Honey, Who Shrunk My Pants?! - Fitness Challenge Month One

Last month before Thanksgiving my husband and I decided we'd have a monthly fitness challenge. Late into the night we discussed the terms, the reward for the winner and all the specifics. Honestly, I was feeling heavy and needed some motivation. My husband also was feeling like his waist was entering the room before he was. Actually, he said, "I'm fat and out of shape." Excuse my poetic license.

Halloween is the unofficial start of the season of eating badly. The sugar doesn't take a break until Valentine's Day. We both would comfort ourselves through food. The availability of comfort food increases exponently during the short days of the winter months.

Let me be clear, neither of us are overweight, but we have habits that are not doing us any favors. Chip bags should not be single serve, if you know what I mean. I ran two marathons this year but still manage to eat more than I burn. It's not rocket science. Eat less and burn more. On paper it's easy. In real life, chocolate won't last two days in my house. Habits are hard to break. I needed my competitive nature to be engaged. We also had to come up with a way to reward ourselves without food. It's so easy to do.

So here's what we came up with:

• On the Ides of the month we would take three measurements. Two measurements would be our weight and our waists in centimeters. My other measurement would be my hips, and my husband would measure his chest.

• The person who had the greatest percentage drop in the measurements would win the fitness challenge that month.

• The reward would be three hours of uninterrupted guiltfree childless at-home time. Time that you could do anything you want.

Here's the summary on Month One:

I lost.

Brandon lost three pounds, and I lost a half a pound. Our waists remained the same as did his chest. My hips expanded. Proving once again that gravity sucks. Okay. Okay. I didn't gain weight over Thanksgiving. And now there's more room for WIDE LOAD on my bum rather than WIDE LOA. I'm a little down and haven't got my head in the game for Month Two, as I just finished some fries. They were fantastic by the way. Hopefully the half marathon in five weeks will kick my big ol' bum. I wish I had three uninterrupted hours to think about it...