Wow. Has it really only been less than 5 weeks since we started the Health Challenge? That is so hard for me to believe. Granted, I started a couple of weeks before everyone else, but really even I’ve only been doing this for about 6-7 weeks. So let’s review the results so far shall we?

• In less than 5 weeks since I officially started I’ve lost 15 pounds. That is 8.6% of my body weight.
• If we include the 2 weeks prior, I’ve lost 21 pounds. That is 10.8% of my body weight
• I’ve lost 3.5% of body fat.
• I’ve gone from doing 30 curls and 35 pushups in one day to 50 plus 300!
• I’ve lost at least 2 inches off of my waist and people have really been commenting that my appearance is dramatically different.

Now, it’s also important to note that I have not spent a single penny on diet aids (no pills, plans, books or anything else), I’ve not stepped a foot inside a gym, and in fact, the only weights I’ve used have been two 30 pound dumbbells. The only thing I have used since I started, is a whole bucket-load of discipline. And this should absolutely prove that you can do it too. You just have to want it!

Ok gang. Whether you are on my Health Challenge or not, International Push-up Day is only hours away at this point, and I must be the only fool on the planet who was ever willing to pay for your push-ups!

Don’t forget that I’m going to make a $1 donation to Heifer International to help the needy for every push-up you do (up to $1,000 total)! So if you won’t do them for yourself, at least do them for the poor people around the world!

There are three ways your push-ups turn into credits for Heifer:

• My strong preference is that you post them on Twitter as you’re doing them. So if you do 10, send a Tweet that says something as simple as “10 pushups #HealthChallenge”. It’s important to add the #HealthChallenge for those of us keeping and eye out for tweets with this tag. If you don’t know how, you can use TweetDeck (Cali Lewis shows you how).
• You can leave a comment here on this page each time you do them. Same thing, just drop it below.
• If you have a blog, you can keep track of your push-ups on your blog. Just link back to this page to create a trackback I can follow when you post your first update, then keep updating your blog post throughout the day. I’ll go to all the linked blogs in the comments to count up the push-ups within the next couple of days.

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I’m back with another Health Challenge update for you guys. It’s been about two weeks since the last update, and when I last came to you I weighed 183 (down from a high of 195). Those of you who are checking in on the Health Challenge page have seen me documenting the changes occurring as a result of the Challenge, most recently, the fact that I dropped below 180 today for the first time in a long time.

Here is the current summary of activity and results. I did workout on the days in between, but didn’t document except on days when I took a measurement.

As you can see, my body fat percentage has decreased by approximately 2% in these three weeks. I actually lost about an additional 1% in the previous couple of weeks, and I’m looking forward to breaking the 20% barrier and being down in the teens once again. Ideally, I would like to be at 10%, so we’ll see how close I can get in our remaining 2 months. That is going to be tough to do given the relatively slow progress in the last month, but I guess I’d be happy to even hit 15% at this point.
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Ok folks, I’m declaring Saturday, May 16, 2009, International Health Challenge push-up day. What the heck does that mean? Well, it means a few things:

1. Everyone will have 24 hours to do, and keep track of, as many push-ups as they can muster in one day!
2. Someone is going to do the most! Hmmm… can anyone out there challenge me? I think not!
3. We’re all going to be really sore on Sunday May 17th!

So, here in Dallas, not only am I going to do push-ups all day long, but I’m going to organize some sort of a Tweetup event for all the Health Challenge folks to get together!

Maybe a local park? Hotdogs, hamburgers and pushups? Whose with me on this? Oh, and of course if you can’t join us in Dallas, that doesn’t mean you can’t organize your own local event! Just spread the word and lets get people around the globe participating all together!

Just imagine how cool it will be if we have a hundred, or a thousand people giving their updates all day long on Twitter! I swear, that… would… ROCK!
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