Skip to main content

Last Day of Team Lean

Now that we are into the third month of the year, I wanted to check in with some of my goals. Today is the last day before the final Team Lean weigh in and cholesterol screening so I must be on my best behavior. Team Lean is an 8-week team-based weight loss challenge hosted by my local YMCA. In addition to weekly weigh-ins they tried to make it fun by hosting events and nutrition talks for extra weight loss percentage points. One of the events was an obstacle 5k trail run that involved a lot of mud. Never before had I scaled a wall of made of tires or run through the woods carrying a bucket of sand, let alone struggle through a mud pit. Here is a picture from the 2019 Red Bug Run:


In addition to this 5k, I ran the Swamp Forest quarter marathon, the Chehaw 10-miler, the Tallahassee half marathon, and the Flatlanders 10k at Providence Canyon. Running these events was fun, but the most fun I had was probably biking 30 miles of red clay roads through North Florida and South Georgia with a friend one day. I followed the route for the Dirty Pecan event starting in Monticello and stopped halfway. When the actual event happened, we opted to skip it due to rain in the area and muddy roads. We are definitely looking forward to more bike rides in the future. Here is a photo she took of my on my bike:


All this activity amounts to thousands of calories burned and I have the pounds to prove it. As of today I have lost 19 lbs, which is not far from my goal of 20. Wish me luck as I strive to lose more pounds in the future by continuing this active lifestyle. Phase 2 of Team Lean will start tomorrow with monthly weigh ins to promote accountability. I guess I can't just eat all the things.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Writing on the Wall: Arguing Against Spanking

It's the 5th week of school and by now we have covered behaviorism and operant conditioning in all three of the classes I teach. I teach that we reinforce productive, desirable behavior before punishing undesirable behavior, and that removal punishment (taking away a privilege or object) should be used before resorting to presentation punishment (scolding or a negative consequence). This is counterintuitive, especially because many of us were raised in environments in which corporal punishment was normative. Discussion is always freeform in my classes and comments are encouraged. I present concrete situations from real life, like my daughter drawing on the wall or a student not being able to stay seated during on-task time. Inevitably spanking comes up in these educational psychology discussions. "If you just pop them, then they will stop immediately... If I got hit, I never did the thing again... little kids are too young to understand other consequences..." As a mot

On Fridays We Wear Red

Today is the last day of the first week of the spring semester at Valdosta State University . Every Friday we wear red to show school spirit. I went ahead and just bought red glasses to make things easier! This semester I *get to* teach two sections of an introductory educational psychology course, called Exploring Learning and Teaching, along with an online section of Educational Psychology for Teaching Adults. These are not new preps; in other words, I have taught these classes before and get to have fun with them. This first week is just an introduction so I chose to try out this empathetic syllabi review exercise from the blog, Faculty Focus . In my face-to-face sections, I asked students to bring in their syllabi and critically review them for missing information, as well as mark important dates in their calendars (paper or electronic). This then facilitated a discussion about why some instructors may leave out due dates or points for each assignment. This is my attempt t

Gamification for ADHD: This week's experience with Forest

This week I learned about an app, called Forest , from an academic mom group and immediately had to try it. Here is a really good  review  all about the app by Amy French. I did spring for the $1.99 paid version that allows you to connect with friends... This is a perfect example of gamification applied to staying on task, which is a primary problem for those of us who struggle with ADHD. Elements of gamification that the app uses includes points (leaves) earned for minutes spent on task. This is measured by not being able to toggle to any other app on the phone. One of my friends already pointed out that a browser version would be more helpful for her and guess what?!? The developers of Forest have a free Chrome extension you can use. For every block of time spent on task/off your phone (25 minutes is the default setting), your forest grows a tree and you earn points . With points (leaves) you can buy ( unlock ) special privileges, background music/sounds, and different types o