I am a team leader in the 2017 Winter 5% Challenge on SparkPeople.com. I lead the Rookie team -- a team for people new to the challenge. I'm not new to it, but I like being the leader of that team and helping new members get involved with the challenge for the first time.
It can be scary joining in a challenge like that, especially one that is as big, there are a lot of members and a total of 15 teams, and somewhat complicated, there are a lot of things to do in the challenge. But people who stick it out find that it is a lot of fun, very motivating and they make a lot of new friends that carry over far beyond the immediate 8 week challenge.
We have been doing the practice run week. That ends today. Tomorrow the official challenge starts. My goal is to lose 16 pounds in the 8 week challenge... hopefully even a bit more like last time. I hit the 5% loss mark at a little over 6 weeks last time, and finished with a 6.2% loss overall, which was pretty good. Hoping to do that well this time, although I've found that winter time seems to slow me down a bit. Even so, I'm still losing, and that's all that matters in the long run.
