Challenge has the lofty goal of encouraging and motivating developers to do something out of their normal routine to become more healthy. The goal is help kick start your routine in February by proving prizes and motivation that most developers will actually care about.

Ways to win:

Because there have been 3 prizes offered up by the community, there will be 3 ways to win. (We like that better than a 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, etc..)

First way: All out winner. The person that loses the most weight between Feb 1^st and Feb 28^th.

Second way to win: Percentage Winner. The person that loses the most weight based on the percentage of weight that they started with vs their ending weight.

Third way to win: Active Participant. Ok, here’s the deal: I’m a big believer in “Social accountability” and that the things that you say and do in public – the more likely you are to actually do them. In this category you will earn various points for participating in various activities. To keep things consistent, pretend that 1 point is like losing 1 pound.

10 points – Blog about the contest, what you are going to do to participate (your work out routine, eating plan, etc..) and link to this blog post (that way we can track your post). Look at that, you just lost 10 lbs for writing 1 blog post.

5 points – post a before picture of your self. You can post this in the Facebook group, Flickr, as a part of your blog post (see above) or anywhere else. Just be sure to post the link to your picture in the comments here or in the Facebook group.

5 points – post an after picture. (see above)

10 points – post a video of your self doing your routine, drinking a health shake, or just talking about what you are doing for the contest. Add a link to your video in the comments, or post it in the Facebook group.

1 – point / every day. You can earn an additional point every day of the contest. Just post to twitter with the tag #FitFeb and whatever you happen to be doing (challenge related) at that moment. It might be working out, or drinking your shake, or taking the stairs in your office building. If you don’t have a twitter account, then go sign up for one (they are free)… also, we are going to use the search feature of twitter to track these points… so if you have “protected tweets” turned on, you’ll need to disable that and make your tweets public during the contest. (or create a new account just for the contest)

10 more blog points – Post a wrap up blog post at the end. Talk about your successes (and areas that still need to be worked on … if you want), how this month has changed your outlook, and what you plan on continuing beyond February.

There are 28 days in February, that means that if you did everything and tweeted every day, you’d have a maximum of 68 points (that’s 68 lbs in one Month! ), but pay attention… because we will probably add new ways to earn points during the month! (just to keep things interesting)

F.A.Q.

Q: We haven’t even started yet and there are already Frequently Asked Questions?
A: Yes, several people have provided some great and valuable input in the last month, and I think that it’s important to address some of those issues.

Q: What if I don’t need to lose any weight, but just want to “get fit”?
A: That is the main reason that we created category number 3 (activity). Anyone can win that category regardless of what that “activity” might entail (ex: lifting more etc..)

Q: Do you really expect people to get Fit in one month, or why can’t these be a longer challenge?
A: The goal of this challenge is to kick start people’s efforts. Hopefully people will have results in the month and that will be enough incentive to keep going. A 90 day challenge is a great idea, but we’d like to start off with something manageable, and achievable for more people to participate in. (maybe next year will do Fit in Spring?)

Q: Why are we just measuring weight? What about BMI, tape measuring inches, etc.
A: We agree that BMI is a much better definition of “Fit”, It actually really frustrates me (Caleb) that “The Biggest Loser” show uses the scale instead of BMI. I once lost 30 pounds of fat, but gained 15 pounds of muscle. All of that being said, we wanted to make this as easy as possible for anyone to participate in, and few things are as universal and as easy to access as a bathroom scale. Also, it’s actually pretty tough to decide on a standard way to calculate BMI and have everyone do it the same etc.. etc.. etc.. Scales are just an easy and consistent way to approach this.

Q: How do I “sign up”
A: Simple, Join the Facebook group, or comment on this blog post.

Q: I’m signed up, how do I participate?
A: To enter category 1 or 2, first you have to register your starting weight. You can either be bold and braze and blog it (which would also get you started in category 3), post it to the Facebook group, or you can just email it to me (and I’ll keep it private). At the end of February, you’ll need to post or email a final result.

Q: Can I participate in all 3 categories?
A: Yes, and you should, but you can only Win in 1. If the same person wins more than one category, then they get first pick of the prize, but the second person in the category gets the last prize.

Q: What if I win all 3 categories?
A: Then, you are the man (or woman)! but you’d still only qualify for 1 prize (see above)

Q: It’s the middle of Feb, can I still join. (OK.. nobody’s actually asked this yet
A: Yes! You can get started at any time… but you will practically have less time to work out than the people that are already going.

Q: Hey, I don’t like your rules, or your contest, and I think that you should have done X instead of Y.
A: Tough nuggets. You don’t have to participate.

“Legalese”:

1. Since this challenge is being conducted mostly “online” it will mostly be based on a level of trust and honor system… so please be honest. Also, the 3 judges maintain the right to call bull on any individual’s “reported results” – so be honest.

2. We are giving our time and resources to make this happen… so you agree that if you don’t win, think you should have won, or just aren’t happy for some reason, you agree that you won’t be a cry baby and get mad at us for any reason. You also agree that participation in this challenge is purely voluntary and that you won’t sue anyone or try to act all tough if it doesn’t go your way.

3. Prizes have been donated, and we’ll do our best to get those to the winners. We’ll ship them or drive them to you, but we aren’t responsible for whatever FedEx, UPS, USPS or carry pigeon might do along the way. Also, if there are other laws or rules that prevent you from receiving the prizes… or redeeming the Team Suite… then tough luck, hope it works out better next time. Also, the Zunes have been donated by 3^rd party individuals… if they decide at the end that they just want to keep their stuff, we can’t help that either, but we would call them on it, and shame them publically. In general, we think they are great people that wouldn’t do that anyways.

Disclaimer:

I have never in my life taken a nutrition, food, health, diet, etc course or training. I know what I’ve studied on my own and what works for me. ALWAYS consult your doctor before starting a new diet and/or exercise plan.

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I wanted to "officially" announce the judges:

Javier Lozano, David Silverlight and myself (Caleb Jenkins).

Javier and David are both Microsoft MVP’s, hard core developers, awesome community guys (working hard with INETA) and are the perfect people to help make this happen. I also want to thank them both for agreeing to help with this… they don’t yet realize how much work is going to be required of them.

Remember the prizes that you’ll be working for: 1 MSDN Team Suite Subscription, 1 Zune, and 1 80GB VSTS Logo’d Zune! (plus a healthier you!)

Now that that’s official… I can post the “official” rules any minute now!

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It got me thinking… when my daughter was 1, she weighed 20 lbs. The next time that you’re in the store… pick up 20 pounds of flour, 20 pounds of grain… or 20 pounds of anything. Imagine carrying THAT around EVERY day. wow. What a difference 20 pounds makes!

Now… to where we are today. 6 weeks ago I was at 276.8 and this morning I weighed in at 251. w00t! That’s right friends, I’m down over 25 pounds in 6 weeks and feeling great! Six weeks ago I was squeezing in to my 44 pants and last Sunday I went down to the Microsoft event for a sound check wearing my old (hole in the knee) 40” jeans. I won’t go in to all of the details, but I will say this. It feels great!

Several people have asked me *exactly* what I’ve been doing… even though I blogged about it before, I’m thinking about doing a Live Meeting on Friday at lunch to walk through exactly how I’ve been tackling this eating plan. I’ll post the details here!

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