The Biggest Winner FOUR MONTH Clean Living Challenge

On Friday I posted on Instagram that I'm taking part in a 4 Month, Clean Eating/Biggest Winner Challenge. Since that post, I've gotten a lot of questions about what this means and how I'm doing it. I figured, I'd write about it here to spread the word (and to keep me honest about the challenge).

Here's how it works (keep in mind, I'm doing this with a group of people in the Durham area, but you can do this on your own or with friends as well!):


Starts: February 1, 2014
Ends: June 30, 2014

Requirements:

1. Eat clean, nutritious food 
• All "junk" food must be made at home, with mostly healthy ingredients 
• Obviously, some days will be better than others, but do your best
2. Complete Canada Health's MINIMUM requirements for exercise weekly: 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity PLUS strength training and balance and flexibility exercises. 
3. Attend monthly challenge and monthly team meeting 
• If you're living far away from me & want to do this challenge, just make sure you have a monthly check-in with yourself to see how you're doing.
4. Make and meet 3 goals each month:
• 1 numerical goal - Example: I want to lose 4lbs or I want to loose 2 inches off my waist
• 1 physical accomplishment goal - Example: I want to be able to do 10 FULL push-ups
• 1 socio-emotional goal - Example: I want to get a mani/pedi with my best friend
5. Complete daily review of your "great things that happened" and your accomplishments.
• Keep a daily journal and write accomplishments or good things that happened that day EVERY DAY, no matter how big or how small

Now for the clean eating part, I'll be real with you. I cannot afford to go completely "clean" so I'm going to do my absolute best to remove any and all preservatives from my diet and make as much possible from scratch. Along with that, I'm going to remove refined sugars from my diet (bye bye sweet, sugary coffee). Also, I know there will be days that I can't stick to the clean eating completely, but again, I'm going to do my very best, every day to eat as cleanly as possible (and post any awesome recipes that I find, here)

For the exercise portion I will be doing Zumba 2 times a week (at 60 minutes a piece) and 30 mins of either running, Tabata (post on this to come soon!) or one other class.

Like I mention above, I'm doing this challange with a group of friends from CORE Essential Fitness but you can do this with your own friends/family or by yourself. I will be checking in here once a month to update you on how it is going, so please feel free to do the same!

For February, here are my goals:

• Numerical Goal - I want to lose 4lbs this month
• Physical Goal - I want to do 10 FULL push-ups by the end of the moth
• Socio-Emotional Goal: I want my hubby and I do go on a REAL date. Get dressed up, leave the phones at home, have a really nice meal and spend the entire evening doing things together. 

Finally, I will be keeping a journal about the good things that happen every day. This can be ANYTHING from a happy moment, to "made it out of the house" today. Anything at all that made you feel good about yourself. It can be one thing or 10 things, whatever will help bring you up! Keep the journal with you as well so that you can write things down as they happen.

That's it for now! If you have any questions at all, please leave them in the comments below! If you want to share your goals as well, please, please feel free to do so! The more the merrier!